Your Immune System Can Age Well, Too
Immune systems change as we get older, and the difference usually starts showing up later in life. Colds last longer. Recovery takes more out of you. A flu that used to cost you a few days might now cost you two weeks. The good news is that a lot of this is within your control. Not all of it, but more than most people assume.
The grandkids come over for Sunday dinner. One of them has a runny nose. By Wednesday, they're fine and back at school, and you're on the couch with a box of tissues and a cough that'll stick around until Halloween.
That's not bad luck. Immune systems change as we get older, and the difference usually starts showing up later in life. Colds last longer. Recovery takes more out of you. A flu that used to cost you a few days might now cost you two weeks.
The good news is that a lot of this is within your control. Not all of it, but more than most people assume.
What's going on in there
There's actually a name for how the immune system changes with age: immunosenescence. Basically, your body keeps making immune cells your whole life, but it makes fewer brand-new ones as the years go by. Those new cells are the ones that learn to spot germs you've never met. So your body gets pretty good at handling the stuff it's seen before and a little slower with anything new.
On top of that, a lot of people develop a mild, constant inflammation as they age. Researchers call it inflammaging. You can't feel it. It doesn't show up as a swollen ankle or anything obvious. But it keeps the immune system busy with background noise, and it's tied to a long list of other things we care about, like heart health and joint pain.
Sleep is the easy one to overlook
Most of us treat sleep as the thing we'll catch up on later. But your immune system does a lot of its work overnight, and when researchers exposed people to a cold virus on purpose, the ones who'd been sleeping under six hours were much more likely to actually get sick.
If your sleep has gotten worse with age (and for a lot of people it has), that's worth bringing up with your provider. Sometimes it's habits. Sometimes it's hormones. Sometimes it's something like sleep apnea that nobody's checked for.
Exercise does more than you'd expect
There's a study we bring up a lot. Researchers looked at older adults who'd been cycling regularly for decades. Compared with sedentary people the same age, they were still making new immune cells at rates closer to young adults. Their immune systems were bit frozen in time (some aging still showed up), but the parts that help you respond to new germs looked a lot younger.
You don't need to be a cyclist. Lifting weights a couple times a week and getting out for regular walks is a solid start. Muscle helps keep background inflammation down, so holding onto what you’ve got, or building some back, pays off in ways that go well beyond being able to carry the groceries.
Food, briefly
Eat enough protein. A lot of older adults don't, and your body needs it to make immune cells and antibodies.
Eat a lot of plants, especially the colorful ones.
And feed your gut. A large share of your immune tissue sits along the intestinal tract, and it does better when you're eating fiber and some fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, or sauerkraut.
That's honestly most of it.
About vitamin D
If you live in western Washington, there's a decent chance yours is low. We just don't get much sun for a good chunk of the year. Vitamin D plays a real role in immune function, and it's one of those things where you shouldn't guess. A quick blood test tells you where you are, and then you can figure out with your provider whether you need a supplement and how much.
Stress, vaccines, and the rest
Long-term stress wears on the immune system. We're not going to tell you to start meditating (unless you want to), but whatever actually helps you unwind, do more of it. Walks, friends, the garden, whatever it is.
It's also a good time of year to ask about vaccines. Depending on your age and health, that might include flu, COVID, RSV, or shingles. Your provider can help you sort out which ones make sense for you.
The hormone piece
This part doesn't get talked about enough. Estrogen, testosterone, DHEA, and thyroid hormones all help regulate your immune cells and inflammation. When they drop off, which they do for pretty much everyone eventually, some people notice they're getting sick more often or taking longer to recover. That doesn’t mean hormones are a cold-and-flu vaccine. It does mean they’re one of the levers worth measuring instead of guessing.
It's one of the reasons we look at hormones at LMC even when someone comes in for something that seems unrelated.
Why we test first
Everybody's different. You could be doing everything right and still have low vitamin D, or inflammation that's running higher than it should, or hormones that are further off than you'd guess. You can't really know without looking.
At Longevity Medical Clinic, we run labs that check things like inflammation markers, vitamin D, blood sugar, nutrients, and hormone levels. Then we sit down with you and figure out what to actually do about it.
Our goal is to help make 90 the new 60. Getting through cold and flu season without losing a month to it is a pretty good place to start.
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