Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Since the beginning of mankind, man has sought ways to promote and preserve health as well as to prevent disease. Adolescence is linked to key changes in lifestyle habits and psychological functioning. Physical activity (PA), sleep time, and body composition are key factors for enhancing human health, avoiding low-grade inflammation or reducing health problems, vascular, inflammatory diseases and influencing weight management; however, as in the case of drugs, dose, intensity, frequency, duration and precautions as well as age have to be evaluated and taken into account in order to get the maximum effectiveness and success of a therapy. Sleep patterns face important changes during adolescence and can have implications for the immune system, which is regulated by the sleep–wake cycle. Indeed, in the HELENA study sleep duration of 8–8.9 h/night has been associated with a healthier immune profile in the European adolescents. In spite of the fact that inflammatory biomarkers are not usually detected until adulthood, atherosclerotic lesions may start to be developed during adolescence. Atherogenesis involves an inflammatory process that leads to plaque instability within the arterial wall, increasing blood levels of inflammatory acute-phase reactant proteins (e.g. CRP and complement factors) and cytokines (IL-6 and TNF-α), which provide useful markers of low-grade inflammation. In conclusion, we highlight that the evaluation of the interaction between lifestyle and immunological biomarkers in the adolescence is of a great interest in order to detect and tackle possible risks of developing inflammatory processes at an early stage.

Biography

Ascensión Marcos is a Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and leading the Immunonutrition Research Group at CSIC since 1987. Her research is focused on Immunonutrition: Immunomodulation properties of nutrients, bioactive compounds and functional foods; Evaluation of the nutritional status of healthy subjects (children/adolescents, pregnant women, and elderly) and patients (eating disorders, obesity, celiac disease, intolerances, drug-addiction) within 83 research projects and 473 publications. She is the President of International Society for Immunonutrition (ISIN) and Federation of Spanish Societies of Nutrition, Food and Dietetics (FESNAD) and Vice president of Federation of European Nutrition Societies (FENS) and Spanish Society of Probiotics and Prebiotics (SEPyP).

Email: amarcos@ictan.csic.es