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Chapter 19 Disease -- Failure of Intelligence (17) All disease is the result of a partial failure within the intelligence system of any organism. Although there are many different pathological disease processes that can affect the body (infection, malignancy, degenerative disease, etc.) they all have a common denominator--a failure of the intelligence system at some level. The origin of a disease process can occur in many different ways, which are best appreciated by the study of human medicine. Although virtually all organs in the body play some role in the repelling of disease, the major defense mechanism is the immune system, which represents that part of the intelligence network charged with the responsibility of fighting off invading microorganisms that threaten any host organism. It is an extremely elaborate system which is strongly influenced by the brain. Psychoneuroimmunology is a field which studies the immune system and how it relates to the brain. Researchers have determined that the brain at least partially controls the immune system via neurochemical communication. It can send out signals along nerves and it can pump out neuropeptides, both of which direct the immune system to aggressively fight off disease. The brain and immune system form a closed circuit, with the latter being capable of communicating back to the brain via chemical messengers.1 It has been determined that the nerves release chemical neurotransmitters which attach themselves onto immune cells and alter the latter's ability to reproduce and to kill invading organisms. The brain also regulates the release of various hormones that affect the immune cells' ability to fight disease.2 As organisms experience emotions, neuropeptides are released by the brain, primarily from the limbic system, and they stimulate immune cells and influence the way that macrophages fight disease.3...It is through the emotions system that stress and affectivity influence the immune system's ability to function. Hugo Besedovsky at the Swiss Research Institute has discovered that the brain keeps track of immunological activity and uses this information to help direct it. When macrophages and lymphocytes encounter viruses and bacteria, they both attack them and send chemical messages through the blood back to the brain. These signals inform the brain that certain hormones need to be produced which either increase or decrease the activity of immune cells.4...When a macrophage encounters a microorganism, it performs the purposeful action of extending a pseudopod and ensnaring it.5...It then destroys it by digesting and metabolizing its materials. The immune system has a memory as part of the intelligence network. Lymphocytes remember encounters with various microorganisms, just as the brain stores information about experiences, and thus they can defeat them more easily when the body is attacked in the future. It has been observed that the two types of memory age in parallel fashion. They both reach their peak during puberty and fade during older age.6
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