Boost Your Immune System
Studies Show Exercise Done Regularly Improves Immune Function
A bout of physical activity affords the body so many benefits on the physical and mental levels; it would be foolish not to engage in physical activity daily.
We know that physical activity has a myriad of health benefits including the reduction of risk associated with numerous diseases. Scientists are also suggesting that those who choose an active lifestyle will garner benefits associated with an improved immune system.
It is this particular benefit that has doctors suggesting seniors engage in physical activity with regularity. Activities such as walking, swimming, biking, dancing or weight lifting seem to provide a boost to the immune system. As people age, their activity level tapers off and with this decline in physical activity, physical problems develop. Among them are susceptibility to pathogens.
Research conducted by Jeffrey Woods, a kinesiology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, indicates that exercise increases the ratio of naïve T cells to memory T cells in the spleens of older mice.The finding is potentially significant, he said, because, on this measure, "we turn old mice into young mice." When people and animals age, he explained, “the thymus, which produces naïve T lymphocytes, shrinks, thus producing fewer naïve cells. This is one reason that older people/animals have trouble responding to new environmental pathogens."
In addition, studies have shown that seniors who engaged in 30 minutes or more of physical activity 5 times per week, showed improvements in physical functioning. Seventy volunteers 70 or older participated in random home-based progressive strength, balance, general-physical-activity intervention, or received home-based nutrition education.
After six months, each volunteer was tested for strength, balance, gait speed and cardiovascular endurance. The researchers concluded that minimally supervised exercise is safe and can improve functional performance in elderly individuals.
It is important seniors understand, becoming sedimentary does not have to be a part of getting older. People should remain physically active throughout their lifetime. Seniors that remain active report having a better mental health-related quality of life, have fewer difficulties with daily activities, experience less pain, have higher energy levels and sleep better.
Physical activity seems to be the key to looking better, feeling better and an overall better quality of health and life.
“Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." –Henry David Thoreau-
