Vaccines are a hot topic right now.
Some people swear by them and others rightly or wrongly vilify them.
No matter how you feel about vaccines at some point in your life you’re probably going to have some.
This is especially true if you travel to places like Africa.
If you’re flying to Africa you’ll need to have all of these vaccines.
- Flu
- MMR – measles, mumps and rubella (German measles)
- Polio
- Hepatitis A & B
- DPT – diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus
It’s important to be protected, and it’s important to understand the biochemical processes that take place once you’ve had these vaccines.
In recent years researchers have discovered a great deal about why we feel low when we have an infectious disease.
When a pathogen such as a virus or a bacterium invades the body the immune system alerts scavenger cells called macrophages which present the bug to a helper T cell which signals that this foreign virus needs to be taken care of.
This will happen if you have a virus or a vaccine that contains a small amount of the virus that you want to build immunity for.
The macrophage then sets off a chain of events which make the T cells attack the foreign virus.
This process is called cell mediated immunity.
Humoral immunity is the bodies second form of defence. This makes the helper T cells stimulate another type of white blood cell B cells to divide, differentiate and produce antibodies to protect our body from the foreign virus.
These 2 processes will latch on to the infectious organism and break it down so it’s harmless.
Immunologists have realised that the immune response involves lots of different cell types that are present throughout the human body.
The immune system uses cytokines to communicate with these different cell types. Cytokines are chemical messengers that travel in the blood stream and lymph fluid.
Interleukin 1 carries this message from the macrophage where it is made to the T cells.
Interleukin 1 can influence the brain, it alters temperature regulation.
Your hypothalamus is set for 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Interleukin 1 moves the set point for your hypothalamus up, so if your body is at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit you’ll start shivering.
As if this wasn’t bad enough interleukin 1 also makes the hypothalamus release corticotropin releasing factor. This makes the hypothalamus send signals to the pituitary gland which then sends signals to the adrenal glands which will activate the fight/flight response.
So you’ve had your vaccines and you’re safe, but for a few hours or a few days you’ll probably be running a fever and your fight/flight response will be activated.
Knowing this you can be prepared and ask your family to take care of you for a few days whilst your bodies systems take some time to recalibrate.
Does this mean we shouldn’t have vaccines?
No of course not!
Especially if you want to travel to places that are ridden with diseases.
When foreigners land in a country that hasn’t had any visitors the original custodians of the land often die because they haven’t been exposed to the viruses that the foreigners are carrying.
Their immune systems haven’t had any practice!
Viruses are everywhere, but if you’re exposed to a virus through a vaccine or in your environment then your immune system will kick in and this process that I just described will protect you and stop you from dying.
The main point here is that germs and viruses are good for us, they strengthen our immune system so it can get used to working and keeping us safe from foreign pathogens.
If you spend your life interacting with your environment freely and wisely then your immune system will get lots of exercise and it will work effectively if you’re healthy and you drink lots of water, exercise, eat lots of vegetables, laugh a lot, pursue your passion, help people, give back to your community and have enough downtime and romantic love in your day to day life.
People get sick all the time if they’re unhappy, if they’re lonely, if they’re stressed too often and their fight/flight system is activated too often, or if they consume too much junk food.
You shouldn’t be scared of viruses because you won’t catch a virus because you’ve been exposed to it, you’ll catch a virus because your immune system was weakened because you compromised it by living outside the dictates of common sense.
A lot of this is just common sense…
However, common sense isn’t necessarily common.
Just remember your body is not a machine, it’s a biological miracle that performs no matter what you do to it otherwise you’d be dead.
100,000 biochemical reactions take place in your body every second.
There is a neuropeptide for every emotional state.
Some neuropeptides are more active in you than others, it’s all about repetition, the more you activate certain neuro peptides with your emotions and your behaviours, the more you’ll become addicted to these neuro peptides.
So if you’re addicted to stress, or overwork, or sex, or victimisation, or exercise, or adrenaline fuelled activities then you’ll find it hard to break free of these patterns and over time these emotional states will become more and more entrenched into your central nervous system.
There are a lot of strategies that you can use to fix this.
About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells
However it takes 6 months for your body to replenish most of its cells, so these cells that are running throughout your central nervous system will have to be reprogrammed.
We also have a lot of tiny cells in our blood, which live only three to 120 days.
To reprogram them you’ll need to go through a painful experience so that you’re motivated to change or you’ll have to make a conscious effort to change gradually and deliberately.
You have to be intrinsically motivated, if you’re extrinsically motivated by bad influences you won’t stand a chance.
The biggest challenge is always going to be your environment, your social circle will usually be normalising these abnormal patterns which create all of your problems.
If something is normalised then it’s hard to change it because everyone else is accepting it, and the strongest desire we have is the desire to belong.
This is why it’s so important to have a family.
Then you’ll have a strong internal compass and you won’t be swayed like a leaf in the wind
You’ll be a strong oak tree.
Be the oak tree.
The acorn that will turn you into an oak tree is meditation.
Meditation comes in many forms, and nothing is as effective as sitting upright in silence in a beautiful location on a warm pleasant day outside.
When you find yourself in silence you’ll know what you need to be happy.
You’ll only know what you need to be happy if you take the time to sit in silence and contemplate the intricacies of your life.
Give yourself that gift each and every day for the rest of your life.
You deserve it…