Your immune system is a fascinating, interconnected network. It protects you from millions of harmful bacteria, microbes, viruses, toxins and parasites, yet most people often don’t give it a second thought.
Overactive immune system is a condition when your immune system starts killing cells and tissues inside your body. While effective immune system is necessary to ensure good health, overactive immune system is a threat in itself. Our immune system is like a line of defense that keeps our body protected against any harmful viruses and bacteria.
However, there are times when our immune system can go awry and start attacking our own body tissues and cells. This can result in various other diseases and allergies. This condition when our immune system starts malfunctioning is known as overactive immune system.
Organs Of The Immune System
What Are The Causes Of An Overactive Immune System?
Overactive immune system is also known as autoimmune disease. It can be caused due to imbalance in the proportion of WBC (White Blood Cells) due to various factors. The immune system may begin to malfunction when the WBCs fail to differentiate between own body cells and foreign particles. This overactive state can result into destruction of normal and healthy body cells and can also affect the functioning of organs due to abnormal growth of organs.
Over a period of time, overactive immune system can result into various types of autoimmune conditions such as sclerosis and arthritis. In both conditions, the immune system starts attacking myelin sheath of central and peripheral nerves as well as synovial membrane of most joints. There are other types of autoimmune diseases that can also be caused due to overactive immune system such as inflammatory bowel diseases, psoriasis, fibromyalgia and Lupus.
The exact cause of overactive immune system is not clearly understood but certain factors are known to precipitate it. Genetic changes can be one of the major reasons of autoimmune diseases. There can be various other factors such as stress, hormonal changes, infections and chemical toxic that could lead to these problems.
(Source: Pramod Kerkar, M.D., FFARCSI, DA Pain Assist Inc.)
Skin Is The 1st Line Of Defense
At the break of skin and the openings of your mouth and nose, it is the border patrol. If invaders do get inside your body, it sends out lines of defense, whether in the blood, organs, muscles or bones.
This internal police force is vital to life, though sometimes it does get overzealous. When this happens, the immune system can work against us, causing allergic reactions or at its worst, autoimmune disorders, such as lupus and multiple sclerosis.
At other times, it weakens, fails and becomes ineffective.
In A Nutshell
The immune system is incredibly complicated and utterly vital for our survival. Several different systems and cell types work in perfect synchrony (most of the time) throughout the body to fight off pathogens and clear up dead cells.
