Tuesday 1, February 2022
When it comes to human health, the thing that matters most is the decline of the immune system
The things that get us: heart disease, cancer, possibly dementia are diseases of the immune system. We feel old, because our immune system is kicking against our own tissues. Most chronic disease now is autoimmune disease: diabetes, coeliac disease, Hashimoto’s Disease, Graves’ disease, vitiligo and many more are endemic in younger populations.
Recent work has quantified the degree to which the immune system deteriorates. I am not sure I want mine measured, but it is scientific progress and we cannot hold it back.
As we grow older, a low-grade, constant, bodywide “bad inflammation” begins to kick in. This systemic and chronic inflammation causes organ damage and promotes vulnerability to a who’s who of diseases spanning virtually every organ system in the body and including cancer, heart attacks, strokes, neurodegeneration and autoimmunity.
To date, there have been no metrics for accurately assessing individuals’ inflammatory status in a way that could predict these clinical problems and point to ways of addressing them or staving them off, Furman said. But now, he said, the study has produced a single-number quantitative measure that appears to do just that. -Stanford Medicine
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