Signal Amplification Is Something That We Don’t Necessarily Want In Our Bodies.

Anything that self-amplifies is unregulated and can spiral out of control, and we wouldn’t want that to happen to ourselves.

In the realm of music, an amplifier is a gadget that

turns the low voltage signals from your source equipment into a signal with enough gain to be used to power a pair of speakers.

It does so by amplifying the signal, or in layman’s terms, increasing the signal in a positive feedback loop.

If we are in an argument with other people and we are raising our voices, our voices get amplified as well.

Of course, the idea of amplification isn’t limited to just sound signals.

There are other things that can be amplified as well.

Another synonym for amplification would be escalation — as in the escalation of issues from one hierarchy to the next hierarchy in any given organisation. When a person does not have sufficient power to deal with a certain issue at their workplace, they raise/amplify/intensify/escalate the issue to their managers, for instance.

Even the response towards stocking up on toilet paper during the COVID-19 lockdown stages was a response that was amplified by fear.

People feared being unable to get the necessary toilet paper/food staples that they projected to need during the lockdown period, and went to sweep the supermarket aisles clean of all those essentials.

So while being able to amplify a signal is one thing on its own, being able to regulate the intensity of its amplification is another story altogether.

Because that also is how our immune system functions:

This leads us to the Goldilocks Principle. Much like how Goldilocks found Papa Bear’s porridge too hot and Mama Bear’s porridge too cold, while Baby Bear’s porridge was “just right”, the author Christopher Booker states that

The idea that the way forward lies in finding an exact middle path between opposites is of extraordinary importance in storytelling.

Unfortunately, the balance in our life also involves finding an exact middle path.

We’d need to be able to get our immune system to amplify inflammatory signals appropriately. We don’t want it to overshoot too much. We want it just right.

Of course, our immune system’s macrophages have a significant role in this:

Because when we’re injured, there is a highly amplified wave of inflammatory signals being sent out in the form of biochemicals known as cytokines.

This high intensity wave is an “all hands on deck” call for all available macrophages to swarm the site of injury or infection — and that is how we can get highly intense sensations of pain, for instance, when we sprain an ankle. That is how we can get highly intense symptoms of a flu infection in the form of blocked noses, headaches and fevers.

So we do need that kind of initial response when our body is trying to heal from an infection or injury — the high intensity wave to call all hands on deck.

Of course, we do need to quell that intensity when the injury has been repaired or the infection has been dealt with. We’d therefore be looking at a momentary spike in the concentration of the cytokines in the blood.

Because when the spike remains intense over a long term period, we’d be staring down the face of a cytokine storm. We don’t want that to happen to ourselves, definitely.

And that’s how our immune system should operate ideally — intense during the moments of dealing with threats, placid when there are no threats.

Much like how a military force ought to be operating. In a war, it has to be focused and intense in dealing with enemy threats, but it can stand down during peacetime, though it has to be continuously prepared and on the alert in case of the next threat.

Of course, we do see how soldiers can go wayward even during peacetime situations, and we can expect the immune system to be doing that if we don’t know how to regulate its functions properly.

We are, unfortunately, the CEO/general in charge of the cells in our body.

When we can live our lifestyles appropriately to keep the immune system functioning according to the Goldilocks principle, we’d have less issues with wayward cells.

Because the problem with the inflammation signalling process in the body is that it is self-amplifying. The positive feedback loop can become a runaway issue.

An inflammation signal is raised to sound the all hands on deck alarm.

The macrophages swarm the site of injury and raise their own inflammation signals to call more of their comrades over to help.

It’s self-amplifying.

Thankfully we don’t have that problem with sound systems, else we’d go deaf very easily.

However, that signalling mechanism and the players involved can go wayward, what we all want to avoid.

And of course, we do need the immune system to cooperate with us. That’s a necessary thing to do!

Do feel free to check out Nutrients That Support A Healthy Immune System to see how our diet can influence the inflammatory response from our immune system!

Joel Yong, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator and a writer. He has authored 5 ebooks (available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on crafting strategies to support optimal biochemical functions in the human body at https://thethinkingscientist.substack.com.