Covid Awareness

MMUNE SYSTEM AND MENTAL HEALTH DURING COVID

Are you tired, so do you feel depressed or are you depressed, so do you feel tired?

It's confusing, but you must have thought about it at some time, is there any relation in our mental health and immune system?

Some people believed that there is a connection between the two. A lot of research has been done and is going on on this topic, so nothing can be said with certainty. But in this article, I would like to briefly mention some things.

OUTDATED RESEARCHES

There was term psychoneuroimmunology used pervasively to designate the study of the bidirectional communication between the brain and the immune system. And it is based on the assumption that psychological phenomena regulate the neural process to influence the immune system.

There was another term that is still used and it is called immunopsychiatry. And it is based on the assumption that the immune system regulates psychological and behavioral processes and eventually leads to psychiatric disorders.

It is believed that before (in the era of psychoneuroimmunology), depression was a mental state that was able to influence the immune system but today (in the era of immunopsychiatry), depression is caused by changes in peripheral (body) immune mechanisms.

In the 1980s Rober Ader and his colleagues performed an experiment on the Pavlovian model, in which the dog was given food when the bell sounded, the dog salivated after it, and after a lot of trials, the dog salivated only after the bell sounded.

A simple nerve impulse due to a taste stimulus could have profound effects on the immune system.

Unfortunately, this model did not deliver the health improvements that had been prophesied. Similarly, a lot of researches was done, but all were unsuccessful.

WHAT DO OTHER EXPERTS SAY?

Undeniably, in those years, it has been worked out that psychological stress has effects on the immune system.

Nevertheless, the research done on animal models showed that stress makes a difference in the immune system, although it may not be a psychological effect but direct communication between the brain and the immune system, through the autonomic nervous system or the secretion of hormones like cortisol.

The cells of the immune system communicate using signal molecules called cytokines. "The cells of the nervous system send signals by means of signal molecules called neurotransmitters. Both of these cells are small molecules that have the same type of structure and configuration," says Associate Professor Solveig Merete Klæbo Reitan at NTNU's Department of Mental Health.

She also mentioned that people with mental health disorders are also more in jeopardy of various inflammations in the body and to immune system disorders. This pinpoints that an interaction exists.

Some psychosis people are also given a steroid drug to see if there are any beneficial effects on the immune system or not.

RECENT STUDIES

1.  A recent study showed that a patient who survived sepsis later developed anxiety and depression because his immune system had experienced a strong response.

2.  It’s now more common to find the immune system, more specifically its inflammatory capabilities, frequently named in the medical literature as the root cause of mental ill-health and a host of psychiatric conditions. Inflammation is pop up as the part and parcel of all mental illness.

3.  It has also been discovered that the microbiome(gut flora) plays an important role in cognition, anxiety, and mood of an individual. It keeps not only our metabolism but also the immune system healthy which also affects our mental health.

HOW IMMUNE SYSTEM AFFECTS MIND

A research that was published in 2016 says that some of the observations tell us how our immune system affects our mood, but it can be a cause of depression for some people rather than a consequence of it. And also, the immune system can alter the functioning of our brain. It was found that one-third of depressed patients showing consistently high levels of inflammation.

Inflammation is a part of the immune system that works on danger, and has to fight a lot of hostile forces which sometimes cannot be controlled and due to this our brain and body are affected. For instance, rheumatoid arthritis is a disease in which the body joints are attacked by the immune system. Patients are given anti-inflammatory drugs to calm their immune systems. But it was found by researches that those medications also put a positive effect on the mood of those patients.

And when mental health researchers scanned their brains, they found that the anti-inflammatory medicines were resulting in quite astonishing changes in the neurochemical circuitry in the brain.

IS IMMUNE SYSTEM AND MENTAL HEALTH RELATED AMID COVID-19

If the recent problem is seen, then in this pandemic, it has been seen that people who are mentally strong, optimistic, their immune system is also healthy and coronavirus is found less in such people, they are more immune to this virus. And there are less suicidal case due to depression. Statistical data says that with country the recovery rate is at 32%, Kerala soars at 94%; Punjab struggles at 8%.

PERORATION

It can be said that with all this evidences and researches, there is some relation in the mental health and immune system. And our physical health connects with these two. Many times you have also noticed that when we exercise, our immune system is good as well as our mood is good. According to an experiment in 2012, people have seen less anxiety, better mood, and improved mental health. Hence, at present it cannot be fully believed that there is any relation between these two, until fully proofed shreds of evidence are found.