Being sick SOON can trigger a person’s immune system to prepare –

One expert says that a person surrounded by other sick people may be better prepared for illness as their immune system begins to prepare for possible infections.

Dr. Patricia Lopes, an assistant professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, says that anyone who sees other sick people around them would interpret this information in a way that prepares the immune system for an infection.

He says this means that parasites like viruses affect a person’s physiology more than they know: Every time they witness another person’s illness, their bodies expend energy to prepare.

It also has serious implications for epidemiology and how the virus actually spreads. Because this research is still in its infancy, it is difficult to determine whether caring for another patient first can significantly reduce the likelihood of contracting a virus.

In her article published this month in Functional Ecology, Lopes writes that uninfected animals, including humans, have built-in mechanisms to avoid becoming infected with a parasite.

“Uninfected animals can try many ways to avoid parasitism,” he writes.

“For example, avoidance of the behavior of congener parasites has been documented in several species.”

One method of avoidance he believes is “less studied and therefore less understood” is physiological avoidance.

He says there is evidence that a person’s physiology changes when they look at another sick person.

“Our brain can take information from sick people and thus trigger changes in our physiology,” he told Neuroscience News.

“For example, looking at pictures of sick people can activate the immune system.”

He talks about a huge knowledge gap that still prevents people from understanding how this phenomenon works and how it can affect a person and the spread of the disease as a whole.

Dr. Patricia Lopes (pictured), an assistant professor at Chapman University, explained that more research is needed to understand how activating the immune system when an animal sees a disease can affect the spread of the disease.

An important question is whether such “preparation” for the disease reduces the infection in any way.

In the context of a serious epidemic such as COVID-19 or monkeypox, the increased general awareness a person has of the parasites surrounding them is to somehow help them avoid infection.

“Determining how the pathological environment in which animals live affects their physiology, survival and reproduction has important implications for our understanding of how parasites affect populations beyond their consumption effects,” he explains.

“If the physiological changes induced in uninfected animals help reduce disease burden or accelerate disease recovery, they can have a cascading effect on disease dynamics; that’s why it’s important to study and understand.’

Previous research has revealed that people find diseases naturally disgusting and repulsive.

As a result, they avoid someone they think is sick as a form of self-protection.

Research published in 2010 from the University of British Columbia found that people who were shown pictures of sick people had high levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is secreted by white blood cells as a defense mechanism.

“It makes sense in evolutionary terms that the immune system only responds aggressively when really needed,” said study co-author Mark Schaller at the time.

“If I see a group of sick people, maybe there’s a serious infection around, and I better get my immune system working.”