Your Immune System & COVID-19

We are walking shock absorbers, built to tolerate our environment, to a point.

Think of stress as simply a lack of ease, or dis-ease, in any aspect of your life. And your immune system as a rubber band that stretches out in response to stress.  When the rubber band is slack, your body’s automatic defense system registers a safe, calm environment.  You feel free to be creative, in thought and action.  Commonly known as homeostasis, your body idles here until another stress is registered, and the rubber band stretches out to meet the challenge.

This long accepted understanding of homeostasis has been appropriately revised in the past two decades by modern science due to a recognition that, for most of us, homeostasis is never truly static.  Each of us is constantly exposed to a variety of stressors, some more than others, through the interplay of choice and circumstance. 

We tend to overlook the pathogenic stressors we’re exposed to in our daily circumstances, in large part due to this very same ability to adapt and “normalize” our respective situations.  We have evolved, like animals, plants, and the Earth really, to normalize any chronic habituation, meaning anything that becomes a part of the fabric of our lives. 

This new normal is the result of allostasis, a relatively young concept in modern medicine that acknowledges the amazing ability of the body to adapt and move forward.   The downside for our well being, and resiliency in the face of COVID-19, however, is that allostasis also recognizes that if the rubber band of your immune system needs to maintain even the smallest bit of stretch to tolerate a new normal, this results in less flexibility for dealing with additional stress. 

And the rub of this is that stress isn’t just anxiety.  Anxiety and depression are common emotional responses to stress, but the causes are as subtle as the air we breathe, as tasteless as much of the “food” in our supermarkets, and as imperceptible as the steady erosion of an untended personal relationship.  Or the gradual erosion of personal freedoms, if we think in terms of our relationship with democracy.

Consider chemical stress in the form of air pollution, often undetectable with the human senses, or food additives, present in the majority of store bought goods.  Or the radiation stress we tolerate through the use of cell phones and proximity to power lines and radio towers of all kinds.  Or the physical stress of sitting for much of the day, looking at screens of all sizes that strain our eyes and further ensconce us in virtual reality worlds devoid of human interaction.  Or the stress of not having enough money to afford food and rent, which are a part of what I’m calling the ABCs of Survival.

In this light, maybe it’s easier to see that being chronically under siege is a disease.  It’s no accident that people of color are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases in disproportionate numbers, at younger ages, and with greater severity.  The stress of not being able to afford any, or enough, of the ABCs of Survival in addition to not feeling safe in a racist country, is obviously taking it’s toll. Read on with COVID-19 and Racism.