Building immunity - researcher Ranjit Chandra - includes related articles on Chandra, evidence of how a multivitamin improved a person's immune system - Cover Story - Interview

Nutrition Action Healthletter, Sept, 1997 by David Schardt

Q: Should people in their 40s or 50s -- or even younger people -- take supplements to boost immunity?

A: Unfortunately, there's no good data available for people this age. But since we don't know exactly when immunity begins to decline and this decline probably begins gradually, I advise middle-aged people to start taking a good multivitamin once a week. Then they should slowly increase the frequency until they're taking it every day by their late 60s.

Q: Is any one time of day best to take a multivitamin?

A: No. For most nutrients, absorption may be best between meals, because fiber, phytate, and other things in food may cause problems with absorption. But some people feel gastric irritation unless they take supplements with meals.

Q: How else can people boost their immunity?

A: Physical activity helps. If you are in reasonably good shape and undertake moderate exercise for about half an hour, three or four times a week, you're more likely to have a stronger immune system than someone who is sedentary.

(1) Lancet 340: 1124, 1992.

(2) Blood 50: 327, 1977.

(3) J. Amer. Med. Assoc. 252: 1443, 1984.

RELATED ARTICLE: RANJIT CHANDRA

Ranjit Chandra, who is a member of Nutrition Action's Scientific Advisory Board, has twice been nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine. He is the holder of five honorary doctorates and is a visiting professor at universities on four continents.

All of which counted for little on a recent afternoon as he shuttled among the small examining rooms in the Janeway Child Health Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland, where he heads the hospital's immunology and allergy department. The young patients likely had no idea they were being treated by one of the world's foremost specialists.

For someone in perpetual motion, Chandra never seems to hurry. That morning, the 57-year-old pediatrician had already spoken at a medical conference, worked on an article for one of the two international scholarly journals he edits, and visited the World Health Organization Centre for Nutritional Immunology he heads in St. John's.

The theory he is painstakingly testing seems surprisingly simple: What a person eats affects his or her ability to resist disease. His research -- which focuses on how malnutrition in mothers leads to immune deficiencies in their children and how being undernourished lowers immune resistance in the elderly -- has already won enough trophies and citations to fill his modest office. More honors would certainly follow if Chandra and his 15-person international team succeed in their latest quest -- establishing a connection between nutrition and the HIV virus.

The son of a physician, Chandra graduated as the top high-school science student in Punjab province. As a 22-year-old medical student in India, he and a colleague discovered an ailment affecting the lungs, heart, and sinuses that still bears their names. In his early 30s he first noticed that many of the children who died after being admitted to the hospital where he worked suffered from malnourishment.