Aaron Hartman explains why COVID hits adults harder than children. Three factors: inflammaging, a chronic low-grade inflammation that builds with age; vitamin D deficiency, more common in older people; and endothelial dysfunction, damage to blood vessel linings linked to age and conditions like diabetes and hypertension. All three are modifiable.
Chapters
All right, so big question people have been asking me. Why is Covid less severe in kids and more severe in adults? We're going to talk about that over the next three videos. But today we're going to talk about why is Covid more severe in adults. There's three major reasons that Covid is more severe in adults. The first is a concept called inflamma aging or inflammation induced aging. The second one, if you've been following us, you've heard a lot about, which is vitamin D deficiency, which is much more severe in adults. And the third is endothelial dysfunction, which we'll spend a little bit of time on. So first, inflamma aging. What is inflamma aging? Inflamma aging is simply the process of as you age, you get more inflamed. This is something we've known about for years. People as they get older are more prone to strokes, heart attacks, etc. And as you get older, that risk goes up significantly. There are certain blood markers, white cell counts, SED rates, CRPs, et cetera, that are associated with this inflammation. And that goes up as you age as well, particularly for females. As they age, their sed rate goes up. So as you become older, you're simply more inflamed. There's a lot of different factors that can lead to increased inflammation, dietary deficiencies, but just the aging itself. And the things related to aging increase inflammation. In part three, we'll talk about ways to address this. The second thing is vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency is much, much more common in the older. A lot of reasons for this. One is older people tend to not be outside as much as younger people. And the primary source for vitamin D is exposure to the sun. The second thing is the skin, the makeup of the skin, how much omega 6 fatty acids versus 3 fatty acids, the integrity of the skin, how it relates to, how it relates to, relates, resolves, responds to the sun, changes lives, you age. So you actually make less vitamin D in your skin as you age. So that's another factor. And the other one is just the diets of older people tend to be lower in vitamin D. The single biggest factor, however, is sun exposure and how it affects levels of vitamin D. The third major factor related to the severity of COVID 19 in the older adults is endothelial dysfunction. Now, what actually is this word? If you've been watching stuff, you've probably heard this word thrown around a little bit, but basically it's a dysfunction of the skin that lines all of your arteries and vessels as well as your lungs. So it's a very, very thin layer of skin. Your heart, your brain, your lungs, all these hollow organs, et cetera, have this endothelial lining. And when it gets dysfunctional, you more prone to inflammation. Interesting enough, you're also more prone to clots. There are a lot of diseases that are associated with endothelial dysfunction. Diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity. Age itself is related to endothelial dysfunction, kidney disease and smoking. Other things related to endothelial dysfunction also include living in smoky environments. If you lived in New York City, Wuhan Province, areas where there's a lot of nanoparticles, dust, dirt in the air, you're more prone to this, this, this inflammation and this endothelial dysfunction. So These are the three top things associated with severity of COVID 19 in the older individuals. There is an article attached with this video that goes more in depth into this if you want to learn about other factors. But the these are the three major factors I want to focus on because these three factors are the main ones that are also modifiable. You can affect your inflammaging or your amount of inflammation. As you age, you can change your vitamin D level and you can also change your endothelial dysfunction through different nutritional interventions, modification of comorbidities like diabetes, kidney issues, weight. And since these are the three largest and they're also modifiable, this makes them the most important. So hopefully that was helpful. We'll continue to go through this series and give you some ideas. The second we're going to talk about why Covid is not as bad in kids. The third one is going to put everything together to give you some personal strategies to improve your chance if you get Covid of surviving and making it through. That's the point of these videos. Thank you. Take care and be well.
