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Article: Your immune system (which will weaken if you let it): the second thing that ages you.(The Better Man / 06)
- Article from:
- Esquire
- Article date:
- May 1, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The weakening of the immune system is heralded by one of three things: infections, inappropriate use of the immune system (autoimmune ailments), and cancer. And they're all a little bit related to one another. First let's talk about what immune cells actually do, because once you understand that, what follows will make intuitive sense.
The body needs a way to respond quickly to a foreign assault. Immune cells provide that response. When an infection invades, your body rapidly senses it: Immune cells "see" the invader, gobble it, identify it by what it's made of, and tell the rest of the immune cells what's there so they can start the "clonal expansion" of ...