Remember the last time you had a cold? Your nose was stuffy, you kept sneezing and you felt really tired and sick? Kinda sucked, didn’t it :(
But then, after a week, what happened? It magically went away! So what do you think made that nasty cold disappear?
The grape flavoured Advil tablet you took 🍇? Hmm, not completely.
All the bowls of soup your parents made you drink 🥣? Not quite, keep guessing.
🤔🤔🤔
Now, if you guessed your immune system, give yourself a pat on the back, you got it! Whether you’ve heard of the immune system before or you think it’s some strange term invented by the aliens, you’ll definitely learn something new if you read on. And it’ll be fun… with lots of pictures, I promise ;)
Chapter 1: You are made of cells
Yep, you heard that right! Your entire body — from your head all the way down to your toes — is made of cells.
But… what are cells? You ask.
Put it this way. Remember the last lego kit you built? Maybe it was a super cool fighter jet or a pretty animal clinic. But to make it easier for me to explain, I’ll be referring to this lego kit kat below:
That lego kit kat looks just like a really big real-life kit kat right? You can almost taste it — biting into all those layers of perfectly smooth chocolate and crispy wafer. *mmm* But… we are all smart enough to know that it’s actually just made of little lego pieces stacked on top of each other 😢.
The cells in your body are just like the individual lego pieces. They stack on top of each other to make you what you look like right now! Except instead of plastic bricks, our cells are little squishy spheres like the ones in the picture below.
Now I know what you’re thinking, WAIT A MINUTE, so you’re telling me that I’m made of things that look like pieces of jelly candy? You must be wrong because I don’t see any of them on my body.
Trust me, I’m not crazy, just hear me out. These cells are super small. Like really really really really small. So small, that they can’t even be seen by any human eye. In fact, about 100 000 000 cells can fit into the period at the end of this sentence → .
🙀🙀🙀
And something that’s EVEN CRAZIER — all these teeny tiny cells are ALIVE! Yes, they are LIVING BREATHING SQUISHY SPHERES!
Wait but… they don’t have noses so how do they breathe? There isn’t possibly any food that’s that small so what do they even eat? To answer these questions, we’re going to need some help from our bodies’ super awesome red blood cells and plasma!
Chapter 2: Your body’s very own delivery system
Think of the last time you ordered pizza. Your parents called your favourite pizza place and within a few minutes, ding dong! 🔔 Your pizza delivery was at the door. You jump up and down excitedly as the irresistible smells of fresh tomato, cheese and pepperoni waft into your nose. You slowly open the lid and the perfectly cooked masterpiece comes into view, filled to the max with all your favourite toppings. You grab a slice ready to —
What were we talking about again? Oh yeah. Blood. Even though blood looks like just a red liquid, it’s actually much more complicated than that! Your blood is a mixture of mostly 2 things: red blood cells and plasma, but there are also smaller amounts of white blood cells and platelets as well. (We won’t be covering platelets in this article, but if you’re interested, I challenge you to figure out what they are by yourself!)
- Red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets are all types of cells but unfortunately plasma isn’t. Although plasma can’t join the cells only party 😢, it still plays a really important role in your body! Read on to find out what that is…
Red blood cells are extra cool because, by surfing on top of plasma, they can move around your body! Think of all the other cells in your body as houses 🏠and red blood cells & plasma as the pizza delivery people. Your blood travels all around your body, delivering everything your cells need to survive. Red blood cells deliver oxygen and plasma delivers nutrients (AKA cell food).
Now imagine you’re one of your body’s normal cells. You eat up all the yummy food and breathe in all the fresh air. But now what? You now have to breathe out carbon dioxide and the yummy food turns into well… 💩.
Thankfully, your blood also has a second job! A garbage collector. It picks up all the waste products and properly disposes of it.
Chapter 3: Your body’s very own 911
WeeeooweeeeoowEEEOOOeeoeoeo 🚨, sound familiar? It’s the sound of a sleek black and white police car 🚔 zooming down the road to catch some scary people doing illegal things. All the police in our city work together to fight bad guys, save good guys, and keep your homes and neighbourhoods safe.
But can you believe that in our own bodies there are police as well?!?! In our blood, we also have super awesome tiny police cells to fight the bad guys that make us sick. They are called white blood cells 💪. And the bad guys that make us sick are called germs… yuck. There are many different types of white blood cells and also many different types of germs (ex. bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc.) but you have to know all of them just yet.
Fun Fact: COVID-19 is a virus but it is also a germ. Some patients do recover from COVID because their immune system (white blood cells) fight the viruses off! However, even with a healthy immune system, COVID can still make us really really sick 🤒 so remember to always wear a mask, wash your hands and social distance!
Like the police, our own white blood cells are really brave and will do anything to keep us safe, sometimes even sacrificing their lives for us 😢. Pat yourself right now and say, “thank you white blood cells” to encourage them on their dangerous job!
Now how exactly do these white blood cells fight off germs? It’s time to get into the DEETS
Our immune system is very complex, there are many kinds of white blood cells and many ways the white blood cells defeat enemy invaders. However, today we will focus on the most common way… eating them muahahaha >:)
Here’s a short video demonstrating white blood cells devouring enemy bacteria (nom nom nom)
This process of eating and digesting bad germs is called phagocytosis [pronounced: fay-go-sai-toe-sis]. Sounds super cool right? It could even be a new pokemon power move: “White blood cell do phagocytosis! 💥”
Phew, that was a lot of big words, here are the definitions to some words that you might’ve been confused about:
- Infection: germs entering our bodies when they’re not supposed to. Can make us sick.
- Engulf: stretching themselves to surround all the bacteria (like a not-so-friendly hug)
- Digest: break down into smaller pieces
See? The police and white blood cells are very similar. Now let’s return to the very first question we asked.
Why do we get sick and why do we get better?
We get sick because of germs. The scary thing about germs is that they’re so tiny that no one can see them but they are literally everywhere. There are millions of germs on the device you’re using to read this right now, on your table, even on the food you eat and the air you breathe.
But the good thing is that for healthy people, only 1–2% of all the germs in the WORLD 🌎 get you sick because of the amazing part of our bodies called the immune system. Most of the time, our immune system eliminates (kills) the weak germs very quickly so we don’t even get sick at all!
Our immune system is super duper complex. It is made up of a lot of cells working together, but the most important cells are the white blood cells (we don’t have to worry about the rest for now).
On the rare occasion that we do get sick (ex. getting a cold in the winter), the germs that cause the cold start to mess up your body. That’s why you feel uncomfy when you get sick (stuffy nose, coughing, sneezing). But right away, your white blood cells are alerted, and they speedrun to the site of infection where the war commences…
After just a few days, the white blood cells finish eating up all the germs and you don’t feel sick anymore. Yay!
All this is why it’s really important to keep our bodies healthy — so that our white blood cell army is strong enough to fight the dangers that come into our bodies every day.
How then do we take care of our little cells? — Do these 3 things:
- Stay hydrated. Drink a LOT of water. It is recommended to drink at least 8 cups a day. Your cells love water. Remember the jelly-like cell diagram at the beginning? It was jelly-like because it was made mostly of water. Watering your cells keeps them squishy and healthy instead of shrivelling up and dying.
- Eat oodles of fruits and vegetables (🍅🍇🍈🍉🍊🍋🍌🍍🍎🍏🍐🍑🍒🍓🥝🥭🌽🍆🥒🥔🥕🥗🍠🥦🥬). Even though they may not be your favourite foods, they’re your cells’ favourite foods! But also don’t only eat fruits and vegetables. Make sure to have a balanced diet — eat healthy foods in all different colours! (candy doesn’t count)
- Go outside and play! Exercise strengthens your muscles and also strengthens your cells. Having fun and making your body stronger? Sounds like a good deal to me.
Recap
Here’s a fun quiz for you to try:
- Every living thing (you, your parents, your pets, even the grass and trees in your backyard) is made up of ______
- Your blood is not something to be scared of. It’s mostly made up of ____________ and plasma and it moves all around your body.
- Red blood cells (RBC) and plasma are really hard working as well, with not one but has two jobs!
- Delivery person: RBC & plasma delivers _______ and food to all the other cells around your body
- Garbage collector: RBC & plasma also takes in the _____________ and waste around your body to properly dispose of it
- Germs are found _________ and some of them can make you really sick (like COVID-19)
- Thankfully, we have ______________. They are like mini police cells, going around your body fighting bad germs and keeping you safe and healthy. (They defeat the bad germs by ______ them 🍽)
- To support our white blood cells and to keep them strong, we need to do 3 things:
- Drink lots of ______ 💧
- Eat lots of ________ foods 🌈
- Go outside and play to ________ our bodies 💪
Answers:
- Every living thing (you, your parents, your pets, even the grass and trees in your backyard) is made up of cells
- Your blood is not something to be scared of. It’s mostly made up of red blood cells and plasma and it moves all around your body. It’s also really hard working with not one but has two jobs!
- Delivery guy: blood delivers oxygen and food to all the other cells around your body
- Garbage collector: blood also takes in the carbon dioxide and waste around your body to properly dispose of it
- Germs are found everywhere and some of them can make you really sick (like COVID-19)
- Thankfully, we have white blood cells. They are like mini police cells, going around your body fighting bad germs and keeping you safe and healthy. (They defeat the bad germs by eating them 🍽)
- To support our white blood cells and to keep them strong, we need to do 3 things:
- Drink lots of water 💧
- Eat lots of healthy foods 🌈
- Go outside and play to exercise your body 💪
The next time you feel lonely in quarantine, just remember that you have a whole city of little friends just inside you :)
Food for thought: If your sibling/friend gets sick and you spend a lot of time with them, why do you get sick as well?
Good job for making it all the way down here, you get a gold star ⭐️. Now it’s recess time so go take a break and rest your eyes! See you sometime 👋
