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How does the immune system work?

The immune system works not unlike a castle defence system. 

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1. First line of defence: Castle Walls

A first barrier includes the walls of the keep, this includes your keratinised skin and a hostile PH environment in the vagina.

Note that vestibule tissue of the vulva is non-keratinised as it's endoderm tissue. This means it's supposed to be on the insider of the body but because it's a transitional tissue, it's in a 'in-between area'. In men, this skin would form the urethral pipe of the penis and so is far better protected. This sliver of tissue therefore, has no castle walls to rely on for defence and why vestibule nerves often get sensitised and damaged with a severe thrush infection. 

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2. Second line of defence: Wall Guards

Next we have armed guards in the form of white blood cells. If Candida enters, they would attack it, whatever and eat it or blast it within minutes. 

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3. Third line of defence: Special Forces

These are the special forces that have targeted knowledge about an infection. 

B cells → make antibodies, like little arrows that stick to the germs so they can’t cause trouble and can be marked for destruction.

T cells → act like knights. Some shout orders to the other soldiers, others go fight infected cells directly.

These soldiers take a few days to get ready, but they’re really good at their job.

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4. Fourth line of defence: Messenger Beacons

Nerves continually send messages from all parts of the body to the brain to alter behaviour to help fight an infection. When an infection breaks out, your immune system releases pro-inflammatory cytokines which warn that there is danger. This is then picked up by the nerves and sent up to the brain. This often results in that fiery burning feeling with a thrush infection. 

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A severe vaginal candida infection can result in permanent changes to the peripheral nerves in the vestibule and chronic pain - see neuropathic vestibulodynia. 

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5. Fifth line of defence: Memory of the battle

After the battle, your immune system writes down what the invader looked like in its memory book. Next time that infection comes back, the soldiers usually recognise it instantly and defeat it super fast. That’s why once you’ve had chickenpox (or got a vaccine), you usually don’t get it again.

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How do I get a healthy immune system?

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Diet

Keep a healthy, balanced diet, rich in vegetables and fruit. This will ensure you get enough vitamin C and zinc, which are needed for cell growth and resilience.  

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Sleep

The immune system is highly reliant on a good night's sleep - preferably over 7 hours. This time allows the white blood cells to fully focus on excreting infection material and proliferating to fight any current infection. 

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Excercise

Exercise promotes immune system regeneration and reduces stress. 

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Avoiding stress

Stress in short amounts is meant to help you and your body cope in an emergency. But chronic stress can lead to a suppressed immune system by lowering white blood cell numbers and making existing ones less effective. 

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Hormones

Regulated hormones can play a part in maintaining a healthy immune system. There is not enough research to completely understand how female sex hormones affect women's immunity – women weren't included in medical trials by law until 1993 and were just considered little men. Research therefore has significant gaps in knowledge with regard to how oestrogen and progesterone influence the neuroinflammatory response. These findings will be important as women disproportionately are affected by neuroinflammatory conditions, for example:

• Multiple Sclerosis is 2-3x more common in women. 

• 60-80% of ME sufferers are women

• Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is two- to three-fold more frequent in women than in men

That being said, science has made clear there's a relationship between oestrogen and the immune system – it promotes white blood cell activity. Progesterone seems to calm the immune response. More research will make further nuances clearer and X chromosomes have many genes coding for immunity which may also form part of the sex differences in immune response. 

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Getting vaccinations

Vaccinations are like taking a battle memory book out of a library and retaining its knowledge. It teaches the immune system about a potential infection without someone having that infection to begin with. There is a candida vaccine in development but it is unlikely to become available until a few decades.