Maintaining Healthspan with Longevity: How Boosting Our Immune System Can Help Keep Our Minds Sharp

As we age, our bodies and minds go through many changes. The effects of aging on our healthspan and longevity are of particular interest to individuals with a mindset of proactive health rather than reactive treatments after a disease occurs. A recent study published in the journal Neuron (Basurco et al., 2025) sheds new light on how our immune system plays a crucial role in keeping our brains healthy.

The study explores the difference between chronological aging (the passage of time) and immunological aging (how our immune system changes over time). They propose that by rejuvenating our immune system, we might be able to slow down or even prevent cognitive decline, which is the gradual loss of brain function that often comes with age.

As we get older, our immune system becomes less effective at protecting our bodies from diseases and infections. This weakened immune response can also affect our brain health. By boosting our immune system, we might be able to improve our brain function and reduce the risk of cognitive decline.

When the immune system is rejuvenated, this can help prevent cognitive decline. This seems natural to assume but is actually not as obvious as it might appear when we take the blood-brain barrier into account. Some scientists in the past thought that the immune system has little effect on the central nervous system. The brain does not have a traditional lymphatic system which is used in much of the rest of the body to develop and transport immune cells and remove toxins. The brain also has a blood brain barrier which keeps many other cell types and substances from the rest of the body out. The Neuron article reviews the advances in recent decades and discusses how we now better understand how the immune system plays a critical role in brain health and cognitive function.

Brain health is dependent on immune fitness, and our immune fitness is dependent on a variety of factors such as age, exercise, genes, environmental factors such as diet and toxin exposure, as well as past experience. Regarding the blood brain barrier, recent research has revealed that this barrier is not as impenetrable as we once thought. Important cells and factors do cross the barrier, and we have even discovered skull microchannels that allow for communication between the immune system and the brain.

With an aging immune system, inflammation increases, resulting in “inflammaging”. Plasma levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-? and interleukin-6 increase and have been associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The blood-brain barrier also becomes leakier with age and allows these pro-inflammatory factors to enter the brain.

The cells of the immune system also become less functional as more cells become senescent with age. When a cell becomes senescent, it is no longer able to divide and make new cells. Some people refer to these cells as “zombie” cells because they not only cease to divide but also don’t function properly and even secrete harmful factors and inflammatory cytokines, leading to chronic inflammation. Specific immune cells that do reside in the brain known as microglia are responsible for clearing out plaques and waste that accumulate in the brain. These microglial cells also become senescent and their presence correlates with cognitive decline and neuroinflammation. Strategies to eliminate senescent cells in animal models have demonstrated improvements in brain function and Alzheimer’s disease models.

Fortunately, there are things we can do to rejuvenate our immune system to help keep our critical organ, our brain, in tip-top shape. Lifestyle factors, such as diet, exercise, stress management, and sleep help in maintaining a healthy immune system. By adopting healthy habits, we can support our immune system and, in turn, support our brain health. Fewer calories have also resulted in improved benefits in several studies. Other strategies are more novel, such as senolytic drugs to eliminate senescent cells or immunotherapies. Newer immunotherapies are in development and testing.

In simpler terms, keeping our immune system strong and healthy can help us maintain our mental sharpness as we age. This could be particularly important for preventing conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Here at the Maharaj Institute, we offer several services to keep the immune system in great shape. The first service we offer is an immune panel. It is hard to evaluate something that you don’t measure. We offer an immune panel that measures the levels of the various immune types in your body as well as inflammatory cytokines. We also provide immune stimulation treatments to boost the immune system if we find it is in decline. Our stem cell banking services allow individuals to bank their own immune stem cells when they are young so that they can re-infuse these cells when they are older. With this treatment, the individual’s cells are a complete immunological match so there is no risk of graft-versus-host-disease or immunological rejection as can occur with transplants from other donors at hospitals. Finally, we are also engaged in cutting edge research with our clinical trial to test the effects of stem cell enriched plasma from young donors transferred into older patients to ameliorate frailty and the immune dysfunction of aging.

In conclusion, we offer a promising new perspective on aging and brain health. By keeping our mindset on a healthy immune system, we can find new ways to age gracefully with healthspan as our longevity goal and we can keep our minds sharp for longer.

Please call Dr. Maharaj at 561-752-5522. https://maharajinstitute.com/ to see how he and his team can help you measure and maintain your healthy immune system as well as to test and measure your inflammation. These are non-invasive tests that will provide a clear picture of where your immune health lies, and should it reflect abnormalities, we have the resources to help correct them. We look forward to hearing from you at the Maharaj Institute in Boynton Beach, Florida at 561-752-5522 or info@bmscti.org. Visit us at https://maharajinstitute.com

Reference

Basurco, L., Abellanas, M. A., Purnapatre, M., Antonello, P., & Schwartz, M. (2025). Chronological versus immunological aging: Immune rejuvenation to arrest cognitive decline. Neuron, 113(1), 140–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.12.004