My Immune-System Kicks Ass!!!

Sometimes I feel like such a wimp.  And not just in the “I feel like a victim of my disease” kind of way.  No, right now I’m looking at the bigger picture, about being a wimp in the evolutionary sense: In the world where the fittest survive, I’m a vulture’s potential meal.  Sure, we now have medicines that keep people like me alive and healthy-ish.  But sometimes I wonder…if I came from a pre-antibiotic world- would I still be alive? 

For the most part I feel that this really doesn’t matter.  I am not in that world but rather in a new world fighting it out with different armor.  But there is a small part of me that for some reason likes to think that I would have stood a chance back then.  I can’t be the only one who thinks about this- isn’t this the whole premise of the show “Survivor”?

Fortunately, there’s the hygiene hypothesis that cheers me up and reminds me that I am not necessarily part of a group of people with a genetic mutation that makes me vulnerable to sickness and death.  No!  Instead, it’s possible that I have a really kick-ass immune system!  That in fact, I may come from some elite group that would have had some advantage!  I don’t have a “faulty” immune-system, it’s just that it’s totally trigger-happy and I’m the only one it’s shooting at. 

I have been guilty of looking upon people with severe allergies as the “fragile” ones in our world.  One speck of something as harmless as a peanut could be their demise.  If the hygiene-hypothesis is true, however, the ones we see as fragile today may have been the ones who would have avoided sickness and outlived others back in a germ-infested world.   And apparently, it’s not just invading germs that were staved off, the immune-system is in fact able to recognize unusual cells.  I have heard that people with allergies are less likely to develop cancer since their immune systems are hyper-sensitive to any abnormalities within the body.  So, the next time anyone ever complains about our peanut-free schools, blame the lack of germs, not the child.

I will probably turn down any offers to join next season’s cast of Survivor, mainly because I don’t think I’d be great at forming alliances and then back-stabbing my so-called friends.  But based on the hygiene hypothesis, I can now imagine that if I travelled back in time to some ancient civilization, it wouldn’t be the germs but rather the saber-toothed lion that would do me in.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130322104255.htm 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/really-the-claim-allergies-reduce-the-risk-of-cancer/