Immune, A journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

Dettmer Philipp

You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You feel a little irritated as you get the kids ready for school and get dressed for work. Meanwhile, an epic war is being waged right under your skin. Millions fight and die for you so you can grumble as you get ready to leave home. So what exactly is your immune system? It is one of the oldest and most critical forms of life on the planet; only the human brain is more complex. Without it, you would die within days. In this book, Philippe Dettmer, the creator of the popular YouTube science channel "Kurzgesagt-In A Nutshell", takes his readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. A constant battle on an unimaginable scale is waged within us, filled with stories of invasion, strategy, ultimate victory, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, while you were reading these lines, your immune system probably detected and neutralized a cancer cell that had started to grow inside you. Each chapter deals in detail with a feature of the immune system, with defense systems such as antibodies and inflammation, with threats such as bacteria, viruses, allergies and cancer, while Dettmer teaches us why the phrase “boost your immune system ” is a chimera, how parasites slip past our body's defenses, how viruses (including the coronavirus) work, and what exactly happens to our wound when we cut ourselves. With colorful images and exquisite descriptions that bring it to life, Immunizer turns one of the most complex subjects into an exciting adventure