Why is COVID Less Severe In Children? Top 5 Factors That Protect Kids from COVID

All right, this is part two in our series of why is Covid not quite as bad as in kids as adults? This is all based on the research we've been looking at over the last four to five months. And a nice article summarized all this that will be attached below in this video. So today we're going to talk about is why is COVID 19 less severe in kids? So there's five major factors I want to talk about today and kind of dive deep in them. The first is there's less vitamin D deficiency in kids. The second is this thing called the microbiome effect, which is the bacteria that live in and on your body affecting your immune system. The third is the kids have a stronger innate immune system. Okay. The fourth is melatonin levels are higher in kids, which we'll dive into that a little bit today. And the other idea of recurrent and co infections in kids versus adults, this is important because four of these are actually modifiable and the fifth one is preventable. So again, giving you tools to actually help change your risk for getting Covid and getting severe Covid. The first one, kids have less vitamin D deficiency. Now why is that? We've already talked about how kids skin is different, how they make more vitamin D in their skin. But the biggest factor is sun exposure, outdoor exposure. One thing I did not mention before is in order to make enough vitamin D on your skin, you actually have to have a layer of sebum or fat on your skin. And if you've noticed, older people don't have as much, the skin's drier, they have less oil on their skin versus kids skin has has that more softer, smooth feel that is the sebum or the fat in their skin. And you actually need that in your skin when the UV radiation from the sun strikes your skin to actually make vitamin D. So if you bathe a lot, you use soaps to strip off the oils from your skin a lot, or you're older and don't have as much of these fats in your skin, you going to make less vitamin D when you're in the sun. The next one, which is very interesting is the microbiome effect. So what is this? This usually relates the microbiome involves all skin bacteria, viruses, fungi that are in and on your body, but usually relates to the place where 99% of these exist, which is in your GI tract. You have about 100 trillion bacteria in your GI tract, which is a huge modulator of your immune system. Now your immune system needs to be educated and so the bacteria in your GI tract, the viruses, the yeast, the parasites, et cetera, educate your immune system to ignore them. And so kids have a much more robust microbiome. It's much more diverse. And that diversity actually goes down as you age, goes down related to environmental factors. Diet is a huge one, stressors, antibiotics, chemicals, etc. And as you age that the diversity becomes less. This is important because if you with that diversity, it educates your immune System to ignore 99.999% of everything you're exposed to. So if you get exposed to an adenovirus or coronavirus, a respiratory syncytial virus or whatever virus or whatever bacteria, 99, 9% of the time, your immune system should ignore it and not get super excited, not create a static cytokine storm and move on. As you get older and lose that diversity, your body is more prone to overreact to certain viral infections. You're more prone to get pneumonia and overreact to it. The cytokine storm we're seeing with COVID 19 is just one representation of that overreaction of the immune system that's been improperly educated to ignore stuff and not overreact to it. The third thing is the innate immune system in kids is stronger than the adaptive immune system, and vice versa. The adaptive immune system is stronger than adults than the innate immune system. Okay, lots of big words, but break it down. What does this mean? Your innate immune system is your body's ability to fight off viruses and cancer. That tends to be stronger in kids, but they have a less robust adaptive immune system, that is antibodies. Your body makes antibodies. You learn, you get educated, and you learn to fight off things. Well, when you're younger, you don't have that adaptive immune system. You're developing it for your whole entire life. And so kids have a more robust innate immune system that can fight off cancers and viruses better, but they deal, they have bigger issues with bacteria, hence the Prevnar vaccine, the Hib vaccine to prevent pneumonia and meningitis in kids. Because it takes four to six to eight years for a kid to actually develop the ability to fight off these common bacteria. As you age, what happens? You have a shift. You have less T cells in your body. Your thymus, which is a source of maturation and education for your T cells, shrinks up. And when you're over 70, it's pretty much non, non existent. So what happens is now your innate immune system is not as robust, but your adaptive system is stronger. And so what happens is in kids, because their innate Immune system is stronger, they can fight off viruses better they adults. But there are some things you can actually do to help continue that education process to keep that innate immune system active. You can actually introduce things into your diet, into your environment that actually can keep that robust. And we'll talk about that in part three. The next thing is melatonin. Melatonin has ended up being a huge workhorse in treating COVID patients. If you're familiar with the Institute for Functional Medicine, their Covid guide or EVMs, their eye mask or MathPlus protocols, they have melatonin in there for prevention and treatment of COVID Why? Because melatonin is a very, very potent anti inflammatory. It's an immune modulator. Yes, it helps you sleep. Yes, it balances cortisol, which tends to be high in stress states, but it's also very potent anti inflammatory. And lo and behold, kids who have less sleeping problems, who sleep better and longer have higher melatonin levels. And older people who sleep less hours have lower melatonin levels. And last but not least are recurrent and concurrent infections. So recurrent infections, getting a rhinovirus, a runny nose, an adenovirus, sore throat and itchy eyes, or another coronavirus, not SARS CoV2. This happens to kids all the time and their recurrent infections and their concurrent infections. Low grade mono CMV is actually one pretty common that kids get exposed to young age. These ongoing and recurring infections actually help the immune system to be better primed to fight off viruses in adulthood. We don't have recurrent. You shouldn't at least recurrent viral infections and ongoing infections unless you're someone with a chronic infectious process. And so that can make it so that your innate immune system isn't quite primed and ready and ready to rock and roll, so to speak, and calm down inflammation. Well, there are some things you can do to help modulate that in adulthood older adults. So actually if you do get exposed to any virus, especially a SARS CoV2, your immune system will be able to respond to it. So in part three, we're going to go through and kind of take these ones that I've just mentioned and talk about how you can actually address those to prepare you to survive if you do get exposed to Covid and do well and have minimal symptoms if and when you do get exposed. So that will be part three. Thanks, take care and be well.