Popular Science Online | Immune cells can also become "exhausted", how can we make them "revive"?

Storing immune cells can prepare a powerful immune army for ourselves, helping us improve our immunity and even fight against disease invasion.

Immune cells are the body's defense force and the strongest "worker" of the body. They work 365 days a year to help the body resist harmful bacteria from the outside world, such as bacteria and viral infections, and eliminate aging, gene mutations and diseased cells caused by the body at any time. However, even the strongest warriors will get tired one day, and even the bravest legions will become weak one day, and the immune cells in our bodies are no exception.

As immune cells age and the immune system function declines, the incidence of related chronic infectious diseases, bacterial and viral diseases, autoimmune diseases and other diseases will increase.

01 Why do immune cells weaken? Natural laws

People age, and immune cells are no exception. They will age along with the aging of the body. It can be said that time is the powerful "opponent" of immune cells!

In 2019, a research team from Martin Luther University and University of Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany discovered that after humans reach the age of 40, the immune cells in the body begin to age significantly.

▲The blue line is the trend of T cell diversity in healthy people

As we age, the number of cell types in our body decreases. As we age, the diversity of T cells also decreases, and after the age of 40, there is a clear downward trend.

The damage of bad living habits to immune cells

We often say that staying up late, smoking, drinking, overeating, and lack of exercise are bad for the body, but what are the specific bad effects on the body? These are reflected in the immune cells:

1. Obesity: Fat may make immune cells "starved"

On December 9, 2020, researchers from Harvard Medical School and other institutions published a research paper in the international top academic journal Cell [2], which showed that obesity reduces the number and anti-tumor activity of CD8+T cells, an important immune cell in tumors . This is because cancer cells reprogram their metabolism in response to the increase in fat, so that they can better devour energy-rich fat molecules, deprive T cells of energy supply, and accelerate tumor growth.

Simply put, cancer cells will "change" themselves to accelerate the absorption of rich fat molecules, but deprive T cells of the energy supply for growth, which will accelerate the growth of tumors.

2. Staying up late: Staying up late may feel good for a while, but it will hurt your immune cells

In 2019, Dr. Stoyan Dimitrov and his team from the University of Tübingen in Germany discovered that during normal sleep, immune cells T cells bind best to targets that need to be eliminated , and as sleep deepens, their work efficiency becomes higher and higher, reaching the highest level of the day at 6 a.m.

However, when I stayed up all night the next day, my T cells behaved in an uncharacteristic way. They were not as efficient as they were on the day I got enough sleep. Losing just a few hours of sleep can significantly reduce the efficiency of my T cells.

This study also revealed a major harm of staying up late: it affects normal immune function. Long-term lack of sleep may lead to the collapse of the immune system.

3. Smoking: Blocking the path of immune cells

As early as 2016, the famous biological journal Cell published a study showing that smoking blocks key immune cells, slows their actions, and hinders their ability to fight infection . Because of this, smokers tend to face a greater risk of tuberculosis (TB) and their condition is more serious after infection.

02How to improve the combat effectiveness of immune cells?

Immune cells are important to our body. After the COVID-19 pandemic in the past two years, we can imagine how much attention people pay to them. However, even the strongest "workers" will get tired one day. How to improve the combat effectiveness of immune cells has become a problem of particular concern to everyone.

1. Good sleep

High-quality sleep can promote the body to produce more sleep factors, which can promote the increase of white blood cells and strengthen the liver's detoxification ability, thereby eliminating bacteria and viruses that invade the human body. Therefore, high-quality sleep can help improve the body's immunity.

2. Reduce stress

In modern society, people are generally under great pressure. Chronic stress caused by problems such as work or children's education can reduce the body's immune system's ability to fight disease . If people are under extreme stress for a long time, it will lead to reduced T lymphocyte activity, reduced macrophage activity, and weakened immune response. Therefore, when facing stress, we must learn to reduce stress by ourselves. We can reduce stress through exercise, games, singing, etc.

3. Exercise regularly

Many people stay at home after get off work, but this does not mean that physical exercise can be ignored, especially scientific physical exercise. At present, everyone can do some moderate-intensity full-body exercises, such as aerobics, yoga, floor exercises, Qigong and other indoor sports. Another benefit of physical exercise is its positive impact on human psychology. During this epidemic, some people have negative emotions such as anxiety, panic, irritability, and depression. Appropriate physical exercise can help these negative emotions be relieved.

03Store immune cells in advance

If you want to get rid of the "curse" of time, storing immune cells in advance is a very good method.

As we age, the number and activity of immune cells decrease, so it is very meaningful to store immune cells when we are healthy . This is also a new way for ordinary people to preserve the fighting power of immune cells by choice.

Storing immune cells can prepare a powerful immune army for ourselves, helping us improve our immunity and even fight against disease invasion.

Moreover, scientific research shows that we should store our immune cells as early as possible. The earlier the storage, the richer the diversity of the immune cells will be. At the same time, the activity and number of immune cells will also increase. By supplementing immune cells, we can effectively improve the response level of the body's immune system, restore normal cell growth regulation, and provide a new way to restore the body's health.

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