People with resilient immune systems when they’re 40 can live 15 years longer than those whose immune systems aren’t as agile, and those with sluggish immune systems have a nearly 70% chance of dying by the age of 70.
What is a resilient immune system? Sunil Ahuja, MD is a professor of medicine at UT San Antonio Health Science Center who led a study that determined the lifespan gap between those who have a resilient immune system and those who don’t. He described a resilient immune system as one that responds quickly and efficiently when it’s challenged.
“We experience various kinds of stressors, and people who manage to preserve their immune health despite experiencing these stressors have immune resilience,” Ahuja explained.
People with resilient immune systems might not get sick if exposed to an infectious disease, like influenza or COVID-19. If they do experience symptoms, they may be mild and they recover quickly. Any inflammation they experience while fighting the illness quickly subsides, which has broad ramifications.
“It protects them from cardiovascular diseases. It has some association with protection against Alzheimer's, with having better vaccine responses and, of course, resisting infections,” Ahuja said.
Immune resilience can be measured, Ahuja continued. He’s graded the immune resilience of many of his patients on a scale of ‘one’ to ‘four.’ If your score is ‘one,’ you may have the fifteen-year lifespan advantage. If you get a ‘four,’ your immune system may be lagging. Ahuja’s patients with poor immune resilience use that information as a tool.
“They're taking preventive measures. They are taking vaccines appropriately. Some of them have chosen to wear a mask,” he said. “So the importance of this work is not the fact that we found this 15-year survival difference. We now have a toolbox to help monitor our patients within this framework of prediction, prevention, and personalization.”
Predicting, preventing, and personalizing each individual’s approach to health could begin to close the fifteen-year gap, and that practice should begin well before you turn 40.
“There's no magic bullet,” Ahuja said, but explained that improving individual outcomes begins in the brain.
“The juice is really attitude and how you interact with your environment and yourself,” he said, and suggested making more intentional choices to get away from your desk and off of your phone or computer. Our ancestors were in motion most of the time, and we’re not wired to sit still.
“So we have a profound DNA-environment mismatch,” Ahuja said. This is reducing our immune system’s ability to respond to threats. However, he pointed out, you can adjust your environment, and you can make intentional choices that bring your genetic makeup and your environment into closer alignment.
Ahuja suggests that anyone interested in improving their immune resilience should increase their physical activity. Be intentional about moving your body, and be intentional about what you put into it.
“What you eat plays a very big role in how your environment interacts with your microbiome, and that interaction is very important,” Ahuja said. “We know that the microbiome could be extremely important in the development of diseases. Parkinson's is a very good example of that.”
This type of intentional living, according to Ahuja, may help those with less resilient immune systems get some of those 15 years back.
