Immunity improves the body’s performance

The most intuitive feeling of improved immunity is that your body's response to external stimulation and injury becomes "sharp", and it will not fall into long-term fatigue and discomfort.

In the winter of the past two years, I was the "cold catcher" in the office. As long as someone next to me coughed twice, I would be infected within three days. Every time, I would develop bronchitis. The cough would keep me awake at night, and I would not be fully recovered within a month and a half. Later, I forced myself to adjust. I took a detour from get off work and walked 20 minutes home every day. I always added a boiled egg to my breakfast and stayed up less late at night. At the end of last year, half of the staff in the department had a fever and asked for leave. I just had a dry throat for most of the day. I drank two bottles of lemon water and was fine the next day. I didn't even open the cold medicine I had stored up. Oh, by the way, there was a strong wind in the spring and catkins were flying in the air. I had rhinitis and could sneeze dozens of times. My eyes were swollen as if I had just cried. This year, I could only sneeze twice when I went out in the morning. I drank a glass of warm water at the company and it relieved me. The allergy medicine I had prepared for a year was still unopened.

If you pay careful attention, small details actually hide signals: before, when you cut a small cut when cutting vegetables, it would be red and swollen for several days, and pus would easily flow out when exposed to water. Now, it has formed a thin scab the next day, and there is no feeling of swelling or pain.； In the past, if I stayed up late at night to catch up on a project, I would have to wait for two or three days to regain my consciousness. I would be so groggy all day that I couldn't even eat. Now if I have to stay up once, I can catch up on half an hour of sleep at noon the next day, and I can work normally when I get up. To put it bluntly, immunity is like the security team in your body. In the past, they were untrained stragglers. The bad guys only reacted when they broke into the house. During the fight, they had to smash the house into a mess, and it took more than half a month to drive them out. Now it is a well-trained team. The bad guys were picked up as soon as they climbed over the wall, and you didn't even notice that there was a foreign enemy coming.

But I have to be honest here. Nowadays, a lot of propaganda on the Internet shouts "the higher the immunity, the better." I have believed it before and spent a lot of money to buy so-called immune enhancers. Later, after asking Fa Xiao, an immunologist, I found out that this perception is really one-sided. Immunity also needs to be balanced. If the security team is too excited and shoots randomly at the slightest sign of trouble, they will hit their own people instead. For example, some people may have a simple cold, but the immune response is too strong and the temperature rises to 40 degrees. There are also people who have nothing to do but take too many so-called immune health supplements, but they often get hives and inexplicable pain in their joints. These are all manifestations of an overactive immune system. Some people say that they have a strong immune system because they have not caught a cold for several years. In fact, this is not necessarily true. It may be that the immune response is too slow and the security team simply lies flat. The germs will not trigger the reaction until they multiply in the body to a certain extent. On the contrary, one illness will cause a more serious problem.

Anyway, my own experience is that I don’t need to pursue a super immune system that is “indestructible”. When I wake up, I feel refreshed and have fewer recurring ailments. When I do get sick, I recover quickly. I feel relaxed and not heavy. This is a sign that my immunity is in a comfortable and balanced state.