3 ms·

Are you implying that catching a flu virus every couple of years is "good for you" beyond confering immunity to other flu viruses?

• colechristensen 5y ago
  More or less. You are built up of many feedback systems trying to achieve some stable or metastable state. Without knowing the exact mechanism, the hypothesis goes something like this: your immune system has an internal variable "activity", and given long periods of nothing to do, it will ramp up its sensitivity until it finds something to do -- and you develop an autoimmune disease ranging from environmental allergies (reacting to things which aren't threats) to one of many where the immune system attacks your own tissues. The actual mechanism likely more complex than a single variable thermostat, but that's the general idea. So yes, challenging your immune system from time to time by giving it a disease or two to fight off might indeed be "good for you".
  • yosito 5y ago
    Sure, but why does that challenge need to be the flu, and not the billions of other microbes we encounter on a daily basis, or even a yearly vaccine?
  • vvillena 5y ago
    Even if you were right about that, we're not talking about a common cold. Flu is a serious disease that makes healthy people stay in bed for almost a week. Surely we can "train" with something else.