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Surprise: you have three kinds of almonds. The tonsils have the most fame, they are sometimes eligible for a haircut. The two are in the back of the throat, on either side of the uvula, the fliebel that hangs from the ceiling.
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Less well known is the tonsil, which lies at the back of the tongue. If you can stick your tongue out far enough, you’ll just see the bumps appear, like little warts on the surface. And then there is the most unknown of the bunch: the tonsil. You can’t possibly see it, because it’s located at the back of the nasopharynx, where air finds its way down from your nasal canal.
So in total you have tonsils in three places, which only makes the question even bigger: what good are you?
Tonsils are the main defense organs of babies
As a newborn baby you are immediately faced with a major challenge. In the womb you were still safely shielded from all dangers, with a mother between you and the evil outside world. It is packed with bacteria, viruses and other scum that love to enter your body. Meanwhile, your resistance is barely prepared for so much aggressiveness.
Your immune system is still developing, says ENT specialist Jet van den Akker of the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort. ‘At birth you still have antibodies from your mother in your body. The number of antibodies decreases in the first six months. The idea is that your own immune system will produce its own antibodies in the meantime. At that moment your tonsils are the most important immune organs to produce antibodies.’ To win the battle against even smaller grits as a little one, you can use those almonds very well.
Defense is built up
The tonsils have chosen their positions strategically. They are located where bacteria and viruses can simply walk in: at the nose and mouth. ‘You have Waldeyer’s ring, that’s the name of that group of tonsils together,’ Van den Akker explains. ‘That together forms a kind of circle of defence.’
Bacteria and viruses that you breathe almost automatically end up at that line of defense. The tonsils are packed with immune cells. As soon as an intruder reports there, they pounce on it like rude bouncers. They recognize common bacteria and viruses by common patterns. That keeps the crooks out as long as your body has not yet developed a more targeted approach.
Meanwhile, the tonsils also act as a training school for your immune system. All the riffraff that presents itself helps your defenses to learn what the greatest dangers are. This is how you build up a specific immune system in the first years of life. These are cells that recognize a single species of bacteria or virus variant and respond more adequately to it than the bouncers of the general immune system.
Sniffling toddlers
As soon as the specific defenses are up to scratch, intruders cause much less hassle for our bodies, says Van den Akker. ‘At a certain point that library is so large that you have a defense against most infections. Then you just have to press the button and you produce the same antibodies again.’
Until then, your body will work a lot harder to keep any cold at bay. It is not for nothing that you see little kids walking around with a snot bubble almost every day. Even with slightly older children, intruders are eliminated without even noticing, partly thanks to the tonsils.
Thanks to this improved door policy, the almonds are slowly but surely making themselves obsolete. You can get better and better without their specialism: shooting mindlessly at every possible enemy. Your other immune systems largely take over the role of the tonsils. Such an adult immune system is already attainable from the age of seven, although in other children it takes until the age of ten. You can also see that the first immune system then switches back: the tonsils are easier to recognize in young children than in adults.
Cut inflamed tonsils
As soon as your tonsils approach retirement age, they can even start breaking you up, Van den Akker explains. ‘That almond is actually a kind of cauliflower with dimples in it. Bacteria can easily accumulate in it. The tonsils then become a source of inflammation themselves instead of counteracting inflammation.’
At that time, ENT doctors regularly decide that the troublemakers can be removed, although that happens less and less. For children, cutting is more like spooning out, says Van den Akker. ‘The almond is a ball that is stuck in a niche with a small connection. We tear through that connection and then we remove the almond. We don’t cut it off, we peel it out. We loosen that with the finger. Just like with a mandarin orange, you peel the segment from its peel.’
It’s a bit of a thankless ending, because the tonsils have just helped you through the tropical years of your immune system.