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So preventing immune aging is something that is important for us all to be aware of and think through how we can approach it. Certainly there’s a genetic component and there are aspects of immune aging that are related to simple aging, and that’s going to happen no matter what. One’s genetics are one’s genetics, and that’s going to influence the immune system the way it does everything else in our bodies. That being said, prevention is a very exciting area of focus. Now we know that things that we should all be doing in any event, like exercising and eating a good diet are extremely helpful to keeping our immune systems as effective as possible. But now we’re learning a lot about inflammation and its influence on the immune system. So a pro-inflammatory diet is something to be avoided. What does that mean? Well, it means things like not eating too much sugar, not having too many processed foods, trying to eat as much as possible, a largely plant-based diet and a diet of whole foods.
So things that you cook in your kitchen, as opposed to getting at a fast food location. These are just things that are helpful in general, but it turns out that the immune system is extremely sensitive to inflammatory elements in our diet. And so things like gluten, especially for those who have gluten sensitivity, processed foods and sugar, excess sugar, are really actually harmful. And eliminating those items from diet can make a very big improvement in the process of immune aging. Precision nutrition is actually an approach that people are starting to use. And there are companies that are analyzing the food and diet and the microbiome to take a look at what individual impact different foods have on our immune systems and whether or not those foods should be helpful or should be eliminated in order to have the healthiest immune system we can have. This is extremely important because immune aging is thought to be a big factor in, for example, auto-immune conditions such as diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, sarcoid, and multiple sclerosis. And these are all conditions that can be very, very, very challenging, if not impossible to really treat effectively. So if we can get ahead of these conditions and be preventative simply by using our diet, we will be much more effective.
