Public Health and Nutrition

Biography

Biography: Ascension Marcos

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 a 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.