The news was already not so good when it comes to your aging immune system. We’ve seen from the Covid pandemic that older adults have been more vulnerable to the ravages of the coronavirus than younger people, and we know that, in fact, your aging immune system is less effective fighting off infection, bacteria, viruses, and cancer. Your older body is simply less efficient and slower in detecting infection and responding once it appears. As one expert makes clear, “Your age is the primary determinant of what’s going to happen to your immune system.” For previous posts on aging and the immune system, click here.

When your immune system declines or is in retreat, inflammation can take hold and it’s implicated in everything from heart disease to dementia to cancer. What can be done to help bolster your immune system as you age? Certainly, vaccinations for such maladies as Covid, flu, pneumonia, and shingles will help stimulate a more robust response than you would naturally have. As well, the healthier you age in general the healthier your immune system will remain. So, adhering to general guidelines for healthy aging (exercise, eat healthily, get sleep, don’t smoke or drink, maintain a reasonable weight) will all help sustain a better immune system. And now, we have new evidence that there’s one more factor implicated in immune system decline: it’s the stress you’ve accumulated over the course of your daily life, be it from discrimination to stressful life events to job strain to trauma. All of these sources of stress take their toll on your health generally and new research specifically implicates stress as a reason for accelerated immune system decline.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this study out of USC looked at self-reported survey results and blood samples from over 5700 participants. Acknowledging that age-related changes in the immune system already play a critical role in declining health as you age, the study authors were curious as to why adults of the same age can have significant health differences. Is there something in particular about the way some people age that contributes to accelerated immune system decline? They found that people who had higher stress scores seemed to have older-appearing immune profiles, with more worn-out white blood cells and fewer disease-fighting cells. This held true even after controlling for education, smoking, drinking, BMI, and race or ethnicity. Of course, this study is based on self-reported survey responses, and people with more stress tend to have poorer diets and exercise habits. Nonetheless, the study seems to help clarify an association between social stress and faster immune aging. Thus, as experts understand, finding ways for people to better cope with stress may be essential to help sustain and preserve immune system functioning. For more on this study and what you can do in response, read here.