Shadowing Practice: When Your Body Attacks Itself – Autoimmune - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Your immune system is an omnipresent, terrifying entity made of billions of nuclear weapons and kamikaze bombers, saturating every little tissue, bone and fluid in your body.
2
It scans, patrols, and when it finds an enemy — it kills.
3
But what if it suddenly decides that you are the enemy?
4
This is the betrayal of autoimmunity – diseases like Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease, lupus and Crohn's disease and many more.
5
Literally every tissue can be affected, from your nerves to your thyroid or joints.
6
They are all unique and different kinds of bad, from manageable to life changing to deadly.
7
All share one fundamental property: Your immune system thinks some healthy part of you is the enemy.
8
It’s like a country attacking itself: fighter jets bomb roads, snipers hunt doctors and baristas, artillery levels daycare centers.
9
While there is usually a certain amount of genetic risk for autoimmunity, to get an actual autoimmune disease you also need a colossal case of bad luck on top of that.
10
How does this work?
11
The Shape Of Life The fundamental building blocks of life are proteins.
12
Like ultra complex lego blocks each of them has a precise shape, allowing them to perform highly specific tasks, like breaking down food or transcribing DNA.
13
In total your body produces about 100,000 different proteins, or shapes.
14
Your immune system evolved to constantly check the proteins of your cells and look for shapes that are not you – and to kill whatever is attached to them violently and brutally.
15
Autoimmunity is when your soldier cells suddenly think that your own healthy and natural proteins belong to an enemy.
16
We explained this in more detail in this video – but in a nutshell: This is such a critical danger to your survival that your body created an entire murder university to prevent this from happening.
17
Here, young immune cells go through ruthless training: if they recognize the shapes of your own proteins, they are executed immediately.
18
But sometimes through sheer, dumb luck one makes it through.
19
Right at this moment you probably have a few million cells patrolling your body with the potential to trigger an autoimmune disease.
20
Another way to trigger autoimmunity is through our enemies: Some bacteria and viruses have evolved proteins that are extremely similar to the ones in your own body.
21
Because they just have to if they want to interact with your cells – and to stay hidden.
22
We see this everywhere in nature, from moths that look like bark or crocodiles that disappear in muddy water.
23
For bacteria your tissue is a hostile jungle full of angry predators looking for them.
24
So they try to cover themselves in shapes that are very similar to your proteins.
25
But both of these things are not enough, the final ingredient is a trigger event.
26
And a colossal case of bad luck.
27
The War That Never Ends The trigger can be anything that activates your defenses.
28
A common cold, the flu, a tiny wound.
29
Any sort of infection floods your body with cytokines, signals that tell your body “this is a real fight, take this seriously” which truly wakes up your immune system.
30
Intelligence cells start to gather proteins – shapes – from the battlefield.
31
These shapes are the physical information of what is going on and are carried to your lymph nodes, information distribution centers.
32
Here, your heavy weapons – T cells – pass through, taking a look at the shapes that are being presented here.
33
If they recognize the shape of an invader they activate the whole immune system and a few days later the attacker will be wiped out.
34
But this time the worst things happen in the worst kind of way.
35
Maybe an intelligence officer picked up a piece of one of your healthy cells that died in the battle, or maybe a bacteria had a protein pretty similar to one of yours. And by sheer, extremely bad luck, a few months ago a single T cell that can recognize this shape survived the murder university.
36
And today exactly this T cell happened to pass exactly this lymph node and is activated.
37
This single T cell now starts a big immune reaction against your own body.
38
It clones itself thousands of times, gathers other cells for support and streams into your tissue.
39
When the misguided immune cells arrive they see nothing but enemies!
40
The proteins they are looking for are everywhere!
41
Which can only mean that there is a full on invasion going on!
42
They spread out and start attacking and killing your tissue.
43
How bad is this?
44
Well, it depends.
45
There are more than 100 different autoimmune diseases and basically any tissue can be affected.
46
In Multiple Sclerosis your immune cells are attacking the insulation of your nerve cells, making them sort of short circuit or slow down dramatically.
47
Causing numbness, muscle cramps, problems with your vision and concentration.
48
In Type 1 Diabetes your immune system kills the cells that produce your insulin in your pancreas, starving your cells of glucose and turning your blood into acid.
49
In Rheumatoid Arthritis angry cells invade your joints and literally start to dissolve cartilage and bone.
50
Lupus is a body-wide Blitzkrieg that attacks literally every part of your body causing painful, unpredictable and widespread destruction with a variety of bad symptoms.
51
And almost all autoimmune diseases come with crushing fatigue and exhaustion.
52
Because when you are sick, your immune system tells your body to shut down and rest.
53
Even if the immune system is itself the attacker, it still sends out the same orders.
54
It feels like you have the flu but the real enemy is your own body.
55
The worst part about autoimmunity is that it never stops.
56
Your immune system is a self enforcing machine of destruction.
57
The more “enemies” your initial autoimmunity cells encounter the more cells they clone and activate.
58
So its nature prevents lasting peace.
59
Why is your Body allowing this?
60
Most, if not all, autoimmune diseases have a genetic component but this is kind of weird.
61
If some variants of genes are actively harmful to us, evolution should weed them out and make them less common.
62
But up to one in ten people in the industrialized world suffers from them.
63
So why did they stick around?
64
Well when it comes to genes, we often have to work with trade offs – at their core autoimmune diseases always mean that your immune system is more aggressive – and while this is mostly bad, until recently in human history, this was pretty great.
65
In the past infectious diseases were the most common cause of death.
66
Terrible pandemics ravaged our cities regularly, sometimes decimating communities.
67
Researchers analyzed DNA samples from London cemeteries before, during, and after the Black Death pandemic that killed about half of the population.
68
They found that individuals with gene variants that increase the risk for Crohn’s disease, seemed to have died at a much lower rate.
69
What helped them against a deadly disease back then might make us vulnerable to autoimmunity today.
70
Evolution doesn’t care about perfect solutions, it is only looking for good enough.
71
If variants made it more likely to survive the deadliest diseases, why care if down the line this might lead to something else?
72
If you have an autoimmune disease you may only be alive because your ancestors carried these genes and survived a pandemic that wiped out their neighbours.
73
And then a hot second ago we changed our world.
74
Hygiene, antibiotics, vaccines and modern medicine revolutionized our lives and how we die.
75
So much so that most of us don’t even think a lot about infectious diseases – and this is great.
76
But now we are left with genes that make our immune systems more aggressive for no good reason.
77
Add a bit of bad luck and all these billions of nuclear weapons and kamikaze bombers take aim at the wrong target: You.
78
Your immune system isn’t the only part of yourself that can be turned against you.
79
Data brokers are constantly collecting personal information like your name, address or information about your relatives.
80
This data is valuable and can be sold to companies who want to show you ads that are tailored to you – but also more nefarious buyers who want to dox you, harass you, or even steal your identity.
81
Today’s sponsor Delete Me can help you climb out of the shopping cart and claim back your privacy.
82
We found their sign-up process easy and intuitive: you just submit your info to their subscription service and let DeleteMe’s privacy experts get to work.
83
Once you join, they start scrubbing your data from hundreds of data broker sites.
84
After just seven days, you’ll get your first custom report showing you where your information was found and what was removed, allowing you to breathe more easily.
85
From then on, DeleteMe keeps monitoring sites all year round and repeats the removal process, again and again if necessary.
86
You can also make custom removal requests and get a real person to help you out.
87
And with a DeleteMe family plan, your relatives are protected as well – our favourite feature to take care of the whole flock.
88
Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/NUTSHELL and use promocode NUTSHELL at checkout or scan this QR code.
89
Your data needs protection — join DeleteMe today to boost your digital immune system.
📺 Same Channel
B222
Your Skeleton Is Electric
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1114
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2133
Can Earth Run Out of Water?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B232
Your Brain Peaked at Birth
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C134
Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2555
What If You Never Slept?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B27
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible! 2/3
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C18
Would You Upload Your Mind?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B264
What the Flu Does to Your Body
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
How ADHD Medication Works
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
The Most Complex Language in the World
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
Let’s Steal a New Moon
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2759
How Stress Changes Your Brain
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
What Happens AFTER Nuclear War?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Awesome! 3/3
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B252
Can We Stop the Extinction?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
YOU Own the Moon. And Mars. And Venus.
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2209
The True Cost of War
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
C17
105 sentences
The Immune System Explained I – Bacteria Infection
University StudentsWorking Adults
C111
24 sentences
Do you understand your own life? | Yuval Noah Harari
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
173 sentences
STOP Running Code On Your Computer
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
380 sentences
A man hiked in the woods. Every brain cell got cooked.
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
32 sentences
What if quantum physics could eradicate illness? | Jim Al-Khalili for Big Think
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
93 sentences
Asthma
University StudentsWorking Adults
C12
177 sentences
The REAL Reason Diabetes Is So Dangerous
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
303 sentences
Every Type of Phobia & Their Effects Explained
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
33 sentences
Your Memories & Emotions Impact Immune Status
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
167 sentences
BLOOD TYPES explained in 9 Minutes
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
57 sentences
Why We’re Scared of Things That Look Too Human (Uncanny Valley)
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “When Your Body Attacks Itself – Autoimmune”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cell, immune, disease, shape, protein. This video has 89 sentences and 1557 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:33. The speaker talks at a natural 163 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| autoimmune adjective | /ˌɔːtəʊɪˈmjuːn/ | Of or pertaining to autoimmunity. |
| autoimmunity noun | /ˌɔːtoʊɪˈmjuːnɪti/ | The condition where one's immune system attacks one's own tissues, i.e., an autoimmune disorder. |
| activate verb | /ˈæktɪˌveɪt/ | To encourage development or induce increased activity; to stimulate. |
| bacterium noun | /bækˈtɪəɹ.ɪəm/ | A single-celled organism with cell walls but no nucleus or organelles. |
| nutshell noun | /ˈnʌt.ʃɛl/ | The shell that surrounds the kernel of a nut. |
| variant noun | /ˈvæɹi.ənt/ | Something that is slightly different from a type or norm. |
| colossal adjective | /kəˈlɑsəl/ | Extremely large or on a great scale. |
| kamikaze noun | /ˌkɑː.mɪˈkɑː.ziː/ | An attack requiring the suicide of the one carrying it out, especially when done with an aircraft. |
| lupus noun | /ˈluːpəs/ | Any of a number of autoimmune diseases, the most common of which is systemic lupus erythematosus. |
| lymph noun | /lɪmf/ | A colourless, watery, coagulable bodily fluid which bathes the tissues and is carried by the lymphatic system into the bloodstream; it resembles blood plasma… |
| sclerosis noun | /skləˈɹəʊ.sɪs/ | The abnormal hardening of body tissues, such as an artery; the appearance of hardenings, indurations, lesions, nodules. |
| attacker noun | /əˈtækɚ/ | Someone who attacks. |
| clone noun | /kloʊn/ | A living organism (originally a plant) produced asexually from a single ancestor, to which it is genetically identical. |
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| infectious adjective | /ɪnˈfɛk.ʃəs/ | Caused by an agent that enters the host's body (such as a bacterium, virus, parasite, or prion); often, also, transmitted among hosts via any of various routes… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| wipe out verb | To destroy (especially, a large number or complete set of people or things); to obliterate. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| send out verb | To issue, dispatch or transmit. |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 4 contractions and reduced forms, such as doesn't, don't, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thyroid /ˈθaɪ.ɹɔɪd/, ruthless /ˈɹuːθləs/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: nutshell /ˈnʌt.ʃɛl/, infectious /ɪnˈfɛk.ʃəs/, sheer /ʃɪɚ/, revolutionize /ˌɹɛv.əˈl(j)u.ʃəˌnaɪz/, insulation /ˌɪnsəˈleɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: autoimmunity /ˌɔːtoʊɪˈmjuːnɪti/, kamikaze /ˌkɑː.mɪˈkɑː.ziː/, industrialize /ɪnˈdʌstɹiəlaɪz/, manageable /ˈmænəd͡ʒəb(ə)l/, nefarious /nɪˈfɛəɹi.əs/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like autoimmune, autoimmunity, activate.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.