As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a phenomenon I call “throwing off” a cold: There’s something going around, I feel like I’m starting to come down with it, and then I don’t.
By “starting to come down with it,” I mean that I get the tickle in my nose and slight sore throat that are almost always my first cold symptoms. But sometimes I get up the next morning and I’m fine. The cold magically goes away for some reason.
My theory about this has always been that the cold is one I’ve had before, so I start to get it and then my immunity from last time kicks in. But I now realize that I have no idea at all whether this is a load of complete bollocks, since I know next to nothing about actual mechanisms of immunity.
So-- is this theory of mine consistent with the way immunity actually works, or have I got it completely wrong?
I’ll be interested to see what people say in this thread.
My husband is like you - just this weekend he complained on Friday night of feeling sick then by Saturday morning he was fine. I started feeling sick on Saturday night and I was completely wiped out for all of Sunday and am still recovering today.
It could be that you’ve already had it, or that it’s just something you’re able to beat relatively quickly. Many “colds” are not colds, but bacterial infections that present the same way. There’s no written law that when you “get” something like that, you must display these symptoms in this order for this amount of time.
It’s likely that you just get a slight bacterial infection that triggers only a few symptoms, and then your lymphatic system gets rid of it before the bad stuff gets in.
An actual cold (rhinovirus) is a virus, which means the only way to beat it is to wait for your immune system to fight it off, so we have pretty good predictions about how long it will last. A virus can multiply very quickly at first, so they’re hard to stave off early.
A bacterial infection, like sinusitis, is basically like an insect infestation in your home. If only a few get in, your body can fight them off before they have a chance to reproduce out of control. Then antibiotics become useful.
So, basically, you do get sick. Just not as sick. It’s kind of silly to think “uh oh, I’m going to get sick soon” when you start coughing and getting stuffed up. Those things mean you are sick. We’re just so used to those being “warning signs” and not actual symptoms, as they’re the first symptoms to present.
Not really related, but interesting nonetheless, is that your body is fighting off bacteria constantly. It’s why dead people decompose and living people don’t. The stuff that decomposes us is trying to do so all day long, it’s just not strong enough to stand up to our defenses.
I’m no expert but from my limited knowledge you might be right. Immunity to a disease is due to your immune system recognizing the disease and reacting before it can establish itself. WAG : Given that colds are actually a collection of hundreds of similar diseases, it occurs to me that your immune system might be reacting to a disease similar to one you’ve had before, which is why it gets far enough for you to notice. Rather like exposure to cowpox granting resistance to smallpox.
Not entirely; some of the microorganisms involved are poisoned by oxygen, and therefore can’t survive at all in live tissue.
i think that decomposition/deterioration is not solely an ‘us versus them’ issue of fighting off bacteria that want to eat us.
your body is constantly repairing itself, cannibalizing itself and repairing. your body has cellular and molecular components that keep breaking or are damaged/injured and needing to be repaired. even with no bacteria if the repairs didn’t stay ahead of the damage you would deteriorate.
I’m similar to the OP - I’d say 4 times out of 5 when I get the “warning tickle” it doesn’t develop into a proper cold. I just put it down to having a good immune system, and/or having immunity to lots of strains of cold virus (my wife is a primary school teacher, so tends to get every cold going - I assume I get exposed to a weakened version of most of the bugs!)
If you body can make the proper antibodies in time and can kill the virus/bacteria before it can spread then you might feel a little sick. If it needs several days to stop the infection then you will definitely feel it. It being your immune system response to the virus moreso than anything the virus does.
I dont think thats correct. Yes, you do have antibodies from a previous infection, but this seems unlikely. I imagine if you had a immune system response that made you feel a little sick everytime you ran into an old virus or bacteria then you would feel sick pretty much all the time.
Hmm. Maybe. But then again, if there were constantly bugs around capable of sickening those who aren’t immune, wouldn’t babies be sick pretty much nonstop for the first two or three years of life?
I’m not ragging on you; I started to post that I thought you were probably right until I thought of the baby thing.
Where’s that Chief Pedant character? S/he usually settles these things!
By the way, I think I did it again-- threw off the bug, that is. Yay me!
IME, Exercise is a miracle cure. I seldom get sick and when I feel like I am coming down with something, I exercise a little harder than I normally do. No pain no gain.
My theory as it seems to work for me, is get the body working into overdrive. Everything is working harder, your heart, your brain, your glands, your kidneys and your immune system.
I frequently get sickly malaise-y occurrences that never develop into a proper cold, too. I don’t think I’ve had a real knock-down drag-out head cold in years. I’ve even been to the doctor about them, as I average about one every other month, and they’re bloody annoying. He can’t figure it out, though.
My theory: as you age, you have already caught and are immune to all the really virulent cold strains. What strains remain for you are wimpy little half-assed bugs that don’t amount to much.
The more you live the more germs your exposed to the better the immune system.
Remember you don’t need exact resistance. For instance, cowpox will produce antibodies close enough to give you immunity to smallpox, even though they aren’t exact they are close enough.
You probably have has so many colds in your life that when you start to get sick your immune system has antibodies similar enough to get a jump on the cold and start the body attacking the germs a lot quicker.
As far as I understand the whole pregnancy deal the baby and the host’s systems stay pretty isolated by the placenta. So I’d guess that the baby grows up with some set of basic anti-bodies that are genetically coded, or something like that, without inheriting ones that the mother has accumulated during her life.
Before I was 10 years old I was sick often. I had scarlet fever, mumps, measles, pneumonia, chicken pox, and got the flu every winter. I still remember the high fever dreams whenever I hear the Pink Floyd song say, “my hands felt like two balloons”.
But I guess that covered most of the things I was likely to get and then I didn’t get sick very often anymore. Nose cold maybe every 3 years when young. I am not allergic to anything.
I’m now over 50, no health issues at all, and can’t remember the last time I was sick. Memory is still good, just been a long, long time since I caught anything.
Some viruses mutate a lot. Smallpox is caused by a virus, and barring super-duper-top-secret stuff in biowarfare labs, I don’t think it mutated significantly. Hence our ability to wipe it out (again, barring biowarfare and the like).
Well, this does have some logic behind it actually. Your lymphatic system is like a plumbing system- basically the non-pressurized one- like your sink drain and all. The lymphatics collect the fluids that basically leak out from your blood vessels and tissues and take them back to major organs to be refiltered into your blood. Along the way they pass the lymphatic Nodes that you have all along your body- these are the “hot spots” if you will of where you’ve got a greater collection of T-Cells, Macrophages, B-cells and all the other good stuff in your immune system that tries to recognize harmful invaders and defend your body against them.
So rather than just have your immune system randomly working throughout your body, it’s slightly more efficient to filter things through these nodes to better try to check for invaders and such.
But as I said above, the lymphatic system is not really pressurized (like how your circulatory system has your heart pumping it). Instead it’s a series of one way valves that open and close to push the lymph upwards by means of muscle contractions.
That’s the key: when you move around, you’re helping to push the flow of lymph through the lymph nodes and recirculate them into your systems. So if you work out quite often- you’re basically circulating your lymphatic system much more often and more efficiently through the lymph nodes. This gives yourself a better chance of your immune system being able to discover a foreign infection and a better chance to immediately start fighting it off before the infection gets a chance to really start doing any damage because as soon as it enters the body, it could be circulated into your lymph systems and be identified.
So there is some truth to exercising and feeling “healthier” in general.