Autoimmunity 101 (But Make It Make Sense)

A breakdown of autoimmunity, immune cells, and what’s actually going on behind the scenes

As someone working in functional health, autoimmunity is a huge sector in this field. The immune system is something many people only think about in reference to a cold, but for others it is the center of majority of their health concerns. There are 80+ recognized autoimmune diseases, and about 1 in 5 women will develop one or have autoimmune antibodies at some point. Which is kind of insane when you actually sit with it.

So instead of jumping straight into protocols and “what to take,” I want to zoom out and break this down from the very beginning. Let’s start with the first layer: dendritic cells, T cells, and B cells, aka the group chat that decides what your body attacks and what it doesn’t.

Dendritic Cells: The ones gathering the evidence

Dendritic cells are basically your immune system’s investigators. They’re produced in the bone marrow, then travel through your bloodstream into tissues, your gut, skin, lungs, etc. Just constantly scanning for anything suspicious. When they find something: a virus, bacteria, parasite, even food particles that slipped through where they shouldn’t (across the gut barrier), they engulf it, break it down, and display pieces of it on their surface.

These pieces are called antigens, and they’re essentially little wanted posters that dendritic cells show to the rest of your immune system. Then they go present this information to your lymphocytes which are your T cells and B cells and say:

“Heyy this is what we’re dealing with. Decide what to do.”

So dendritic cells don’t attack they inform. But what they present, and how often they’re activated, plays a huge role in whether your immune system stays calm or starts overreacting.

T Cells: The ones running the operation

T cells are like the leadership team. They coordinate, regulate, and decide how aggressive the response should be.

There are three main types, and each one has a specific role:

• Helper T cells: These are the communicators. They release signaling molecules (cytokines) that activate B cells and recruit other immune cells. They basically say we need backup.

• Cytotoxic T cells: These are the ones that handle infected cells especially with viruses. If a cell is compromised, they’ll destroy it to stop the spread. Ruthless.

• Regulatory T cells: These are the ones that calm everything down. They make sure your immune system doesn’t overreact or keep attacking once the job is done.

So you need T cells to not only respond but to know when to stop. And this is where things often start to break down in chronic conditions.

B Cells: The ones making targeted weapons

Now B cells are the ones doing the heavy lifting. Once they’re activated (usually with help from T cells), they multiply quickly and turn into plasma cells, which produce antibodies, aka highly specific weapons designed to bind to whatever your immune system flagged as a threat.

There are five main types of antibodies:

• IgG: the most abundant and long term antibody
  
  It circulates in your blood and tissues constantly monitoring for threats. You have a lot of this like over 70 grams worth just quietly working in the background. It’s also the only antibody that crosses the placenta during pregnancy

• IgM: the first responder
  
  Shows up early in an infection. It’s not as refined as IgG, but it makes up for it in volume

• IgA: your mucosal protector
  
  Found in the gut, lungs, saliva, and even breast milk. This is your first line of defense against what you eat and breathe. A strong lgA ensures pathogenic gut bacteria doesn’t cross the gut lining. Chronic stress breaks down lgA (think about this next time you take the man back).

• IgE: your allergy antibody
  
  Lives just under the skin and along blood vessels. It’s involved in parasite defense but also responsible for allergic reactions

• IgD: the mysterious one
  
  Less understood, but believed to help regulate immune responses and maintain tolerance

Each of these plays a different role, but together they create a system that can recognize and respond to almost anything.

Memory cells

After your immune system responds to something, most of those activated cells die off. But a small group sticks around and these are called memory cells. They remember exactly what your body encountered. So the next time you’re exposed to the same thing, your immune system responds faster and more efficiently. This is called the secondary immune response, and it’s why you don’t get as sick from the same pathogen twice (in theory). Now this sounds like a great system until your immune system starts remembering the wrong things.

So where does Autoimmunity come in?

Autoimmunity is essentially a case of mistaken identity. Somewhere along the way, your immune system begins to recognize your own tissues as a threat. Meaning your dendritic cells are presenting self antigens, your T cells are coordinating a response against your own body, and your B cells are producing antibodies against you.

And because of memory cells, this response doesn’t just happen once, it repeats. Over and over. This is how you get conditions like Hashimoto’s, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and more. Not because your immune system is weak but because it’s misdirected.

So what do we actually do about Autoimmunity?

This is the part everyone wants to skip to. And as someone with Hashimotos I get it, once you realize your immune system is basically attacking you on accident, your first thought is cool… how do I make it stop? But here’s the truth (and I’m saying this in the least annoying way possible) Once the mistake is made you don’t just “shut off” autoimmunity. What you can do is lower the noise, remove the triggers, and retrain the system so it stops overreacting to everything.

The biggest triggers I see over and over are:

• Food sensitivities (huge) (I offer various food insensitivity tests which measure various antibodies and inflammatory reactions to different foods).

• Gut infections / dysbiosis

• Chronic stress

• Environmental toxins

• Poor sleep and blood sugar instability

Final thought (this is why this matters)

Your immune system isn’t trying to hurt you. It’s trying to protect you it’s just working off the wrong information. And when you understand how this system works, from dendritic cells, to antibodies, to memory, you start to see that autoimmunity isn’t random. It’s a pattern. And patterns can be traced, supported, and, in many cases, calmed down.

This is exactly what I did for myself and what I specialize in. I’m trained in a wide range of advanced functional labs to get to the root of what’s going on. If you feel like this might be relevant for you, you can head to my website and request a consultation. xx