Why your own spittle is a cure
I was recently collecting leaf specimens in a small woodland area and I was not wearing gloves. Some of the leaf hairs must have pricked my skin and sensitised that area. For up to a week afterwards that area of skin felt prickly, uncomfortable and annoyingly itchy.
I remembered the old saying that you should spit on your skin if stung by nettles, so I did exactly that and massaged the skin. Hey presto! It did the trick. This got me trying to understand the science of why, if you rubbed an irritated area of skin with your own spittle, that this could be a remedy.
Immunology is a complex subject, but to break it down and simplify things, I think that an area of skin which is irritated produces inflammation and floods the area with blood and cells to attack any foreign body. This immune reaction, of course, is our protection against bacteria, viruses, injury, but sometimes the body does not seem able to switch this "warring" reaction off and the cells produced to fight foreign germs turn upon our own cells and this gives rise to auto immune disease and damage to our own tissues.
By rubbing an irritated area of skin with my own spittle, I introduced my own cells into the damaged area. My immune cells then recognised some of my own cells, these mucosa cells from my mouth, and sent out signals, chemicals, which then switched off the immune reaction.
I consider that herein may lie the key to helping people with auto immune disease. That their own cells can be introduced into the affected area of the body and perhaps then the body will recognise itself and switch off the immune reaction.
I would be interested to know if any immunologists out there think there may be something in this too?
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