New discoveries emphasize the need for immune resilience as a key variable in earning our way to longer, healthier lives. Midlife is a particularly active window of opportunity to build resilience, the body’s natural capacity to resist infection and illness. You can have a huge impact on this resilience, particularly from age 40 – 70. As individuals approach their seventies, their immune systems start to decline. This underscores the need for clinical and public health interventions in these critical years.
Research indicates that those who are immune resilient by age 40 have an enormous survival benefit. This amazing advantage can set them up for a lifetime of healthier outcomes. In return, they should mostly through middle age, enjoy an average survival benefit of 15.5 years. This is the case even when you compare them to people whose immune power first begins to wane. This phenomenon highlights the need for proactive monitoring of immune health as we age.
This allows for the first time, researchers say, to quantify immune resilience. Specifically, they quantify proteins critical for maintaining immune homeostasis. Together, these protein levels are good indicators of an individual’s overall immune resilience. For example, all else being equal people with strong immune responses enjoy a 15-year longer life expectancy than those who are immune resilient.
Lifestyle factors, such as quality diet and physical activity, play an essential role in improving immune resilience. Getting plenty of movement and nourishing your body with a variety of wholesome foods are time-tested recipes for supporting a strong immune system. To further narrow the focus, medical interventions and treatments have the potential to restore or maintain high levels of immune resilience.
To assist individuals in assessing their immune health, healthcare professionals recommend a group of blood tests that function as an “immune resilience checkup.” These diagnostics went on to be hugely important during the COVID-19 pandemic. They reproducibly validated which hospitalized patients would benefit from more aggressive treatments while focusing on immune response levels.
It’s important to recognize that immune resilience doesn’t necessarily bounce back even once the illness is gone. Handwashing and other hygiene protocols are powerful tools — they save millions of lives. They drop your chances of getting sick by around 90% and spare your immune system. As individuals progress through middle age, their immune resilience becomes more apparent with marked variability. Studies show that this unevenness does even out and is consistent by about age 70.
Current studies are underway to further explore how lifestyle modifications and medical treatments can assist individuals in restoring or maintaining high immune resilience as they age.
“We have similar aging rates, but very different health outcomes, which is what you call healthspan,” stated Dr. Sunil K. Ahuja, a prominent figure in immunology research. His speculative prognostications focus our attention not on helping people just to live longer, but helping them to live healthier lives for a longer time.
Dr. Ahuja pointed out potential concerns regarding younger individuals’ immune health: “If a 25-year-old person came to me and [had test values in the lowest range] for immune resilience, I’d be very concerned.”
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