Skin Health

Skin Inflammatory Response

Microorganisms sometimes get beyond the body’s outer defenses, through a cut in the skin, for example. They then face a second line of defense in the blood and the tissues, inflammation, or the inflammatory response. This response is a general one, It is aimed at helping to ward off any irritant or “foreign body” whether it’s a relatively large physical object such as a splintery), a chemical substance, or microbe.

As you may know, we have both red blood cells and white blood cells in our bloodstream. The red blood cells have an important function. They transport oxygen to all the cells that we’re interested in here. Some of them are of a type known as phagocytes, a term that literally means “cells that eat.” Phagocytes sometimes come along and literally engulf foreign substances, so that they are no longer dangerous. Each individual phagocyte is made up of a semi liquid, jellylike substance, with a cell wall holding it together, it can come along and actually flow right around the foreign object, surrounding it. Then the cell can take the object apart chemically and digest it.
What happens in the inflammatory response is this. The supply of blood to the endangered area increases, and at the same time the flow of blood through that area slows down. As a result, some blood plasma (the fluid that transports the red and white blood cells) can leak through the walls of the blood vessels into the spaces between the cells in that area, bringing with it special protein that can help destroy bacteria and toxins. Meanwhile, phagocytes rush to the area too; there they set to work engulfing bacteria and foreign particles.

posted by Margi @ 2:03 AM