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Amazingly, bringing up a child helps to improve your immune system more than the "seasonal flu vaccine or traveler's gastroenteritis", according to scienceworldreport.

Research by teams from VIB and KU Leuven in Belgium and the Babraham Institute in the United Kingdom examined the immune systems of 670 people from 2-86 years old, in order to understand the drive behind immune system variations.

Analyzing a number of factors, such as age, gender, and weight, made the team examine whether individuals co-parented children. Such persons showed a 50 percent reduction in variation between their immune systems, as compared to others.

As they were studied for three years, the team learnt that their immune systems continued to remain stable in spite of illnesses such as gastroenteritis. It indicates the strength of our immune systems to get back into shape.

"Our research shows that we all have a stable immune landscape which is robustly maintained. What is different between individuals is what our individual immune systems look like," explained Dr Michelle Linterman, a researcher at the Babraham Institute and co-leader of the study, in a news release.

"We know that only a small part of this is due to genetics. Our study has shown that age is a major influence on what our immune landscapes look like, which is probably one of the reasons why there is a declining response to vaccination and reduced resistance to infection in older persons."