We tend to think of the immune system as a Boolean did I get sick or did I not get sick? Which makes sense for the most part, because most of the time if you are around lots of people sharing things, you do get sick.
But maybe immune systems are more of a gradient, like contracting a cold is binary but how sick you actually are, as in how much the symptoms of that strain are affecting you, is actually quite variable. I ask because there was a huge big bad contagion at my place and I was the only one to not get sick, so I pumped myself full of vitamin C and zinc and was careful to wash my hands a lot. Like, maybe the disease did reach me (there were a couple instances where I was sure sharing that plate or such and such definitely was The Point Of Transferrence) but the moment it hit my zinc’d up system it just doubled up and filled my blood with cold dead cold cells (harharhar).
Similarly, I had a piano teacher who said she never got sick because lots of grubby little kids were always playing her piano. Is it possible in both examples we were actually sick, but didn’t exhibit many symptoms because our immune systems were on high alert? In the piano teacher example, it only makes sense if she’s boosting her immune system as much as I was. Unless she has a naturally incredible immune system. How realistic or practical is “immune system boosting”? Do some people have naturally better immune systems, excepting auto-immune disorders or hypochondria? If so, how much variation is there? Can it be fortified? Like the mythical iocaine resistance (I know poison is a progressively lethal thing) is it false to assume that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?
I mean, just how nebulous is the immune system to present-day science?
No, seriously, if you or someone you know from a knowlegeable background can answer these questions I am seeking non web-md.com answers.
Also long time no see haha. Pardon?
Escape! Escape! 
Aug 03, 2015 @ 23:00:05
Okay, so, yes, that is sort of actually how it works?
The immune system is all about antibodies. Antibodies are created when your body fights off a single, particular strain of a thing. Then, these antibodies are stored in your body.
The next time you encounter *that exact specific strain of thing*, you have the exact specific antibodies to fight it off.
So, you’ve still contracted the thing, but you’ll have virtually no symptoms, because your body *already* has the tools to fight it off. (This is also sort of a type of carrier. Because if you’ve already had it, you can be *carrying* the disease, but not showing any symptoms, because *your* body already knows how to fight it off.)
However, because there are so many *similar* strains of disease, what ends up happening is you’ll get a strain of something that is similar to something you’ve caught before, and your body will respond with ‘oh, that looks mostly like this thing that used *these* certain antibodies, as a first response.
The stored antibodies that your body has will be less effective than the ones that it creates for that specific disease, but they’re a lot better than nothing.
So, your piano teacher who was constantly around grubby kids is referring to having a very large store of antibodies that are mostly similar to what she comes into contact with.
If *she* were to contract a strain of something, she’s got a very high likelihood that she will have many different antibodies that are fairly similar to what she needs to fight off whatever she’s been exposed to.
That means that her reaction will be significantly less severe, and she’ll take a lot less time to get over it.
(This is also why people freaked out so much over things like bird flu and swine flu? There are several strains of flu that are pretty common, so people can pick up similar-enough antibodies through weaker strains of the flu virus. The problem with swine flu and bird flu is that they’re *different enough* that the antibodies that people will pick up from modern flu won’t help fight those off. So, essentially, the antibodies to fight modern influenza can’t help against bird flu and swine flu, and that’s why people get so freaked out about it.)
So, in conclusion:
Yes. Immune systems are absolutely a gradient, based on your overall health and previous exposure (among many other things).
The whole ‘binary’ thing, I think is probably more cultural, because the American culture is really weird about being sick.