StemCell Therapy

What is the Immune System?

Just like the human immune system, the animal immune system is an amazingly intricate and complex system that keeps animals healthy and protects them against all sorts of invaders including viruses, bacteria, microbes, parasites and toxins. The subject of immunity and the immune system is one that regularly crops up in conversation, in the newspaper and in magazines not to mention the vast number of adverts promoting products aimed at working with this system.

If the immune system is weakened, every body system in the animal body is at risk. In order to understand the true importance of the immune system, we firstly need to understand a little bit about how the immune system works.

How does the animal Immune System Work?

The animal immune system has many different components both inside and outside the animal body. If we start from the outside we will see that an animals body has many different barriers that form part of his or her immune system.

While an animals skin is obviously a physical barrier to many germs and toxins, it also contains special immune cells that act as warning bells to alert the immune system to any foreign material, while also regulating the immune response to this material this is evident in the skin of an animal reacting to fleas or certain plants.

The skin also secretes antibacterial substances that hinder the growth of excess bacteria on the skin. An animals eyes, nose and mouth are all possible ports of entry for invading germs but an animals tears, nasal secretions and saliva all contain enzymes or cells of the immune system to keep the invaders at bay.

The mucous membrane linings of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary tracts also provide the one of the first lines of defense against invasion by microbes or parasites. Internal defense mechanisms for an animal include the Lymphatic system, Thymus gland, bone marrow, spleen, white blood cells and antibodies.

The immune system is amazingly resilient and powerful system, protecting an animal daily from a wealth of viruses, bacteria, foreign cells and an animals own body cells that have "gone bad" such as cancer cells. However, like with most amazing systems, sometimes things go wrong.

Many animals suffer from allergies that are caused by a hypersensitivity reaction of the immune system to certain allergens in the environment. When these antigens enter the body system, the immune system tends to over react and antibodies quickly cause the release of histamine which results in an allergic reaction.

These reactions differ in severity and may include itchiness, lesions, blocked sinus, Asthma, Eczema and Contact dermatitis. When cells of the immune system are over-produced, they become out of control and the result is cancer or auto immune diseases, for example in humans when the body over produces white blood cells, the result is leukemia.

Antibiotics are created for the purpose of treating bacterial infections when an animals immune system cannot mount an adequate response. So does it not stand to reason that if an animals immune system were strong enough it would not need the antibiotics? Antibiotics are specific chemicals aimed at killing off the targeted bacteria.

They are not effective against viruses and should not be given to a pet for a viral infection. Unfortunately antibiotics have been excessively and improperly used -The more you give your animals antibiotics, the more you depress their immune systems - and the more depressed their immune systems are, the more likely they are to get another infection and if they get another infection they are given another antibiotic and so the vicious cycle continues!

There is a lot that can be done naturally to help boost your pets immune system. A strong, healthy immune system is the best armor you can give your animal. Here are some of the lifestyle factors that you can employ with your pets to keep their immune systems in peak condition and able to ward off recurrent infections:

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Immune System - PetAlive

This entry was posted on October 16, 2017 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Immune System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |