Full disclosure… My wife is a Rheumatologist and I’m just depriving some poor village of its idiot.
What I have picked up from her is that the immune system is very complicated and is made up of a series of balancing factors. So the short answer to your question is no that’s not how it works.
An immune system out of balance one way will give you a histamine response which results in you sneezing and having to take anti-histamines by the bucket full. Out of balance the other way and you now have cancer.
Same thing with eczema and psoriasis. Those two conditions are the opposites if the immune system is out of balance in a different way. Sorry, I do not understand it enough to say what specifically is out of balance in this case. Just that if you take a drug for eczema like Dupixent, it can cause you to develop psoriasis instead. Someone taking Dupixent has to be dosed just right to keep the immune system in balance. Or they have to take topical steroids.
Hopefully a trained immunologist or Rheumatologist will come along and explain it better. The above is just my understanding based on what I’ve gleaned from my wife who is a MD/PhD and a lot smarter than I am.
In addition to my comment above, not all immune related conditions are the result of the balancing I state above.
Ankalosing spondylitis, which is a rhuematalogical condition that attacks the spine is a bit different. One theory (in the scientific sense) is that the condition is caused by a mis-folded protein response caused by cellular stress. In this case specifically the HLA-B27 protein. You might not have heard of this disease, but it’s out there. The lead singer for Imagine Dragons, Dan Reynolds, suffers from the condition.
Edit: it’s the HLA-B27 protein, not HLS. That was a typo.
If having an allergy means your immune system turns against you
Incorrect. You’re thinking of an autoimmune disease. An allergy is an overreaction to a detected foreign substance the severity of which can be life threatening.
good immune system
Subjective. All dogs are good dogs, but, when poorly trained can still be dangerous to themselves or others. An apt metaphor.
My wife insisted that our kids go to daycare, even though for a period there I was home unemployed. The reason was she WANTED them to pick up Illnesses from other kids.
It was a PITA for a while, but they were rarely out of school in their elementary and middle school years.
They also were put outside and told to play in the dirt as much as possible.
Training that good dog as it were.
