Feb. 4, 2026
How to boost the immune system over 65
How can adults over 65 strengthen their immune system? Join Carmenn Miles and Dr. Tamika Perry on Docs in a Pod as they share practical tips, medical insights, and preventive strategies to support immune health and healthy aging.
Docs in a Pod focuses on health issues affecting adults. Clinicians and partners discuss stories, topics and tips to help you live healthier.
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Show transcript
Podcast transcript
INTRO
Welcome to Docs in a Pod presented by well. Over the next half hour, Docs in a Pod will educate you about the health and wellness of adults everywhere. Co-host Dr. Tamika Perry and Carmenn Miles will share information to improve your health and well-being. And now here are Carmenn Miles and Dr. Tamika Perry.
CARMENN MILES
Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Carmenn Miles, your co-host on the award winning Docs in a Pod podcast, brought to you today by WellMed. Each week, alongside amazing co-hosts and guests, we'll bring you a wide range of health and wellness topics, especially those that impact seniors 65 and older. Our goal weekly is to share a practical tips, expert insights, and strategies to help everyone live healthier, happier lives and to better manage some of those chronic conditions. We're excited to have you with us today. As a reminder, this podcast is available wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Keep in mind, you can always find us on the radio in several Texas cities as well as Florida. Our Docs in a Pod co-host and guest today is none other than Dr. Tamika Perry. She's no stranger to Docs in a Pod, and I refer to her as the People's Doctor. She is an associate medical director at WellMed, overseeing several large clinics in the Optum Care North Texas region. As an associate medical director, Dr. Perry supports providers at a number of clinics as they deliver quality care and a compassionate patient experience. For 11 years now, she's helped live out the WellMed mission of helping the sick become well and helping patients better understand and control their health. Dr. Perry's a proud alum of A&M University, where she earned her undergrad degree. She then went on to graduate from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she was National Health Service Care Scholar. She completed her family medicine residency at Methodist Charlton Medical Center, where she served as chief resident. Dr. Perry is also a diplomat of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. When she's not busy keeping people well, Dr. Perry is a world traveler and is packing her bags now and on her way to Zimbabwe.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yes. I am going to go on a safari and look at some lions and elephants from afar. I will not be getting out of the jeep at all.
CARMENN MILES
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yes. Oh, my.
CARMENN MILES
Well, today we're chatting about boosting our immunity, especially for those 65 and older. I really want to just hone in on facts and habits and myths. Dr. Perry, if you would be so nice to talk about boosting immunity, it would be nice, actually, if there was an instruction manual. I find myself on the vitamin aisle looking at all the selections there. IÕm looking at gummies, a gazillion supplements, I'm looking at green smoothie options, and probably not a good idea, but I grab all three hoping that something sticks. Help us.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Let's do this first. Let's define what is the immune system and what its purpose is. The immune system is really a collection of cells along, with some organs that act as your body's defense. We're talking about red blood cells, white blood cells, mast cells, collection of cells, various types of cells that recognize when something foreign has invaded your body. Then they send signals to each other to say, how are we going to attack this enemy? In addition to that, what aids the immune system in as part of it is also your gut and your skin. Your skin is the biggest part of the immune system. It's a barrier to prevent things from getting to us. Now, I always tell my patients, think of the cells in immune systems as little soldiers and the lymph nodes in the lymph system in your body as military bases, and think of your body as a globe. The soldiers recognize when something is getting ready to attack us. They correlate with the base, which are the lymph nodes. They tell each other what they what to do, and they go back into the world, and they release antibodies, they release peptides, they cause inflammation. They do things to try to push the offending agent out. So, what we're really asking is how can we make our own whole internal military defense stronger? How can because that's what system really is. It's not quite as you think. Some of it is really kind of in a common sense. We'll start with nutrition. Fresh fruits and vegetables provide a lot of those vitamins that you're looking at. Whole fresh fruits. I'm not talking about canned or processed. I'm talking about like an apple off the tree. Fresh greens, spinach, kale, broccoli. These type things contain the zinc, the vitamin C, the vitamin D that you're trying to look for in that commercial product. If you don't think you have a great diet, then at that point we might want to think about those commercial products.
CARMENN MILES
Nutrient dense foods are what we need to lean into. Is that an accurate statement?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yes.
CARMENN MILES
Okay, we're off to a great start. Let's just take a moment to welcome those who may have just joined us. You're listening to the award winning Docs in a Pod by WellMed. I'm Carmenn Miles alongside Dr. Tamika Perry, our co-host and guest today, and we're talking about how adults 65 and older can support immune health in simple, realistic ways. There's no miracle cure. There are no gimmicks to follow. Just smart habits that help your body do what it does best. Dr. Perry, if immunity really works the way social media says it does, a green juice will make us invincible, right? And garlic would replace doctors, and you'd be free to travel the world all day, every day. But that's not the truth, right?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
I hope garlic doesn't replace me, but it can help. We're talking about nutrient dense foods. We're looking for these vitamins like vitamin C that helps boost your immune system. Vitamin D helps those particular cells in the immune system do their job better. Zinc helps to stop viral replication. So, if you've contacted a virus and you take zinc within the first 24 to 48 hours, you may be able to cut their life cycle short and shorten your actual illness itself. So, a good healthy diet. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Colorful. If you have to drive around the building and they hand you your food out of a window in a bag, itÕs probably not for you. I'm just saying. Once again, you to pick it off the tree, pick it up off the ground, wash it off and eat it.
CARMENN MILES
The convenience is not necessarily our friend. The convenience of driving through and grabbing that sack. It's not our friend.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
No, it's not our friend. That convenience in that case is not our friend. Because what's going to happen later on is you're going to end up sick and in the hospital, and that's not our friend either. So, let's pick our battles here. What else makes our body healthy? What else boost our immune system? Regular physical activity and maintaining lean body muscle mass. This allows our immune system to work better. It's recommended for every person, as per the World Health Organization, to get 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a week intertwined with weight training. We just spoke about on a previous show, if you're a person who has arthritic conditions, meaning your friend Arthur being arthritis, lives in your low back, lives in your shoulders, and you have trouble with certain exercises, you can literally sit in your chair while your favorite program is on, lift your arms up, put them back in a fly motion, raise them up over your head. You can lift your legs at the level of the hip. You can lift your legs at the level of the knee. You can flex your foot backwards and forwards during the commercial of the show. If you do that consistently for 2 to 3 weeks, guess what? Instead of resting during a show and working out during the commercials, now you can flip it around. You can work out during the show and rest during the commercials. So, this is for people who have arthritic complaints. If you have access to a swimming pool and you have arthritic complaints, this will greatly boost your immune system. This cardiovascular exercise intertwined with weight training. More lean body muscle mass, the better you heal.
CARMENN MILES
You're saying that the nutrient dense food is really the best thing that we can do to support our immune system, right? You talked about supplements that can help as a support system to that. You're now working in the exercise element. Tell me the correlation between building that muscle mass and the immune system.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Your muscle mass itself supports the immune system, but more importantly when we become ill, our body uses more metabolic energy because our music is trying to fight it. Your muscles help to support that metabolism. That's why when our seniors start to get older and naturally during the normal process of aging, our appetite goes down. We feel fuller earlier. We don't feel like eating. As we get older, we'll see people lose lean body muscle mass, but we always encourage weight training exercise and foods that are dense in nutrients. We encourage you to keep your weight on in a healthy manner. We don't want something called protein calorie malnutrition, because that is the exact opposite of conducive healing and prevention of disease.
CARMENN MILES
We talked about exercise. Are there other things that could help us? I know there's a laundry list you're going to share with us and help us cut through the jargon. What are some other things? What about sleep? Does it help us with immune immunity?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
My favorite activities sleep.
CARMENN MILES
Get some rest.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Your body is a metabolic machine, but that machine needs to rest at times so it can relax and reset, and that includes sleep. 7 to 8 hours of sleep every single night is what our body requires for this immune system to be up and running. Me personally, I have to tell myself, go to bed at this time Tamika, because it's not, I'll find myself trying to end my day, finish notes, call my daughter on the phone, etcetera, etcetera. But at some point, you have to shut it down like my mother says. 7 to 8 hours of sleep every single night.
CARMENN MILES
I have a friend who sleeps maybe 3 to 4 hours a night, and she will just run herself radish and say, I never get sick. But at some point, her body shuts down and says, yeah, we can no longer go on without quality rest. We're going to take just a quick break but stay right here with us as Dr. Tamika Perry shuts down the myths about quick fixes to our immune system right here on Docs in a Pod presented by WellMed.
AD
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CARMENN MILES
We're back Docs in a Pod by WellMed. I'm Carmenn Miles alongside co-host Dr. Tamika Perry. She's also our guest today and we're discussing the best ways to support our immune system.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yep. Let me tell you, we've talked about food, we've talked about exercise, we've talked about sleep. But another entity that really takes a toll on our bodies is stress. Stress will do a plethora of not so great things for our body as well as not allow us to heal properly. It doesnÕt allow that immune system to kick in gear and stress will increase inflammatory markers in your body, which is not conducive to good health. There are certain areas in the world called blue zones in which people live to 100 plus, and one of the commonalities in these blue zones is mindfulness and fellowship, meaning that individuals in these areas will coalesce together. They have fellowship amongst each other. They're mindful about what's going on around them. This in essence reduces stress. We live in a country that is high stress. What are they say in Jamaica? No worries. Don't worry.
CARMENN MILES
Don't worry, be happy.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Don't worry, be happy. We want to be as stress free as possible and to employ strategies to manage our stress. Do we have a good support system? Do we go see our PCP on a regular basis? Do we have an activity outside of work and family that just belongs to us? Are you in a dance class? Do you like to golf? How can we manage stress so we stay healthy?
CARMENN MILES
Absolutely.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Stress management is equally as important as everything else that we'll talk about to help your immune system. From a physiologic scientific standpoint, are you up to date on your vaccinations? Let's talk about how vaccinations work with the immune system. When you get vaccinated, we actually give you an inactive, weakened version of the disease state. You say, why would you give me polio? Why would you give me COVID? Why would you give me a part of any of this? We give you a weakened, inactivate portion. Your immune system recognizes those proteins, and it makes these little peptides called antibodies. The antibodies are built up in your system. So, when you come in contact with the real COVID, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza. I name these because this is what we get vaccinated against. Tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough. When you come in contact with the real one, it already recognizes it. It's made of defenses against it. It attacks it and you don't get sick. If you do get sick, it's a watered down version of the sick, and your outcomes are much, much better then had you not had the vaccination vaccine.
CARMENN MILES
Why so many people anti-vaccine, Dr. Perry?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
I can't speak for the anti-vaccine people, but from what I hear, it's a lot of misconceptions about what they think the vaccine is going to do to them adversely. But let me tell you this, me as a clinician, me as a physician, I take all of my vaccines. So, if they're tricking us, they've been tricking me, too.
CARMENN MILES
Follow your doctor's lead is what I say. Follow your doctor's lead. Going back to some of the supplements sometimes we want to support our immunity. Are there products out there that you would recommend? You talked about zinc a little bit, but give us an idea of what we should be looking for because some of it is just gimmicks, right? Some of it's just a money grab for consumers, and it's hard to decipher what we should look for and how we should supplement our immune system and help boost our immunity.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
If you really feel like you have to take something, I would go with vitamin D. If you're close to an illness, vitamin C. If you're trying to prevent or shorten that illness, zinc. Honestly, those are the three that I would go with. Everything else, try your best to get in your diet. That's going to be the best way to get it in. You say, why those in particular? Because vitamin C and vitamin D help the immune system fight, which you need to fight better. Zinc stops the viral replication. You'll see products over the counter, and it says, this will shorten or stop your cold. That would be zinc. The other one said this is going to help boost your immune system and help the cells of your immune system. That's vitamin C and vitamin D. By the way, Airborne has some of these products in them. So, like, you take those before you get on an airplane if you're trying to prevent this. It has some of those components in there. You'll see these products with a bunch of different vitamins in them and a large capacity. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them, I'm saying you might not necessarily need them. Most vitamins except vitamins A, D, E and K are water soluble. What that means is that once your body has reach, once your cup is full of vitamins, the rest just kind of runneth over means you're going to pee them out. You're going to urinate them out. So, if you're taking these multivitamins and you're like, why does my urine look like Mountain Dew? It is a bright yellow color. Because you're urinating out your money because you've gotten enough of what you need and the rest is going out of your system. So, if you ask again, those would be the three that I recommend.
CARMENN MILES
What about the gummy craze? Are gummies equivalent to some of the supplements and some of the pills?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
It's just a delivery system. It's just how you deliver it. The way the vitamins are formulated, they're very large and they have some fillers in it to bind them together. So, people become nauseous when they take large vitamins like that. It's just a delivery system. Do I want to do a liquid or a tablet? Do I want to do a gummy or a capsule? It is simply which delivery system does your body prefer? One of the things that we didn't talk about is extracurricular activities that we may do that is not in the best interest of our immune system. One of those extracurricular activities includes smoking. Like we talked about another guest on another show, I don't understand why anybody in this day and age smokes. If you smoke, you're impairing your pulmonary system. Any time there is loss of the integrity to your pulmonary system, like you have injured your lungs, even if it's for a temporary period of time, you're going to stay sick longer. It's not just smoking cigarettes. ItÕs the smoke from marijuana, the smoke from vaping, the smoke from pipes, the smoke from hookahs all impair your pulmonary system. So, when you get COVID, you're going to have it longer. When you get a cold, you're going to have it longer, you're going to have it worse and it's going to linger. So, we should just avoid smoking like the plague. I'm not sure why in this day and age anybody starts smoking. We've seen all the commercials and if we're going to believe any quote unquote propaganda, believe that. Why are we still smoking? No smoking. We try to cut back. If you are a smoker, I do realize that it's extremely hard to quit smoking. But don't start. If you have started, work towards quitting. Definitely cut back. The other thing is, and y'all, please don't fire me for saying this, but let me try alcohol intake. That, too, impairs liver function and impairs immune function. Limit your alcohol intake. I'm not trying to be a hypocrite because I'm a girl who enjoys a good margarita. However, it is not my drink for every single meal. Water is my drink for almost every single meal. That's what's going to improve your immune system, which gets me into my next recommendation. Stay well hydrated. Water is your friend. Our body is made up of water. The earth is made up of water. Water is your friend. It helps almost every organ in your body. Of course, always consult your physician first if you have a water restriction and certain diagnosis like congestive heart failure. But by far, water is your friend.
CARMENN MILES
I have got to figure out how to consume more water.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
I'm not the best water drink in the world, but I found it easier if I do it in small chunks. Instead of having the 16 or 20 ounce bottle of water, I have these little eight ounce bottles all over my house and all over my office because it's easier for me to get that in. How do you know if your body's got enough water? Well, there's all kinds of fancy scientific equations you can do, but the quick and dirty of it is, is that your urine should be almost clear, just faintly yellow, with virtually no odor. If it's anything darker than that or malodorous, or you can smell the urine, you haven't drunk enough water. It's too concentrated. You're working towards dehydration. However, you need to get your water in, get it in.
CARMENN MILES
Going back to the margaritas and the wine, I like a nice glass of wine. When I go to a new doctor, they always ask, do you drink alcohol? The answer is yes, and they say once a week, twice a week, five times a week. What's okay?
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Please, once again do not fire me.
CARMENN MILES
We will not. Tell us, Dr. Perry.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
It used to be less than eight ounces of red wine a day was heart healthy because it kept your blood thin to a certain degree. Kind of like aspirin, right? But however, in the last few years, the World Health Organization has said that no amount of alcohol is in your best interests. So, take that with what you will. What I'm saying is, if you're celebrating a birthday or an anniversary, it's probably okay if you have a little bit, but there's nothing that you want to consume on a consistent and regular basis.
CARMENN MILES
Got it.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
So, healthy diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, stay up to date on vaccines and avoid copious amounts of extracurricular activities like alcohol and smoking.
CARMENN MILES
Very good. We got it. Tell me this, we're focused on adults 65 years of age and older, does your immune system change over time? I'm curious about that.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
When you're a little baby, it's not quite developed and it reaches its peak. Then as we start to get older, it's not quite as strong. But everything we talked about today promotes it staying as strong and as healthy as possible.
CARMENN MILES
Very good. Well, I'm so glad to get all this great information, and I'm going to practice what you have preached to us today. Here's what I'm taking away. First and foremost, be skeptical of immune boosting marketing claims. A lot of claims are simply consumer money grabs. We've got the goods, right? We just need to make sure we're feeding our immune system in the proper way and taking care of our immune system. Try to stick with a whole food diet. Move our bodies, even if it's just for a few minutes each day. Prioritize rest and stay up to date on vaccines and minimize that stress. We need to minimize stress. So, all in all, immunity is not based upon products. It greatly depending on our patterns when it comes to our diet, sleep, movement and minimizing stress.
DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Correct.
CARMENN MILES
We are out of time today. Thank you so much, Dr. Perry, for all the great nuggets of information. You are listening to Docs in a Pod, a WellMed podcast. You can listen to Docs in a Pod wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget, you can also catch us on the radio in several Texas cities as well as Florida. Thank you for the great conversation, Dr. Perry, and we will catch our listeners on the next episode.
OUTRO
Executive producer for Docs in a Pod is Dan Calderon. The producer is Cheriese Pendleton. Thank you for listening to Docs in a Pod presented by WellMed. Be sure and listen next week to Docs in a Pod presented by WellMed.
DISCLAIMER
This transcript is generated using a podcast editing tool; there may be small differences between this transcript and the recorded audio content.
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