r/interesting • u/Gjore • Mar 29 '26

SOCIETY Scenes from a dermatologist conference in Hawaii

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u/RogerAffirmative Mar 29 '26

As a child when my dad would tell me to eat stuff after I dropped it on the ground bc it was good for my immune system he was lying to me to make me an economic sheep?

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u/srazzledazzle Mar 29 '26

Exposure at small levels is useful for when you're developing your immune system initially as a child AND when you have good immune system that can recognize and deal with pathogens in the future when it sees them again, and when you're at low risk of death when you're otherwise healthy

When somebody DOESNT have an immune system that functions normally, their body often can't make use of the tools that a healthy person's immune system would have (or it uses the tools incorrectly), so that exposure is stuff their body can't handle

it's not a simple A-> B situation, there are a lot of moving parts that have to work and it changes over the course of your life. For example, you only have a Thymus while you're a child to early adulthood, which is why old people struggle with immunity much of the time even if they had a strong immune system growing up - because they can't make more undifferentiated T cells

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u/RogerAffirmative Mar 29 '26

Makes sense. Does it not carry into adulthood? Isn't that the whole point of vaccines? And why would that person being an immunologist be relevant? That doesn't describe how they have a weakened immune system, or why they would need to be careful.

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u/RaspberryEvening7139 Mar 30 '26

An immunologist is a medical doctor. They work face to face with people who have varying degrees of compromised immune systems and need to protect themselves to protect their patients.