Something I Didn't Know

Imagine an amazing high-tech security system combined with a military-grade arsenal of weapons, all set up inside your body to do surveillance and identify invasive agents, then neutralize, poison, and destroy them before they can harm you. And imagine this system has a memory so vast that it is able to store not only information on how to fight never-before-seen diseases and infections, but one that never forgets diseases you've had all the way back to when you were a child. Science calls this your Immune System.

Our amazing body has a defensive system built in to protect us from most outside biological attacks, from our digestive system to our organs to our lymphatic system, and even right down at the cellular level. Without diving into the specifics of T-cells, B-cells, Interferon, Macrophages, Immunoglobulins, Neutrophils, Basophils, Eosinphils, and Mast Cells, I would like to take a look at two appendages – the tonsils and the appendix - that play an essential role in the immune system – something that many of us never knew.

From the beginning to the end of the digestive tract, our amazing bodies have immune surveillance checkpoints, beginning in our mouth and extending all the way to our large intestine. These checkpoints are there to check the content of the air we breathe and the food that enters our bodies. If anything potentially harmful is detected – bacteria, viruses, parasites, pathogenic microorganisms – an immune alarm is sounded, directing immune cells and immune chemicals to deal with the emergency immediately.

The three main security checkpoints are the tonsils in the throat, Peyer's Patches in the small intestine, and the appendix in the large intestine. When an intrusion is detected, these essential organs spring into action, triggering a complex and lethal immune response. Who knew?

Long mistaken by medical doctors as a useless organ, and too often surgically removed, the tonsils are now recognized as an essential part of our immune response. Loaded with immune T-cells, B-cells, and potent immune chemicals, their location positions them as the first line of defense against any invader you might inhale or ingest. It has been discovered that the tonsils can synthesize the antibody for Poliomyelitis, and they may be the only place in the body that can do this. Doctors that were quick to remove the tonsils of children left them essentially defenseless against the paralyzing polio virus. With the knowledge we have today about the importance of the tonsils in maintaining immunity, it makes tonsillectomies look barbaric and insane in hindsight.

Then located in the small intestine, there are lymph nodes called Peyer's Patches that are saturated with immune T-cells and B-cells, which not only directly kill harmful disease-causing germs in the digestive tract, but also mediate an entire immune response whenever germs are detected after food leaves the stomach.

Then there is the appendix, long thought by the medical community to be another useless organ, like the tonsils. Today we recognize the appendix to be an immune aggregator. Positioned perfectly at the beginning of the large intestine, it can detect disease-causing microorganisms as they enter the bowel, neutralizing them, and if necessary, initiating an immune response signalling the spleen and other organs to release more immune cells as needed.

Needless to say, modern surgeons do everything they can these days to avoid removing these essential organs. If you always suspected that God put your tonsils and appendix there for a reason, you were right!

Adapted from the work of Dr. Richard Schulze