Immune Systems 101 Courtesy of Ellen

Wikipedia tomato found here. 

My WEGO Health blogger friend Ellen Schnakenberg has penned two very, very good articles explaining our immune systems. The first is entitled, 12 Things About your Immune System Your Doctor Didn't Tell You. Here's a small excerpt:

Before you can truly understand autoimmune disease, it's wise to learn about your immune system itself. This is a complicated, multifaceted subject our doctors don't usually have time to teach us.
This post is designed to give you a few general bullet points you may not have already known about your immune system. 

Ellen's second in the series is entitled, Your Thymus - The Educator Of Your Immune System:

Each person has three types of immunity - innate immunity you're born with, adaptive immunity that develops throughout our lives, and passive immunity which is 'borrowed' from another source..........The education of the adaptive immune system begins in an organ called the Thymus gland. When you were an embryo, special tissue migrated from near your brain, down your neck and into your chest. During this migration, parts of this clump of tissue specialized into other glands (thyroid, parathyroid, etc), broke off and stayed in their current locations. 

I've posted about this topic previously, and according to one of my reference sources, the Merck Manual, lumps the types of immunity into two groups: innate and adaptive. Others divide them into three groups, however the information is basically all the same.

You know. To-May-toh, To-Mah-toh. Kind of like that.

It's always a good idea to revisit this complicated information and benefit from others' descriptions of this complex body system. Bookmark these articles to visit when you're having one of those What The Heck Is Going On In My Body?! moments.