Immune Aging – Overview

Transcript

Immune aging is the concept of the immune system, which creates the cells in our bodies that fight infection and for example, make antibodies that are part of the immune response to an infection, as all parts of our body age, the immune system can age as well. And as it does, we become a little bit less capable of fighting off infection, of healing wounds and of preventing things like auto-immunity, which is the situation where the immune cells don’t correctly recognize the invader and they actually attack our own healthy tissues. So for example, type one diabetes is a situation where our immune systems incorrectly identify the cells that produce insulin in our bodies, as foreign, as invaders, as dangerous. And they attack those cells and they destroy them. And that’s why auto-immunity is so dangerous and is something that we have to avoid, just the way we try to prevent immune aging.