DUE TO THE NEVER ENDING RECENT EVENTS. You're right, a certain kind of cynicism flashes through this line.

This page is the foreword to the metaphors I am going to use in MYBIESTMILCHWORLD.

 

Only a brief remark at the beginning to make you understand the title. Usually the immune system is seen as a defense system, the metaphor of conventional warfare is still prevailing most places, in science, in politics, in economy, in the media, at home in every household.

I don't see the immune system that way. This explains why my texts always have another turn and postulate that regulation is the key for understanding the biology of life.

THE INFECTION SEEN THROUGH EYES DISLIKING WAR

When these pages have been written by me, COVID-19, the pandemic and the measures taken were not yet recognizable on the horizon. For this reason I feel an introduction is needed to outline a slightly different frame of reference. My view on the inflammation has not changed at all, but I have to write a far more drastic outline here.

 

I write these introduction to the inflammation at a time when the fourth lockdown due to the delta variant of the Corona virus in the air.

Variants belong to the nature of many viruses. All of you know it from the many forms of the influenza virus, every year another strand.

There are viruses, of course, that are rather stable, such as for example measles, poliomyelitis, smallpox or rubeola. The vaccines protecting from the infections therefore have been rather successful, but not without side-effects too. The numbers are small compared to what we experience now with the SARS-2 vaccines. SARS-2 like the influenza viruses are volatile particles.

 

This is not my topic here. But it gives my text another turn and up-to-dateness.

 

Infections are inflammatory processes. The pattern of spreading depends on the trigger - the microorganisms kicking our bodily systems into an imbalance that needs to be restored by the inflammation process. There is no healing without this natural reaction of inflammation.
 

The organs or/and organ systems first of all affected depends on the affinity for the receptors on our cells. Virus particles bind to the receptors with the best matching first, abut not only because receptors are flexible in shape and therefore the uptake of viruses into the cell can also happen by a less optimal binding conditions.

To keep in mind, the biology of life does not follow an all or nothing rule. E.g. a monoclonal antibody never induces a 100% blockade. On the contrary, it is well able to engage other cells by a suboptimal binding and like that creating reactions.

Infections are inflammatory processes. The pattern of spreading depends on the trigger - the microorganisms kicking our bodily systems into an imbalance that needs to be restored by the inflammation process. There is no healing without this natural reaction of inflammation. The organs or/and organ systems first of all affected depends on the affinity for the receptors on our cells.

 

Virus particles bind to the receptors with the best matching first, abut not only because receptors are flexible in shape and therefore the uptake of viruses into the cell can also happen by a less optimal binding conditions, which then are first of all experienced as side-effects, side-effects that are in its core inflammatory again.

 

A cell to change its functional state needs hundreds of thousands of receptor interactions, and the trigger particle is required to bridge to other molecules expressed on the cell, only then and only then the respective cell starts to transform into another activity state.

 

This complex process changes the milieu of the cell, this alteration in the milieu in turn causes the cell to change anew - a circular process going on until the balance is achieved.

Cells and their receptors are incredible flexible and able to transmute depending on their context. The receptors are no stiff shapes sticking out of the cell membrane. It look smore like they are swimming on this surface. The membrane too is in permanent motion like water waves, and not in a state of rigor.

With the Corona virus we have obviously a particle with a high affinity to the endothelia of the pulmonary system accompanied by an affection of the nervous system, primarily the taste and smell circuits.

 

On top of these observations the particle appears not very stable as we already arrived knowingly at the delta version.

The longterm effects of the infection

The longterm effects of the infection may have one of its many causes in this affinity to the central nervous system. The phenomenon in my viewpoint is one of a chronic condition. The super systems of regulation - the autonomous nervous system, the immune system and the system of hormones - don't succeed to rebalance our organism. Viruses as a rule of thumb don't get cleaned off the body. If the regulatory processes can't manage to contain the shedding of viruses, then symptoms of sickness reappear.

 

These symptoms can have an acute face. Then the relapse is similar to the illness as it presented itself in the first place. A good example for this acute illness is the herpes virus infection.

 

The more drastic version of a virus infection aftermath is the chronic course which can have very distinct faces, a face you may not recognize as the consequence of the infection. The longterm illnesses can range from chronic fatigue, tumors to autoimmune diseases. All of them serious incurable chronic conditions.

TO TACKLE THE DRAMA,
THE ACUTE HAS TO BE SEPARATED FROM THE CHRONIC

At this point begins the drastic split between the acute and the chronic, the chronic diseases medicine is struggling so incredibly with. Anyway, inflammatory processes are without exception the main players.

 

What we generally do in the case of a chronic diseases is following the mindset of blocking and suppressing instead of fostering the regulation. The regulatory systems and their regulatory efforts fail to rebalance our bodies.

 

 

The chronic fatigue syndrome - termed long COVID - we currently observe in patients who came down with the Covid-19 infection is a chronic inflammatory process. The exhaustion is among others the result of an immune system that fails to restore balance. The messenger molecules that are permanently released by the system itself, the fatty tissue, the muscles and the autonomous system eats up the energy supplies produced by the metabolism which is tightly intertwined with the super systems of regulation (see above).

 

But more about this tricky subject on the pages that are going to follow.

DE