How Stress and Exercise Impact the Immune System

The immune system is the body’s natural defense against illness and infection – a difficult task that requires an intricate network of cells and proteins to work together in order to keep the body healthy. Though our immune response does require every part of this integrated system to work together, we can more easily understand this complex process by breaking it down into two basic parts:

First we have the Innate Immune System. These cells act as “first responders”, and rapidly respond – within 96 Hours – to infections to contain and eliminate threats. These immune cells have no memory, so they attack all threats the same. 

The second part is the Adaptive Immune System – the second line of defense. These cells have a slower response, but are able to use memory to attack specific pathogens/antigens that the immune system has previously come across – building what we refer to as immunity.