Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article I will talk about age-related decrease in immunity and how to deal with this unpleasant phenomenon.
We have already discussed normal aging and all the changes in the body that occur during this process. Among other things, immunity weakens with age. This can lead to various infections or cancers that are easy to die from.
That is, our immunity is also aging. To some extent, this can be combated.
Food
At all times it was very clearly noticeable that lack of nutrition spoils people's immunity. Every doctor has a gut feeling that an elderly person can boost immunity with a special diet.
Earlier, even a separate topic was about how to disperse the immunity of old people. This was called "immunity boost" in English. It was believed that it was enough to eat better, add multivitamins in tablets, and immunity would accelerate. Then it turned out that not everything is so simple.
This is because nutritionists have become fearful. Much has changed in nutrition and dietetics over the past 30 years. At first, they thought that it was necessary to remove bacon from the diet and replace it with margarine. Then it turned out that from margarine with trans fats you can get a heart attack even faster. Then they said that you can eat a lot of eggs. Then they said that in fact, probably, a lot of eggs are not very useful. Well, stuff like that.
So in the case of distilling immunity with vitamins and nutrition, it is also not simple. With multivitamins in tablets somehow it did not work out. Well, that is, when they were given vitamin D or B12 for medical reasons, then everything was wonderful. But if they slipped multivitamins to everyone in a row, then for some reason sometimes the overall mortality increased from this. Therefore, now you will not be too persistently offered multivitamin complexes.
It seems that everything is very complicated there, and you need to get these vitamins together with vegetables and fruits. Plant foods will still contain all sorts of antioxidants and something useful that we may not yet know. There is little research on this topic, but there are some decent ones.
It is now fashionable to refer to one such study from 2012 in which people aged 65-85 were tested for immunity against pneumococcus.
It turned out that if the elderly ate 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruits per day, then the immunity against pneumococcus worked better than if they ate 2 or fewer servings per day.
They took 80 grams of vegetables or fruits per serving. It could be one apple, orange, banana. Or three heaped tablespoons of vegetables. Or 150 ml of fruit juice. It was all counted as one serving. You need to eat 5 or more of these servings a day. Take a note. This is a true story.
Exercise stress
Everything is complicated here. Research has been carried out many times and it has been found that intense physical activity instantly boosts the immune system. On the other hand, they found confirmation that exhausting physical activity suppresses this very immunity.
We agreed that regular, moderate physical activity is definitely beneficial for older people, which accelerates the heart, forces balance, strengthens bones and increases flexibility. I have a bunch of articles about different load options here below in the channel. You can read it later.
Stress
Chronic stress accelerates age-related weakening of the immune system. Learn to cope with this business and overcome. This is a separate story. There are methods and ways for each person.
Vaccination
We have also discussed this many times. Older people have their own characteristics. After 65 years, it is advisable to get vaccinated against influenza and pneumococcus, because they can kill an elderly person.
On the other hand, now they say that an elderly person can kill someone if he is poorly vaccinated. If grandparents are going to babysit their grandchildren, then they should be properly vaccinated against whooping cough. Small children sometimes die from whooping cough. So ask your immunologist about vaccinations. What is needed is an immunologist, because older people have their own special vaccines and their own vaccination regimens.
Immunomodulators and immunostimulants
Would you like to find an immunostimulant in the pharmacy? Everyone would like to. Only they are not there. Rather, the drugs themselves are present somewhere in scientific research. These immunostimulants stimulate guinea pigs and other laboratory animals. The results seem to be encouraging. I doubt that you will find such things in pharmacies in the near future.
Statins
This is an unexpected turn. It turned out that statins have some other anti-aging effect. They can literally slow down the aging process. All this will be studied for a very long time.
It's funny! I have always said that statins prolong life. Well, that is, they protect against a fatal heart attack or stroke. And then it turns out that statins really slow down aging and prolong life.
In short, eat right, do not forget about physical activity, vaccinate early against everything that the immunologist suggests. That's all you can really do for your aging immunity.
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