Book review: Immune: A journey into the system that keeps you alive – the book from Kurzgesagt
The immune system is just a true wonder of the universe and the authors at Kurzgesagt have done a wonderful job of bringing that wonder to life in this incredible book.
To give you a taste of the book and help you understand what it can teach you, this review shares the notes I made while reading the book. I have studied the immune system many times, so I am familiar with it and all its complicated terminology. What drew me to it was the promise of a different view of the immune system, giving a story-based approach to what is normally a dry and academic subject.
What I got was everything I was hoping for. A great storyteller who created a book I couldn’t put down.
Helpfully Kurzgesagt have produced a video that introduces you to the topic. So you can read my thoughts below but for now enjoy the authors 10 minutes on what the immune system is.
Now on to the review of their lovely book.
Part 1 Meet your Immune system
This is a nice, fun primer for the newbie to the immune system. It’s very much the introductory chat you go through before that big ride at the theme park, getting you up to speed with what you need to understand for the fun ride ahead.
This short excerpt introduces you to the wit of the author and the fun of the journey ahead.
“Now, you may ask yourself: If we have this huge continent of flesh that is populated by billions of robots that are collectively smart while being, on an individual scale, internally complex yet pretty stupid—how on earth do they defend your body?”
Part 2 Catastrophic Damage
Begins with the line…
“To understand your defenses, it is critically important to understand who is attacking you.”
Well said. The immune system is very much your first line of defence for most things and it quietly gets on with protecting you in the background as your own personal security team.
Chronic inflammation is involved in more than half of all deaths each year
Chapter 9 Inflammation: Playing with fire
On page 62 We learn that “chronic inflammation is involved in more than half of all deaths each year as it is an underlying cause of a wide number of illnesses.” Therefore, understanding the immune system and inflammation is critical to good health.
Chapter 14 Super highways and MegaCities
On page 96, we learn about this tidbit about the lymph system.
“Funnily enough, and too weird, not to mention, the Lymphatic System is your fat transportation system. It picks up food fats around your intestines and dumps them into the bloodstream to be further distributed.”
I was so excited to hear this because it gives a further explanation to why eating too much and general obesity causes health problems. I have known this for so long and knew the mechanisms but seeing it in print like this in a serious and well written book instead of a bunch of complicated research papers is a dream come true.
So much of the book reads like this to me. If people just read this one book then so much of what I have been saying for years will make sense and you will understand why you need to move more and how to take better care of yourself.
The simple takeaway is that too much fat would also clog up the immune system and cause other problems.
Chapter 18 The murder university of the thymus.
On Page 109, we learn that “Your thymus is absolutely critical for your survival and in a way will decide at what age you will die.”
This is another nugget I have known for years, but you have never read about this or heard about it. Not only is the Thymus given its proper place as a key organ in your immune system to fight against invaders, but You also learn in detail how it works so you understand how you can support it better.
Part 3 Hostile Takeover
This section begins with the line.
“Whatever you do in life, it is not possible to exist and function with the world and the things it offers”
This is a typically short and sweet introduction to the mess that our bodies have to deal with on a daily basis and the challenge that faces our immune systems every minute of every day, all our lives.
Chapter 29 chemical warfare: interferons, interfere
On page 186, we learn that:
“A standard response virus attack is to shutdown protein production to stop virus production.”
This is the first I had heard that cells would stop protein production do to infection. This is specific explanation which got me think about how this would affect health if the immune response is constantly triggered? It would disrupt normal cell function across the body.
I have been aware for years that constantly triggering the immune system is a known cause of many illnesses and that the modern way of life encourages this problem. This more detail than I have found before that explains exactly why triggering the immune system could disrupt the body.
Put in the practical terms that the author does it all makes so much more sense and helps you understand why you should never trigger your immune response when it is not needed. Therefore if you have habits that trigger the immune system like worrying too much then it is important to find better habits and stop triggering your immune system.
Further on the story continues…
“So when cells pick up interferon molecules, it triggers different pathways that make them change their behavior drastically. One important thing to understand here is that at this point it is impossible for your body to deduct how many viruses are present, how many cells they have invaded, or how many cells are already producing new viruses in secret.
So one of the first changes is for the cells to temporarily shut down protein production. Every moment of your life your cells are recycling and reconstructing their internal building blocks and materials to make sure every protein is in good shape and works as intended. So some interferons tell cells to chill out a bit and to slow down the production of new proteins. If a cell doesn’t build a lot of proteins, it can’t build a lot of virus proteins if it happens to be infected already. So basically, just by ordering cells to slow down, interferon slows down the production of viruses considerably. “
This is the response to cytokine production by cells as a warning of a virus attack.
The explanation of this process is phenomenal in my view because you see the immune system as a living entity trying to solve a really difficult problem. You become intimately aware of the challenge of maintaining the health of the wider organism while having to hurt specific cells to prevent damage. It is a very difficult balancing act.
Throughout this book, you begin to see how important our immune system is for our overall health. You start to understand that how the immune system protects us and is strengthened or weakened through our lifestyle has long-ranging effects on our life. I have lots of articles on Fit2Thrive that mention this, but nothing puts the whole story together in the way that this book does so effortlessly.
Chapter 33 How a viral infection is eradicated
On page 219, we are treated to a clear summary that our own immune system response can be more dangerous than the infection it fixes.
” In contrast to our first story in the bacteria section of this book, we are dealing with a different kind of immune response here. It is more global, touching way more systems, organs, and tissues, and the infection is way more dangerous. And while you lie in your bed and feel horrible, it is important to remember that the symptoms you feel are mostly created by your own immune system to clear out the infection. If these countermeasures are used too freely, your immune system can do immense and terrible damage to you, much worse than even the influenza A virus could do.
So there is an intense need to downregulate the immune response again, to have it strike with just the exact amount of vigor, and to shut it down as soon as it is not needed. To get back to homeostasis.”
Chapter 35 Immune – How your immune system remembers an enemy forever
This chapter talks about vaccination and makes clear the dangers of not getting the necessary vaccinations.
An aside: What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger: Measles and memory cells
On page 230, we learn why avoiding the MMR jab has exposed millions of children to serious preventable diseases.
“Measles deleted your memory cells so it removes your existing learned immune response. So people not vaccinating their kids against measles leads to more than just a risk of measles but lifelong risk of other diseases they had previously built up resistance to. “
Part 4 Rebellion and civil war
Begins with the scary line:
“The human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, is a really terrifying but fascinating example to showcase what happens when your immune system breaks down.”
With that introduction, we learn what happens when the immune system breaks down and what happens as a result. We go on to learn how modern life weakens the immune system, leading to many of the major illnesses we face today.
Chapter 41 The hygiene hypothesis and old friends
Page 277 reminds us that living naturally by getting out and spending time in nature trains our immune system. What I do notice is the lack of information about the value of exercise and keeping fit as an important part of keeping your immune system fit. Exercise is also important in getting your body good at removing bad cells that the immune system has targeted and treated.
Chapter 42 How to boost your immune system
This chapter explains that most immune boosters are pointless. What you really need to make your immune system as strong as possible is to focus on homeostasis. Which means how to bring balance to your body and encourage healing. This is how you achieve balanced immunity.
Homeostasis is the biological term for cells living in balance and this is achieved by learning how cells work and healing habits that support the processes cells rely on.
Page 280 contains the nugget
” Luckily the danger is pretty mild that you could actually boost your immune system since basically nothing you can buy legally actually does it! Even the mere term “strong immune system” is a misnomer. Over everything else, you want a balanced immune system. Homeostasis. Aggression and calmness. You want elegant dancers who remember the choreography really well over pumped-up rugby players who want to smash stuff. In all likeli-hood, your immune system works exactly as intended. “
Further down the page, we learn that malnutrition weakens the immune system, which implies that strict diets will weaken our immune system. What this means is that any rigid, limited diet will limit the nutrition available to the immune system, so it won’t be able to function properly.
“At least for now, there are no scientifically proven ways to directly boost your immune system with any products that are easily available. And if there were, it would be very dangerous to use them without medical supervision.
The most important thing you need to do to have a healthy immune system is to eat a diet that provides you with all the vitamins and nutrients your body needs. The reason is, simply, your immune system constantly makes many billions of new cells. And all these newborn cells need resources to function properly. Malnutrition is strongly associated with a weak immune system. If you are starving, you are more susceptible to infections and diseases because your body has to make hard decisions and the immune system suffers from that”
The next page mentions benefits of exercise. And problems of malnutrition in the elderly.
“On top of just eating right, the positive health effects of even moderate regular exercise have been known for a long time. Your body is made for movement and so moving it around a bit keeps a variety of systems in good health, especially your cardiovascular system. Working out also directly boosts your immune system, because it promotes good circulations of fluids throughout your body. In a nutshell, just by moving, stretching, and squashing your various body parts, your fluids flow better and more freely than if you lie on your couch all day. And good circulation is good for the immune system because it allows your cells and immune proteins to move more efficiently and freely, which makes them do their job better.”
Final chapters. Stress, cancer.
Chapter 43 Stress and the immune system
This chapter confirms the value of reducing stress because reducing stress will reduce your levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Reducing cortisol lets you immune system do its job and reduces inflammation throughout the body.
Chapter 44 Cancer and the immune system
This chapter explaining the origins of Cancer is an excellent and short description of that shows why it’s so deadly but also the basis for how to minimise your risk.
We learn that cancer comes from disrupting the normal functions of the body. Particularly the problems associated with not clearing up cells that have gone wrong. Modern life has disrupted this important process and made cancer worse as a result.
Chapter 45 The Coronavirus pandemic
I read the news differently to others during the pandemic because I was aware of the impacts of obesity on the immune system. I noticed many reports of westerners suffering worse with COVID than those in less developed countries and I was interested to hear that this book had something very important to say.
“Fat cells produce inflammatory cytokines so obese people have more inflammatory signals
* One of the many reasons obesity is such an unhealthy thing is that fat tissue produces loads of inflammatory cytokines. So even on a good day, an obese person has a lot of inflammatory signals in their system. When infected by the coronavirus for example, their starting point is already worse, they are already more inflamed than they should be”
Get the book
You have read my summary, but I have only shared the tiniest insights. You have to get it yourself to really benefit, and I can safely say that it will have a positive impact on your life. It helped me a lot even though I was well briefed on the area. It was great to be able to confirm and consider everything in a different and engaging way with the most current research available.
If you want to get your own copy, I included a link to Amazon for ease of access. This is not an affiliate link it was just easy to do and helps you out.
— Immune: The bestselling book from Kurzgesagt – a gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system by Philipp Dettmer
The images were taken from the Immune System Battlefield Poster available in the kurzgesagt shop.
The Kurzgesagt channel
The main reason I got this book as soon as it came out is because I am a big fan of their youtube channel
Links
Website: kurzgesagt.org
Further references
- About Immune: More detail from the books author Philip Dettmer.
