How viruses stimulate the immune system
The more often a person gets sick, the stronger his immunity is. At least this is what a significant group of people believe. And others are convinced that getting sick one after the other contributes to the weakening of the immune system.
Who are actually right?
Theoretically, any disease passed, especially a viral one, stimulates immunity and strengthens it, and ultimately prevents the development of allergies.
On the other hand, if a child has a genetic predisposition to compromise immunity, any disease can cause serious complications that negatively affect the state of his immune system.
Of course, a father will have chicken pox much harder than his son. On the other hand, the immune system of people in adulthood reacts too intensively to any antigen – infectious diseases in them occur with high fever and severe intoxication.
But there are no guarantees that the disease in a child will be mild – in 1 out of 1000 children, measles, chicken pox and rubella cause encephalitis, and mumps in 10-20% of children causes the development of meningitis.
That is why it is better to protect children, as well as adults and elderly people from infectious diseases.
What makes us healthier?
It is said that the healthiest and most resistant to infectious diseases have always had a runny or stuffy nose in their childhood.
The formation of nasal secretions is caused by about 200 infectious organisms – getting sick from all of them and building immunity to them is almost impossible.
Children often get sick for a variety of reasons – both due to defects in immunity and due to living conditions.
In particular, if there is smoking in the home where the child lives, the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose will be more sensitive to viruses and microbes, and the child will get sick more often from acute respiratory viral or bacterial infections.
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In general, frequent illness weakens the body, and the weaker it is, the harder it would bear any subsequent infection.
But if a sick child, when he grows up and starts to toughen up, do sports and eat properly, his immune system will strengthen and it is possible even to stop getting sick completely in a young and mature age.
It is believed that immunity is formed by the first year of a person’s life. This is most likely due to the fact that children up to 1 year are less likely to suffer from viral diseases, for example smallpox, because the protective proteins formed by their mother are preserved in their organism.
In the period between the 6th and 12th months, the mother’s antibodies disappear from the child’s blood and he remains defenseless against viruses. And already at this age it is recommended to carry out vaccination.
Many parents are convinced, as it has recently become particularly relevant in Bulgaria, that the risk of complications from the administration of vaccines many times exceed the dangers of the development of the disease itself.
In this regard, it should be noted that there is currently no way to create an absolutely safe vaccine – it contains an active substance and therefore can cause adverse reactions.
Scientists have found that there is a genetic predisposition to post-immunization complications. When it becomes possible to study the genome of each person, children with a particular heredity will be found and they will be vaccinated according to a different scheme.
For now, it is necessary to correlate the risk of disease with that of vaccination – serious complications from vaccination are extremely rare, 1 case per 1 million immunized, and people die from infections and viruses much more often.
