This prostaglandin can instruct the brain to constrict blood vessels, to start producing more heat internally, to give us chills, and to guide us to seek sources of heat: essentially, a fever. For example, they can interact with our central nervous system, which leads to higher levels of prostaglandin E2 in the brain. They are, after all, present in the blood, so some are swept away and taken to other parts of the body. This is because some of the molecules unleashed by our blood cells don’t stay at the site of injection. Some of a vaccine’s side effects are systemic: they affect the entire body.
When a threshold is met, like hitting a funfair’s strength tester strong enough to trigger the bell, you experience pain. The pain itself at the site of injection can be caused by blood cells releasing certain molecules like cytokines, prostaglandins or ATP and directly binding to pain receptors.
It means that more blood cells can come and interact with the injected solution, but it also means redness and swelling.
Some of the molecules they release post-vaccination are vasodilators, which inflate local blood vessels. Mast cells got their name because they were originally believed to help feed the biological tissue around them, and mast is German for “fattening” macrophages are literally “large eaters” that can invaginate themselves to engulf disease-causing microorganisms or dead cells. Rather, our immune system is a little bit like those massive battle sequences in The Lord of the Rings movies: impressive in scope and involving innumerable agents all performing different functions.Īfter getting vaccinated, some of our white blood cells-namely mast cells and macrophages-start releasing heaps of molecules into our bloodstream. A great article published in The Atlantic last year put it thusly: “immunology is where intuition goes to die.” That’s not to say that immunologists throw their hands up in the air when asked to explain what is going on with our body’s cellular defence system. Its complexity is legendary among those who study it. The immune system is a universe unto itself, an ecosystem of different cell types and chemical messages. What causes it? Within minutes of being vaccinated, a branch of our immune system starts becoming very active. An injection site symptom like this is quite common. Many of the vaccines I have received have resulted in a sore arm for a few days. It’s no wonder then that our immune system sometimes responds to this by triggering the same cascade of events that is required to help us fight the real deal. So what exactly is going on inside the body that makes us think we’ve been infected by a nasty bug when it’s just a vaccine? An activated ecosystemĪ vaccine stimulates our immune system by presenting an inactive microbe, either whole or partial (or even the instructions to make part of one), to our body. Rather, it was probably inflammation created by my body in response to the vaccine, and this inflammatory response is known as a vaccine’s “reactogenicity.” The COVID-19 vaccines bring with them their own baggage of reactogenicity: potential redness and pain at the site of the injection, a bit of swelling, and sometimes body-wide symptoms like fatigue, headache and even fever. It turns out that my reaction to the flu shot was natural. “Why get a flu shot if it’s going to give you the flu?” I thought at the time and skipped that shot for a few years before being convinced to get it again. Fatigue, body temperature on the rise and a general unease made me think I actually had the flu. Many years ago, I received the flu shot for the very first time and, later that day, I began to feel sick.
0 kommentar(er)
