Your Immune System Is Quietly Stepping Down with Age
⏱ A One-Minute Read
Colds take longer and longer to clear up, wounds heal with increasing effort, and minor ailments that used to pass in a day or two now drag on for a week. This is not your imagination.
This is the aging of your immune system—known medically as immunosenescence. It accelerates after the age of 40 and progresses year after year.
The core reasons are threefold: the thymus (responsible for training immune cells) is shrinking (leaving only about 30% of its function by age 40); existing immune cells are becoming older and slower; and the body begins to develop a lingering, low-grade chronic inflammation. The convergence of these three factors directly impacts your infection risk, recovery speed, and cancer incidence rates.
