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Asked by amber13 to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 16 Nov 2012.
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Marcus Wilson answered on 16 Nov 2012:
YOur body is pretty good at killing most infections, why when you have a cold it goes away eventually. you have a really sophisticated immune system that kills the majority of infections. in fact most of the symptoms you feel when you are ill are byproducts of your body is trying to fight the pathogen ( high temperature, aching runny nose etc), rather than the pathogen itself. its also why you dont tend to get sick agin form the same pathogen, your body remembers what infected you last time and stops you form feeling sick.
however pathogens are really good at avoidingways to beat your immune system so thats why sometime you need a bit of help.
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Joanna Giles answered on 16 Nov 2012:
Just like Marcus said, our immune system is always adapting to new pathogens to try to kill them. We are infected every day with viruses or bacteria and we don’t even know it because we are always fighting them off! If the bug is doing a good job at attacking us – then we will get a runny nose etc as our body is “winning” the war, but most of the time you won’t even get symptoms – the body just deals with it without us even knowing!
But, pathogens do have their own life cycle too, and so even if they are outside the body they can die naturally if they don’t have any nutrients….or if you spray them with Mr Muscle!
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Louise Walkin answered on 18 Nov 2012:
Yes, our bodies are incredible at deciding whether something is pathogenic or not. Sometimes our bodies are fighting an infection of some kind without us even knowing about it. Yep, the runny nose, headaches etc are side effects of the fight our bodies put up when we are suffering from a cold etc. Our bodies build up a protection so that if we experience the same pathogen again we have antibodies tht are specific for it to make sure we don’t get sick – this is how vaccines work, we get a tiny bit of a disease to allow us to build up immunity, then when we are exposed to the real thing, our bodies can specifically fight it with our special new antbodies. 🙂
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Adam Paige answered on 19 Nov 2012:
absolutely. we can’t treat cold viruses for example. We can treat the symptoms with pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs, but we basically just wait for our bodies to kill the virus.
Comments
cheesecakegirl commented on :
is there a possibility that a disease like the plague could come back to england, and would there be a cure for it?
Joanna commented on :
Yes there is really, the plague (or black death) was a simple bacterial infection, but these days we have so many better medicined like antibiotics and more hygeine and better sanitation that bacteria should not pose a risk of epidemic. It is the viruses, like swine flu that are the biggest risk to the population.