hey guys I am back today we're going to talk about the thymus gland in
relationship to viruses it's the missing link let me explain what is the thymus
it's different than the thyroid okay the thyroid is located in the front part of
the neck it regulates your metabolism and many other things
the thymus is a little lower it's right on top of the heart right underneath
your sternum right here okay and when you're born it's very very large and
then when you get older it actually shrinks okay so the thymus is a lymph
gland it's a very important gland I'm going to talk about what it does and
what you can do to keep it really strong the thymus has a very important primary
function and that is something called central tolerance what does that mean
central tolerance tolerance is all about preventing a self attack like in an
autoimmune disease where your body is attacking itself you have certain
mechanisms in place that prevent that self attack your body is supposed to
differentiate between your own cell and a pathogen because we don't want our own
immune system to go rogue and destroy our own tissues and this is a very
interesting point because in certain experiments when they removed the thymus
gland all sorts of autoimmune diseases popped up okay and autoimmune disease is
very specific to a gland so if you have an autoimmune condition to your thyroid
you have any buddies that are attacking itself so the thymus has a very big
importance in preventing this from occurring let's talk first about what is
a t-cell and by the way in the thymus you have T cells and B cells the T
stands for thymus because it actually develops in the thyroid gland whereas B
cells develop in the bone marrow so there's three types of T cells okay I'm
going to try to keep this very very very simple you have the killer T cells which
basically kill viral infected cells so in other words if that virus gets into
that cell this killer t-cell will destroy the
entire cell and the virus and by the way in order for this cell to develop it
needs iodine so if you're deficient in iodine what can happen is you might not
have the full capacity of the killer cells the killer's t-cells are basically
like your special forces okay now we have the helper t-cell the helper t-cell
works by coordinating the army it doesn't necessarily do the killing
but it does tag viruses so it will take spray paint and put a big X on the
viruses or the pathogens that need to be taken care of and those messages are
sent to the killer T cells and other cells for them to do the dirty work the
helper T cells are the coordinator they're in communication with the entire
army they do a lot of recruitment so they will signal certain parts of the
immune system and tell them to ramp up and get ready and send more troops
because we need more help then you have something called the regulatory t-cells
and this is very very interesting this cell keep the immune system from
overreacting so here you are you have this war going on between your new
system and this pathogen and you have a lot of things flying around you have
inflammatory things you have certain toxic chemicals that your army has to be
able to kill off pathogens well some of that leaks out and it actually irritate
your tissue you have certain what's called cytokines that are like weapons
that your white blood cells use to kill viruses and bacteria and fungus and
parasites and when you get sick and you get a headache or the full like symptoms
or muscle ache or fatigue what you're feeling are those cytokines or weapons
from your white blood cell doing the destruction
same thing with a fever your body is just trying to kill off something the
worst thing you can do is quickly try to suppress that with some medication you
want to let your body do its thing you don't want to necessarily get rid of the
fever too fast and you want to kind of cope with some of these symptoms
as long as you can because your body is working it's trying to fight off this
infection and realize also that the regulatory t-cells need vitamin D
because if this cell is deficient vitamin D it cannot do its job so this
is where you get an overreaction of inflammation and you could potentially
get a situation where you have a cytokine storm okay now I don't know if
you've been following the COVID-19 connection to the lung and how some
people are developing what's called a cytokine storm and that's when they're
in intensive care in serious condition where they're on a ventilator or
respirator and they have this serious inflammatory reaction well guess what
that is because this system where this cell is broken down and it can't calm
down or suppress the reaction of your immune system trying to kill off this
thing so when you look at this cytokine storm where you have this inflammatory
process it's not that your immune system is overreacting it's that part of the
immune system is loss its function to suppress or balance out the other side
and it just so happens vitamin D can help this cell and it can also help
suppress inflammation as well and by the way I think I already mentioned this but
the helper t-cell also needs vitamin D to help coordinate the army so you can
see all of these cells work together and by the way this cell right here also has
a job of preventing auto antibodies or autoimmune conditions and so when you
lose this function you get autoimmune issues you have allergies you have all
sorts of inflammatory conditions and as a side note vitamin D is one of the best
anti-inflammatories it's an immune modulator so it actually suppresses an
overreaction of the immune system all right now we get to it's called the
b-cells okay b-cells basically make and two bodies now what are antibodies you
have five different categories of antibodies antibodies don't kill
anything per se what they do is they tag things okay I know tannic pathogens
viruses and fungus and parasites so these other cells can do the dirty work
and kill them so the weakness of antibodies is that they can't actually
see what's happening inside the cells so once the virus gets in the cell they
can't really do anything but that's why you have like cells like this that can
tag the cell and so this cell can destroy the whole thing so here's the
thing antibodies are very very specific to certain pathogens in other words you
may have an antibody to epstein-barr virus for example very very specific you
may have an antibody to another pathogen in fact what's fascinating is the
capacity of how many antibodies your body can actually develop it can go up
into the numbers so high and I'm talking about a million trillion antibodies your
body has the capacity of making that many so you can see the power of your
immune system you can have resistance or protection to pretty much anything now
some antibodies can also bind with the virus okay and just kind of leave it out
to dry but they don't necessarily kill it with any type of poisons like this
cell right here releases certain I was called cytokines that actually can
poison or kill viruses alright so that kind of gives you a summary of what the
thymus does realize that it's not just about vitamin D it's also about zinc as
well with the finest because if you're deficient in zinc you get a trophy of
your thymus gland it shrinks and so you're not going to have all these
functions so what's really really important to support the thymus is zinc
vitamin D iodine keeping your stress low and of course avoiding sugar if you
haven't seen my video on supporting a healthy immune system check it out I put
it right here