Season 2, Episode 6: Allergy, Infection and Inflammation

Possibly the most intricate and elegant of the body’s functions is the immune system. It's designed to recognize and protect your body or “the self” from all that is not the self, such as bacteria, viruses, even splinters. It can also run amok reacting to non threatening invaders like peanuts or even "the self" in what is called auto-immune disease like rheumatoid arthritis. Among the ways in which the immune system isolates foreign invaders is a process called inflammation.  On this episode, we hear from callers whose concerns introduce us to the complexity of the immune response.