https://howtohideapandemic.substack.com/p/the-thieves-of-time
"Our body’s natural defenses against disease are comprised of many different
components. Of these, there are two that stand out: our skin and our white
blood cells.
Our skin provides the first and most powerful protection against disease:
barrier protection. Like the wall along a country’s border or a moat around a
castle, our skin prevents invading pathogens from getting inside in the first
place. And if it doesn’t get inside, it can’t do any damage.
Simple as that.
However some things do manage to get inside. No matter how well we try to tape
over the inevitable holes in our barrier skin with condoms, masks, goggles,
etc. And there are always enemies lurking within us against which we must
protect ourselves and against which the skin can provide no protection —
enemies such as cancer.
For all those we have white blood cells. White blood cells come in a dizzying
array of types, if not colors (they are all “white” after all), with each type
specializing in a specific function from “eating” bacteria to manufacturing
antibodies to creating immune memory to killing our own infected cells.
It’s really not necessary to obsess over which specific type of white blood
cell. What’s necessary is to know they’re all white blood cells.
And that they all come from the same place (bone marrow) and that we are all
born with a fixed number of them.
The latter is not literally true as we continue to manufacture white blood
cells in our marrow into early adulthood. But the amount we manufacture drops
off precipitously after about age 20 so that by the time one reaches their
early thirties it can safely be said that they’ve got all the white blood
cells, brain cells and eggs that they’re ever going to have.
Critical to understanding why we die is understanding that we have a fixed
amount of biological material with which to fight off death. And that the more
rapidly we deplete that biological material (white blood cells), the more
rapidly we approach our own death.
It is as comforting as it is fashionable to think of the immune system as akin
to a muscle: something that needs to be “exercised” or it will atrophy. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The immune system is like your car’s gasoline
tank (or battery) — the more you use it, the less there is of it left.
Our immune system is constantly fighting the enemy from within: cancer. Each of
us has likely “had cancer” hundreds or thousands of times in our lifetime and
will never even know, because our immune system eliminated the cancerous cells
before they got a running start.
Every time your immune system kills a cancer cell, every time it fights off a
nasty head cold, every time it prevents a cut finger from being infected, it
uses up some of your limited number of white blood cells.
Your immune system doesn’t get stronger every time you use it. It gets
weaker
every time you use it."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: January 11, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-96291169
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
