Your Blood Type Determines Your Susceptibility to Different Infections
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 2020-08-17

See all the Healthcast at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog/
We all have a blood type, either O, A, B or AB.  The original blood type was O, and it is the most common blood type in the world.  The other types are mutations that we have carried with us through our genetics….but what does blood type really mean?  Here is a tiny bit of basic science.  Our red blood cells carry a glycoprotein “antigen “ stuck to the outside of the Red blood cell.  It is this antigen that provides the “Type” of blood.  Antigens include A antigen, B antigen.  Those people with O blood type don’t have any antigens on their RBCs, and AB people have 2 antigens.

When it comes to getting sick, we have a very complicated immune system of White blood cells that recognize foreign invaders that can make us sick, like viruses and bacteria, and mobilize special white blood cells from our thymus gland and other lymph nodes to attack and kill the virus before it makes us sick.  This is called cellular immunity.  Our white blood cells are like an army that provides a peremptory strike to kill the invaders it recognizes as foreign.  The ability of our body to recognize foreign substances or particles, from “self” is the key to preventing our WBCs from attacking and killing our own red blood cells or attacking our own joints like Rheumatoid arthritis.  All living things have the ability to discern “foreign” glycoproteins from their own tissues, to protect themselves from disease, and infection.  

When people lose the ability to determine the difference between their own tissue and foreign tissue, they develop disease.  An example of diseases where the immune system attacks its own tissues include autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and MS.  An example of the immune system failing to recognize foreign or abnormal cells is cancer.  Cancer cells are not normal and have different proteins on their cell walls and they are produced  in everyone all day long, but a normal immune  system recognizes them as foreign (abnormal ) and the  WBCs attack and destroy them.  Disease occurs when a person loses the ability to recognize these cells as foreign, and the cells are left alone, and they grow and become “cancer”.  Cancer is in reality an immune problem.

Our blood type is based on antigens that are attached to our RBCs. We recognize our own Blood type as “self” and a different blood type as foreign, and our WBCs attack the “foreign” RBCs.  We do not attack our own blood type cells.  

So, the antigen A is recognized as self to A blood type people and antigen B is recognized as self to blood type B people. O blood type has no ABO antigens on their cell wall.  Our own immune cells, our white blood cells,  recognize our own blood type antigens as belonging to our body and do not attack.   For example, the A antigen is recognized as “self” to a person with A blood type, and therefore the immune system does not attack our own RBCs that have A antigen. if  an A person is given B blood  then their WBCs  attack the foreign B RBCs, B blood cells are destroyed and the patient can die.  When transfusing blood doctors give blood of the same type or O blood.  O blood has no ABO antigen on the cell wall, and can be given to any blood type, because they have no antigen to trigger the  immune response.   This is why O blood type people are called “Universal Donors”.  

Your blood type obviously is the detriment of how we recognize foreign tissue in our body and therefore determines whether we recognize other cells as “not ours”.  In addition, Blood type is also inherited along with other generic susceptibilities to diseases, so it can also be an inexpensive test of genetic susceptibility to diseases.

How does this Blood type work in disease and cancer?  If an A person develops a cancer that resembles the A antigen, that person will not kill these cancer cells. B people also will be blind to cancer cells that look like the B antigen.  ABs have a double problem, being blind to both A-like and B like cancer cells.  However, half the world is blood type O and they kill both the cells that look like A and B cells.