Immune symptoms (like cough and fever) are experienced when we sense the immune response.
The symptoms themselves do not necessarily mean that there is an infection present, just that the immune response is activated.
The immune system can become sensitised and learn to respond to everyday things as a threat. This gives us symptoms like we are allergic to many different things or like we are always catching a cold.
Inflammation and autoimmunity
When the immune system has become sensitised, there might be a background level of non-specific immune activity. This is called low grade inflammation.
Inflammation can be thought of as a sort of soup, laden with immune cells. This inflammatory soup might collect in tissues of the body where the lymphatic channels are not regularly flushed through. This is one reason why moving and stretching the body can help with immune symptoms.
Sometimes, when the immune system is sensitised, it can start to attack our body’s own tissues. This is called autoimmunity. In functional symptoms, any signs of autoimmunity are usually mild, unpredictable, and not tied to a specific issue. It’s more about the body being in a generally inflamed state.
