Posted on September 9th, 2008 by Stuart Reeves, Ph.D., Scientific Contributor
Spanning your life: how immune balance affects long-term health
The activity of the human immune system changes during the different stages of our life. In infants it is still developing, in children it defending against exposure to a large number of unknown infections, in maturity it is, in an ideal world, well balanced and fully functional, and then finally it starts to decline in efficiency as we age. A healthy immune system will defend us against infections, but in the modern world it is very easy for it to become unbalanced. The very significant increases in allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases seen over the last few decades are good indicators of this – they are due to an imbalance in the immune system.
Older children and young adults are extremely susceptible to infection, much more so than adults. Part of this is due to the fact they tend to spend a great deal of time in places that act as infection reservoirs – schools and colleges! But their bodies are growing fast and undergoing many changes as they morph into adulthood, and all these changes cause stress. Any stresses on the body are known to reduce the efficiency of the immune system.
Under normal conditions, our adult years should be relatively quiet and stable in terms of the immune system, but unfortunately modern life has somewhat altered the equation. The body has “seen” most of the typical infections, and is ready to fight them. However, the fact that we now live very sterile lives, and live in a world of increasing stresses such as work, personal commitments and travel, means that the immune system is very susceptible to an imbalance of the immune system. These are two reasons why the problems mentioned earlier tend to arise at these stages of life.
As the human body enters its senior years, its ability to fight off infection and other health problems diminishes significantly. The immune system, which is responsible for fighting infection, simply does not function as efficiently in older adults as in younger people. Here an overall supporting role needs to be played by supplements, without causing a lack of balance and stimulating the parts of the system that are responsible for allergy, and especially, inflammation, to which the mature body is particularly susceptible.
