But what I’m guessing that you didn’t know was that your army is no ordinary army. You think you’re fighting off that infection with ointment. PUH-LEEZ!! Before you even begin to unscrew the cap of that tube of NeoSporin, there are already tanks rolling through capillary walls, personalized grenades flying and blowing holes in enemy cells, and the synchronization of the greatest league of suicide bombers that you’ve never heard of!! NeoSporin… HAH!

Neutrophil

There’s really no better place to begin this tour of Base Camp You than with the bravest soldiers that your body has to offer… and boy does it have a lot to offer. Of the ten-or-so thousand immune system soldiers that are surging through your blood vessels at any given time, somewhere between six and seven THOUSAND OF THEM are neutrophils, the best kind of suicide bomber you can get.

Your immune system is only as good as it it because of the thousands of cells that lay their life on the line for the good of the body on a daily basis. When a neutrophil gets word of an invader, it spends no time lolligagging around. These highly focused professionals run right up to the source of the emergency signal and push the red button. BOOM! They let out a mix of toxins that eat up the invader and the soldiers too… and it’s never just one. They pride themselves on this kind of display of patriotism, so there are hundreds that just dive in together. It can get pretty messy, but we’ll get to the clean up crew later…now, moving on…

Eosinophils

This next group of soldiers may not be as numerous as the first, but they’re just as willing to do their job and DO.IT.WELL. The eosinophils are the best trained kamikaze pilots you’ll find on this side of the epidermis. These soldiers are trained to recognize an IgE antibody signal from a mile away, and when they enter fight mode, THEY DO NOT QUIT. They will hunt down that antibody and fly directly into the source thereby releasing their acid bombs, eradicating the enemy… and themselves in the process… but, moving on…

Macrophages and Dendritic Cells

You may be asking yourself where we get out intelligence down here. Well, sonny, we may not have any newfangled sophisticated computing devices, but we have our methods. The macrophages and dendritic cells are the best spies that an old fart like me could ever ask for. *snif. My apologies, this system is just so dagnabbit beautiful, I get emotional sometimes.

But back to brass tax, these spies are ALWAYS undercover. From the moment they leave the hematopoetic tissue they pose as GARBAGEMEN… smooth talkin, quietly in a corner, just mindin’ my own business GARBAGEMEN. And nobody ever notices. You see, they don’t go around raising fuss about intruders. They just clean up what they see… and later, when it’s just them and their supervisor, they unload the goods. Everything they find is cataloged and reported. Sneaky? Yeahhh, we don’t like to brag.

B Lymphocytes

Now, before we go any further up the corporate ladder here, I think it’s high time that I introduce you to the robotics department. Our robotics department is a little different than what you’d think, but similar in many aspects too. You see, the B Lymphocytes are trained to only make one type of device: radio transmitters. It’s truly pathetic when you get down to it. These creatures are so annoying that they are all confined to little rooms scattered across the body.

Remember that mysterious superior of the garbagemen? Well, it turns out that the robotics guys answer to him too. They spend their entire juvenile life perfecting their prototype. Then, when they become adults, they sit in that room and wait for the superior to give them permission to move on to mass production of their transmitter.

I can admit that without those transmitters (I believe you refer to them as “antibodies”), the system would go awry pretty fast… but spending your WHOLE LIFE? Seems a bit overkill to me… but moving on forward…

Whoops, my break is up! I had better get back to work. I’ll pick up where I left off on my next break, but in the meantime, click here to learn more about your immune system and how to take care of it.