back to indexUsing Your Nervous System to Enhance Your Immune System | Huberman Lab Podcast #44
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, we are discussing the immune system,
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and we are also discussing the nervous system,
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which is the brain, spinal cord,
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and the connections of the brain and spinal cord
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with all the organs of the body.
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We are also going to discuss how the nervous system
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can be used to activate and control the immune system.
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Now, about 10, 20 years ago,
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if somebody said that the mind
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could control the immune system,
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it'd probably get laughed out of most academic conferences,
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and certainly the work wouldn't be published
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in quality journals.
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But nowadays, there are dozens, if not hundreds,
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of quality peer-reviewed studies
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on how the mind and how the nervous system
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can control activation of the immune system.
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This is a wonderful growing body of research.
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And just to give you a hint
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of where we are headed with this,
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just this last week,
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there was a paper published in Nature,
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which is the apex journal for scientific publishing,
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premier journal, extremely stringent.
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A paper published in Nature from Chufu Ma's lab
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at Harvard Medical School
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explored how acupuncture can reduce inflammation in the body
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and I will describe this study in a bit more detail later,
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but what they discovered was that by stimulating the body
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in particular ways at particular sites on the body,
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they were able to liberate certain cells and molecules
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that enhance the function of the immune system
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and potentially can be used
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to combat different types of infection.
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And just to give you another little hint,
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they found that a particular type of organ tissue
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called fascia, some of you may have heard of fascia,
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fascia surrounds our muscles,
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just to look at it,
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you might think it's a kind of useless tissue,
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it's sort of like a dense bag
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in which the muscles are contained.
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Well, it turns out that those dense bags
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are much smarter than we thought,
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they don't have a mind of their own,
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but by stimulating the fascia
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in a particular location on the body,
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there's a pathway leading out of that fascia
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directly to an organ called the adrenal medulla,
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I'll explain what all this means,
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that could liberate particular chemicals
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that had a potent anti-inflammatory effect.
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So what we're basically saying
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is that the nervous system acts as a set of highways
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between the different tissues of your body,
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calling into action the immune system,
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liberating particular molecules
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that can reduce inflammation and lead to faster healing.
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And I will explain how all of that works
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as well as some other non-acupuncture methods
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for activating and enhancing
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the function of the immune system.
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So today we're going to be talking
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all about healing with the mind
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in a completely non-mystical, non-abstract sense.
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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
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that this podcast is separate
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from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools
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to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Roca.
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Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses
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that are absolute superb quality.
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I've spent a lifetime working on the visual system.
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And I can tell you that one of the major issues
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our visual system has to contend with
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is how to see things clearly in bright environments
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or dimmer environments, et cetera.
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Roca clearly understands the science of the visual system
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because one thing that's wonderful about their sunglasses
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is that you can be in a very bright environment
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and then walk into a shadowed environment
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and you don't even notice the transition.
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Everything is still seen with crystal clarity.
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Their eyeglasses as well allow you to see things
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regardless of how bright or dim internal lighting is.
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I wear readers at night.
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I wear sunglasses during the day.
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And Roca eyeglasses and sunglasses are particularly nice
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because they're very lightweight.
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I often forget that they're even on my face.
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They also don't slip off if you get sweaty.
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They were actually designed to be used
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while running or cycling.
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And so I can use them while exercising.
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They also have a great aesthetic.
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So you can go from exercising to dinner or to work
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without having to change from one set of glasses
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If you'd like to try Roca glasses,
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you can go to roca.com.
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That's R-O-K-A.com and enter the code Huberman
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to save 20% off your first order.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012.
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And so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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The reason I started taking Athletic Greens
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and the reason I still take Athletic Greens
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once or twice per day is because it allows me
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It's got the vitamins and minerals
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And probiotics, we now know,
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And a healthy gut microbiome, we know,
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I usually add some lemon or lime juice.
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It tastes delicious.
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I like it very much,
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and I'll drink it once early in the day,
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and once again later in the afternoon.
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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you can claim a special offer.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Inside Tracker.
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I've long been a fan of getting regular blood work done
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for the simple reason that many of the things
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There's just simply no other body surface marker
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We really need numbers on those things
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Okay, let's talk about the immune system
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and the nervous system and how the two interact
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and how you can control your immune system
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to serve you better.
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We are going to talk a lot of mechanistic science,
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a little bit of detail.
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You learned some new language around the immune system,
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names of the different cell types and so forth,
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but I promise to make it all very clear
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regardless of your background.
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We are also going to discuss a lot of tools.
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And I think many of you are probably here
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because you want to know what you can do
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in order to boost or enhance the function
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of your immune system.
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That's a very reasonable question to ask.
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I want to begin by just acknowledging that
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if one were to put that question into the internet,
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you would get back a lot of answers.
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And there is now a sort of generic form of that answer
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that deserves our respect,
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but is not going to be the topic of conversation today.
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I just want to tip my hat to it, however,
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and list off a few of the things that we know
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set us up to be healthier than we would be
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if we didn't do these things.
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So the first of course,
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is the foundation of all mental and physical health,
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which is to get adequate sleep, meaning enough sleep,
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whatever it is for you that you require to get deep sleep.
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So it's got to be of high quality
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and to time that sleep correctly,
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meaning you can't sleep during the day one day
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and at night the next day
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and expect your system to function well.
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Talked a lot about that before on this podcast,
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you need a relatively consistent sleep schedule
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most of the time, about 80% of the time,
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or even better would be 90% of the time.
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But the realities of life make it that
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we can't always go to bed at the same time
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and wake up at the exact same time, okay?
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We do need sunshine.
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Why do we need sunshine?
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Because it sets our rhythm into a regular state
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where the genes in all of our cells
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can be expressed at the correct times.
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We're sort of a factory of cells, if you will,
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and that factory can only run properly
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if it knows when certain things should be active
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and when certain cells should not be active.
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And the best way to coordinate all of those activities
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of all the cells is to get sunshine in your eyes
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in the morning and again in the evening
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and not to get too much bright light in your eyes
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in the middle of the night.
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That's just foundational.
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And then any lists that you'll find
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on any number of websites on the internet would say,
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okay, get good sleep, get sun, get exercise,
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how much exercise?
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We should all be getting 150 to 180 minutes
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of zone two cardio.
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That's cardiovascular exercise
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where we can just barely hold a conversation
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or maybe not per week.
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We should be eating well.
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We're always told we have to get good nutrition.
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What good nutrition means to you is going to be different
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than what it means to somebody else.
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But we acknowledge that food intake
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and quality of food in particular,
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avoiding processed foods, that's going to be important.
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Social connection is important.
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Hydration is important.
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You're starting to get the picture.
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We can take all that, acknowledge it as useful
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and foundational for mental and physical health.
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But of course, there are many people who still struggle
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with getting ill too often or with not being able to heal
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from physical injuries and wounds
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or from various bacterial and viral infections
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quickly enough or deal with chronic disease.
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And so today is really about how you can take all
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of that information, acknowledge it and follow it.
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But in addition to that, there are things that you can do
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to leverage your nervous system in order
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to enhance the function of your immune system
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in very robust ways.
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So that's where I'd like to shift the conversation to.
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The first topic we have to attack is the question
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of what is the immune system and how does it work?
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I think many of you have heard of antibodies
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or killer cells or the various organs of the body
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that are involved in the immune system like the bone marrow,
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the spleen, the thymus and the lymph nodes.
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I'd like to just take a moment
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and do a sort of brief immune system 101.
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Really simple, cover the basic elements of the immune system
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so that everyone listening or watching this
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can get a clear sense of how the immune system functions
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and what its basic parts are.
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For some of you, this might be too basic.
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It might be a little bit of background
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that you already know.
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I think for most of you, this information will be new.
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And I promise you, you don't need a biology
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or medicine background in order to understand this.
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It's actually really simple
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because it is truly elegant in design.
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You have three main layers of defense for your health.
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These are the three things that are constantly at work
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to protect you from invasion and illness,
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from bacteria, from viruses and from parasites.
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And the first of those three is a physical barrier
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that we call your skin.
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And that might seem kind of obvious,
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but everything about you is contained in this compartment
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that is boundaried by your skin.
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And your skin is a very important aspect
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of your immune system.
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If you've ever had a cut,
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you essentially have a breach of the boundary
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that is your immune system.
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And you would notice a number of things would happen.
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You might get some swelling around that cut.
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You might get a scab.
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Likely you would get a scab over time.
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If it got dirty, there were some bacteria that got in there.
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You might see some accumulation of white blood cells,
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what's called pus.
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I know it's kind of gross, but that's what that is.
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It might take on a yellow tint
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because of the accumulation of some dead cells there.
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But basically your skin is the primary barrier
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through which you keep things from the outside
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that could harm you from getting to the inside.
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Now, still in category one,
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your body and your external surface,
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you have openings to that surface, right?
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You're not just a round or a body shaped,
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completely covered up with skin, you have openings.
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What are those openings?
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Well, let's start at the top and work our way down.
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A primary site of potential infection are your eyes.
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You have your ears, you have your nostrils,
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you have your mouth, okay?
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Those are going to be the primary sites
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by which things can get into your system.
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And you need to put things into your system.
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You need to drink and eat
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and you need to get light into your system.
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That's why you have those openings.
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But bad things, meaning things that can harm you,
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can get into those systems.
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And then of course, along the back of your throat,
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all the way down to your stomach and your digestive system
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and through your intestines and out your rectum,
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you have a tube that you are basically a series of tubes.
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I've said that before in this podcast,
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and this is one such tube by which you extract nutrients
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from the outside environment.
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But all along that tube,
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including your nose and your mouth, it's lined with mucus.
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And while mucus might seem kind of gross to some of you,
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the more you learn about mucus,
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the more you realize that mucus is really, really cool
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because mucus essentially acts as a filter,
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as a trap for bacteria and viruses.
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And it has certain ways of scrubbing or killing
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those bacteria and viruses.
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Now, the mucus is constantly being turned over.
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As we'll talk about later,
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the chemistry of that mucus is really important
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in order to make sure that certain things
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don't make it into your system
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and other things are allowed to move through your system
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and you can extract nutrients from them.
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So the reason I'm talking about this first category
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of a barrier for immune system in such detail
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is I'd like you to envision yourself as a human, of course,
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but as a human that is a clear entity from everything else,
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and you have to bring in the right things
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and you have to keep out the wrong things or kill them.
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Now, inevitably, bacteria, viruses,
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and parasitic infections are going to make their way
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But whether or not they are killed off
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or whether or not they take over and cause us harm
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is going to be determined by layers two and three.
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So layers two and three are the so-called
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innate immune system and the adaptive immune system.
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So the innate immune system
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is what I would call the second layer of defense.
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So whether or not it's bacteria, virus, or parasite,
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what happens when you have something enter your body,
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maybe you swallowed it, maybe it got in through your eyes,
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maybe you shook somebody's hand
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who is carrying a particular kind of illness,
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and then you wiped your eyes.
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And I've talked about on this podcast before,
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very soon after we meet another person,
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usually within 30 seconds, believe it or not,
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most people wipe that person's chemicals
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somewhere on their face or on their body surface.
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This has been demonstrated over and over again.
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If you want to learn more about that,
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we did an episode all about chemical signaling
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where you can learn about it.
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I know it sounds weird and you might say,
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I don't do that, but indeed you do most of the time.
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Most everybody does.
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Okay, so this innate immune system is this rapid response.
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When something enters our system
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and our body doesn't recognize it,
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it's not food, it's not clean air,
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it's something that's either a bacteria, virus, or parasite.
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And the innate immune system involves the release
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of particular cells that are waiting dormant,
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ready to attack whatever this invader is.
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And some of these cell types you've heard of before,
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the most typical one are the so-called white blood cells.
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So the white blood cells will actively go to the site
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of invasion and will start to encapsulate
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or try and surround that given invader.
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The other names of these different cell types
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are things like neutrophils, macrophages,
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natural killer cells,
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just a few of the many types of immune cells.
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So there's kind of like an ambulance system,
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but rather than go and try and heal something
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like a paramedic would,
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they go there and they try and surround and kill
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whatever this invader is.
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They work in concert with two other assistants.
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And those assistants are called the complement proteins.
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Complement proteins exist in the blood.
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And what they do is they travel to sites
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where there's an invasion and they mark certain things
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for being engulfed and eaten.
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So they sort of put an eat me tag on it.
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They basically put a chemical tag onto invaders
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that then allows those white blood cells,
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neutrophils, macrophages, and natural killer cells
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to say, ah, I need to basically wrap,
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you'll kill this thing and then wrap it in a body bag
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and send it off, kill that thing,
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wrap it in a body bag and send it off.
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And I'm using the analogy of the body bag,
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but in a sense it is one, it's the right one rather,
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because the cells that come in and kill things,
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the way they do that is actually to engulf
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the invading bacteria virus or parasite.
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So they actually surround it.
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And when you see pus or you see infection
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in maybe a cut on the skin or something like that,
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or even in an ingrown hair that gets some bacteria in it,
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that pus and that the white part,
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I know it's kind of gross to talk about,
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but those are the white blood cells.
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And those are the dead, oftentimes it's dead cells,
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and that's the dead invader sitting there.
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So it's trying to create an isolated compartment
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because it wants to keep it in that part of the body.
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So you've got the innate immune system.
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The compliment comes through blood
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and helps it by tagging certain things
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with an eat me signal.
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And then there are the cells that are either damaged
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from the injury or from the parasite
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or are suffering because of the bacteria
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or the virus itself.
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And the cells of your body will also release
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an alarm signal, which is not an eat me signal,
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but a help me signal.
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And those help me signals come in the form
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what we call cytokines.
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And the cytokines are things like interleukin-1,
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interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor alpha.
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You may have heard of these things
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if you are at all curious about
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or been learning about the health space,
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online health space, especially in the last few years,
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inflammation is all the buzzword now.
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Everyone's talking about inflammation,
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inflammation, inflammation.
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What do we mean when we say inflammation?
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Well, inflammation is a physical response,
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but it's also a chemical response.
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And many times the markers of inflammation
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that are measured in people or an animal model,
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excuse me, where this research is done
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are things like interleukin-1, interleukin-6,
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tumor necrosis factor alpha.
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So when those go up in the blood,
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it's a sign that somewhere there's a cell
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that's saying, help me, help me,
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and it's secreting these things,
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which calls in those neutrophils, macrophages,
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natural killer cells, and white blood cells, okay?
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And it might help to remember all this
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but by just telling people that what interleukin means
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is to communicate, right?
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So the interleukin is shouting out, help me,
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the complement proteins are coming in and saying, eat this,
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and tagging the invader with an eat me signal,
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and then the killer cells and the white blood cells
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are doing the job of trying to kill off that thing.
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That's the innate immune system.
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So your skin and your mucus lining,
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plus your innate immune system
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are a beautiful two-layered set of defenses
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against various kinds of invaders and infections.
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And then there's the third type,
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which is the adaptive immune system.
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And you'll notice that leading up until now,
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I haven't said the word antibody at all,
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and that's because it is the job,
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not of the skin or the mucus or the microbiome
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or the innate immune system to produce antibodies
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that can recognize specific invaders,
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but rather it is the job of the adaptive immune system
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to create antibodies against bacteria, viruses,
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and even parasites and even physical intruders
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So the adaptive immune system has this incredible ability
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to show up at the site of invasion
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or infection or inflammation.
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It's called there by various cues,
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including the cytokines that we talked about earlier.
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And what it does is it actually attaches to
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and creates a sort of an imprint of the shape
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of whatever invader happens to be there.
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So if that particular invading bacteria or virus
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has a contour that's kind of rippled or kind of spiky
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or whatever shape it happens to have,
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it creates an imprint of that.
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And then using that imprint in concert with some other cells
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creates antibodies that are specific
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to recognize that invader
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should the body ever have that invader inside of it again.
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Now that's why it's called the adaptive immune system.
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And in many ways, it creates a memory of a prior infection
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so that these antibodies can be made anytime
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that same invader comes back again, all right?
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And so this is the basis of what we call immunity.
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This is the basis of what we call an enhanced ability
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to combat certain types of infections.
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And it's really a wonderful,
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and I mean, just, I can't even state
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how incredible this really is
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that all of our bodies have this capacity, right?
link |
We have something called leukocytes.
link |
These are essentially white blood cells.
link |
We have red blood cells and white blood cells,
link |
and they both are derived from the same type of origin cell.
link |
When you hear stem cell, a stem cell just means
link |
a cell that can become many different types of other cells.
link |
We sometimes hear about stem cells
link |
in terms of people that are getting injections of stem cells
link |
or the potential therapeutic effects of,
link |
or potential of stem cells,
link |
but we all harbor certain stem cells within us as well
link |
that can become lots of different cell types.
link |
And there's one particular type of stem cell,
link |
which is the hemopoietic stem cell,
link |
which can give rise to red blood cells and white blood cells.
link |
And in general, these reside in the marrow,
link |
at least in adults.
link |
So in our bone marrow,
link |
we have this ability to make certain cells
link |
that can go out when they are called out chemically,
link |
they're called out to sites of infection
link |
and create antibodies,
link |
and then maintain those antibodies in our system
link |
or have a memory of that particular infection
link |
so that if the infection comes back again,
link |
we can kill it off immediately.
link |
And it doesn't have to pass through these multiple stages
link |
of first the innate response, then the adaptive response,
link |
Now, there are a lot more details
link |
to the adaptive immune system,
link |
but I just want to emphasize a few points
link |
that might be relevant.
link |
First of all, the name of the antibodies that are created
link |
sometimes come in the form of IgM and IgG,
link |
things of that sort.
link |
This isn't a full deep dive immunology class,
link |
but Ig stands for immunoglobulin, okay?
link |
So the immunoglobulins are part
link |
of the adaptive immune response in creating antibodies.
link |
If you hear IgM, the IgM is the first
link |
of the adaptive immune responses,
link |
and it tends to come on earlier.
link |
So if somebody is immunopositive for IgM
link |
for a particular type of viral or bacterial invader,
link |
that means that it was a fairly recent infection.
link |
Later, one creates the adaptive immune system,
link |
I should say, creates an IgG,
link |
which is the more stable form of the specific antibody
link |
that's going to recognize a given invader.
link |
So IgG tends to come up a little bit later.
link |
So just to recap, something gets into your system
link |
through your eyes, through some hole in your skin,
link |
a cut through your mouth.
link |
Sexually transmitted diseases come in
link |
through the mucous membranes that are on the genitalia
link |
or in the genitalia.
link |
Sexually transmitted disease, airborne disease,
link |
gets into the mucus, somehow gets into the bloodstream.
link |
Then there's the innate response,
link |
which is a more general response of trying to contain
link |
and combat the infection or invader.
link |
And then the adaptive response is the one
link |
that generates the antibodies.
link |
First, the IgM response, the immunoglobulin M response,
link |
and then the immunoglobulin G response, IgG response.
link |
So how do we keep these three barriers
link |
or these three defense systems to infection tuned up?
link |
Well, leaving aside the list of things
link |
that I mentioned before
link |
that generally enhances their function,
link |
things like sleep and sunlight and good nutrition, et cetera,
link |
the sort of generic things for good health,
link |
one of the key ways we can do that
link |
is to keep that mucus lining in really good shape.
link |
And what does that mean?
link |
Well, the mucus lining needs to turn over quite often,
link |
and it needs to be the correct chemistry
link |
to be a trap for the bad stuff
link |
and for it to be permeable to the good stuff,
link |
to the nutrients that we need.
link |
And it is now very clear from hundreds,
link |
if not thousands of studies,
link |
that the best way to do that is to maintain
link |
a healthy so-called microbiome.
link |
The microbiome being these little bacterial organisms
link |
that are good for us that live all along our mucus pathways
link |
and even in our eyes.
link |
Now, just to be really clear,
link |
it's not just about the gut microbiome.
link |
We actually have a microbiome in our eyes.
link |
We have one that's specific to our mouth.
link |
We have a nasal-specific microbiome.
link |
There's one all along the gut,
link |
and the species of microbiota
link |
that live all along the digestive tract
link |
differ from the mouth to the throat
link |
to the stomach, intestines, and to the rectum.
link |
It's well-established that there are healthy microbiota
link |
that live all along that length
link |
and they differ along that length.
link |
There's also a urethral microbiota,
link |
and there's a vaginal microbiota
link |
that promotes health of that environment as well.
link |
So how is it that one can maintain the healthy microbiota
link |
and not favor growth of harmful bacteria
link |
or allow that mucus lining to become too permeable
link |
to the bad stuff that can come in from the environment?
link |
Well, as far as we know,
link |
there are three main ways to do that.
link |
The first two are purely structural and mechanical.
link |
It's very clear now from work,
link |
some of which was done at Stanford, but elsewhere as well,
link |
that the nasal microbiome is particularly good
link |
at scrubbing bacteria,
link |
at preventing certain types of infections.
link |
So this is a reminder that whenever possible,
link |
unless eating or speaking,
link |
you want to be nasal breathing,
link |
not breathing through your mouth.
link |
Your nose is a much better filter for viruses and bacteria
link |
than is your mouth.
link |
The mouth contains certain structural features,
link |
even organs and cell types
link |
that can protect against incoming infection,
link |
but you don't want to be a mouth breather
link |
for a variety of reasons.
link |
And there's a terrific book called Jaws, A Hidden Epidemic,
link |
which was written by my colleagues,
link |
Sandra Kahn and Paul Ehrlich at Stanford
link |
and Stanford Medicine
link |
with a forward by Jared Diamond and Robert Sapolsky.
link |
So it's really a lot of heavy hitters on that book
link |
that talks about the increase in infection
link |
that one gets when breathing through the mouth,
link |
as opposed to the nose.
link |
Now, of course, during hard exercise,
link |
one breathes through the mouth.
link |
That's not necessarily bad when one is eating or speaking.
link |
That's not necessarily bad at all.
link |
I guess it depends on what you're saying.
link |
But in general, when possible,
link |
you want to be breathing through your nose.
link |
Many people have trouble breathing through their nose
link |
because of so-called deviated septums
link |
or chronically collapsed sinuses.
link |
The best way to dilate those sinuses
link |
is actually to breathe through your nose.
link |
So it can take a little bit of time,
link |
but there is some plasticity to the sinuses.
link |
And so be a nose breather, not a mouth breather.
link |
You will combat more of the infections
link |
that you are constantly confronted with.
link |
I should mention that we are always bombarded
link |
with different types of bacteria, viruses,
link |
and parasites in our environment.
link |
And the goal, of course, is to reinforce your immune system
link |
so you can keep these things at bay and not get sick.
link |
There's actually a paper that was published in Cell Report,
link |
Cell Press Journal, excellent journal,
link |
that showed that the nasal microbiome,
link |
it has particular species of microbiota
link |
that are good at fighting off infection.
link |
There has not been a direct link
link |
between particular patterns of nasal breathing
link |
and the nasal microbiome yet,
link |
but oxygenation of that environment
link |
by breathing through your nose
link |
turns out to be quite important overall
link |
for enhancing it as a filter.
link |
So don't just think of your nose
link |
as something to smell foods and to bring in air.
link |
It's also an active filter for things that could invade you.
link |
The other way to try and keep out bad things
link |
and to avoid getting sick is the advice
link |
that your mother and certainly my mother gave me,
link |
which is to not touch your eyes
link |
after touching other people or touching other surfaces.
link |
And as I mentioned earlier,
link |
we tend to do this subconsciously.
link |
But the reason to avoid doing that
link |
is the eyes are a primary entry point
link |
for a lot of bacteria and viruses.
link |
You're constantly lubricating the surface of your eyes
link |
with the so-called lacrimal glands and tears
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
If you've ever noticed when you wake up in the morning,
link |
you have some sleep in your eyes,
link |
either the kind of crusty stuff
link |
in the corners of your eyes or on your eyelashes,
link |
that sleep, that crust are actually dead bacteria
link |
that you've successfully battled during the night.
link |
That's what that is.
link |
It's not the accumulation of some healthy tissue.
link |
It's the accumulation of your healthy mucous membranes
link |
and tears and other things
link |
that are specifically combating those bacteria.
link |
So I know that sounds a little bit gross,
link |
but that's what that is.
link |
So you're wiping away the casualties of a battle
link |
that you fought at night.
link |
So during the daytime, you don't want to introduce viruses
link |
and things to your eyes as much as possible.
link |
It is a primary site of entry.
link |
This is why people wear goggles in surgical units
link |
and things of that sort
link |
to try and avoid getting things into their eyes.
link |
Very, very important.
link |
And then the third way to keep a healthy line of defense
link |
for your entire mucus tract
link |
is to enhance the proliferation of good gut microbiota.
link |
The best way to enhance the quality of your gut microbiome
link |
and the mucus lining that serves as this protective layer
link |
all along your body is to ingest two to four servings a day
link |
of fermented foods, low sugar fermented foods.
link |
I've talked about this before a bunch of times
link |
on the podcast, but these are data
link |
from my colleague Justin Sonnenberg's lab at Stanford Med,
link |
and there I just wiped my eyes.
link |
But a paper published in the journal Cell,
link |
which is a absolutely spectacular journal,
link |
really points to the fact that when people eat
link |
fermented foods, two to four servings per day,
link |
it helps reduce the activity of certain cytokines.
link |
Now you know what those are, right?
link |
Cells make cytokines to call out, help me, help me,
link |
to reduce the amount of cytokines,
link |
the so-called inflammatome.
link |
Now that doesn't render those cells more vulnerable.
link |
The reason they saw a reduction in IL-6 and IL-1
link |
and some of these other cytokines
link |
is because when people have a healthy gut microbiome,
link |
there are fewer cells in the body being infected
link |
from outside infections and therefore less of a reason
link |
for cells to be crying out help
link |
because they are thriving, not suffering.
link |
So don't wipe your eyes, keep your hands clean.
link |
Everyone tells you that, right?
link |
But keep your hands clean, don't wipe your eyes.
link |
Be a nasal breather, not a mouth breather,
link |
unless you're speaking, exercising, or eating,
link |
and keep a healthy gut microbiome
link |
by eating two to four servings a day
link |
of quality low sugar fermented foods,
link |
things like sauerkraut, things like natto,
link |
if you can access that.
link |
I've tried it before, it's interesting.
link |
It's sort of an acquired taste.
link |
Kimchi, pickles, again, low sugar sources
link |
are going to be the sources
link |
that are going to be most effective for this.
link |
So now you're armed with three ways
link |
to enhance the function of your immune system
link |
and combat infection that is, I like to think,
link |
separate from the typical type of information that you get,
link |
such as get good sleep, good nutrition,
link |
good social connection, et cetera.
link |
All that stuff still holds true,
link |
but these three other points,
link |
I think can really make a substantial difference
link |
in terms of bolstering the immune system,
link |
your immune system.
link |
I do want to mention,
link |
because these names are going to come up several times
link |
during this episode,
link |
that while interleukins like IL-6 and IL-1
link |
encourage inflammation,
link |
they are these help me signals
link |
that call in cells to gobble up invaders.
link |
There are some interleukins that are anti-inflammatory,
link |
and the one that I'd like to highlight in particular,
link |
because it will come up again in a little bit,
link |
is interleukin-10.
link |
So not all of the IL, insert number,
link |
not all of the interleukins are inflammatory,
link |
some are anti-inflammatory.
link |
So that's an important point to keep in mind
link |
Next, I'd like to talk about
link |
what's called sickness behavior.
link |
And indeed, there is a category of behavior
link |
that we call sickness behavior
link |
that is very informative
link |
as to the things that we can do
link |
to avoid getting sick.
link |
Now, this notion of sickness behavior
link |
goes back several decades or more,
link |
and it's a very interesting way of looking
link |
at the function of the immune system,
link |
because what it does is it bridges us from this thing
link |
that we're calling the immune system,
link |
where it's T cells and B cells and cytokines and leukocytes,
link |
and it starts taking us into the realm of the nervous system
link |
because, of course, the nervous system controls behavior.
link |
So sickness behavior is a suite of responses
link |
that we tend to all undergo when we are feeling sick.
link |
So this is going to vary from person to person,
link |
but there's some general categories of things
link |
that we all do and that happen to all of us
link |
after we are wounded or sick
link |
or dealing with an infection of any kind.
link |
And by examining sickness behavior in some detail,
link |
it can be really informative
link |
as to routes that we can take to health.
link |
So the main thing about sickness behavior
link |
is that it tends to involve a slowing
link |
of our usual levels of activity.
link |
People start to feel lethargic
link |
or they feel like the activities
link |
that previously they could do with relative ease
link |
are very difficult for them or somewhat overwhelming.
link |
The other thing you start to see
link |
is that people and animals, by the way, stop grooming.
link |
They stop taking care of themselves,
link |
not necessarily stop showering,
link |
although oftentimes that's the case,
link |
but they will stop doing their hair.
link |
They'll stop putting on makeup.
link |
You know, depending on whether or not they did that before,
link |
Animals will stop licking and grooming themselves.
link |
People will stop taking care of their cosmetic appearance.
link |
Now, it's not just because they don't care
link |
how they look when they're sick.
link |
It's because there's this overall suppression
link |
of certain kinds of activities
link |
and an enhancement of other kinds of activities.
link |
And this is really important.
link |
Sickness behavior is actually a motivated state.
link |
It's a state that's designed to accomplish certain things.
link |
One of the other features of sickness behavior,
link |
in addition to being lethargic, loss of grooming,
link |
will be a loss of appetite, right?
link |
Oftentimes people who have a great appetite
link |
normally just won't feel hungry at all.
link |
And there are several theories as to why this would be.
link |
One prominent idea in the literature
link |
is that it's to discourage vomiting and diarrhea,
link |
which of course can be infectious to other people.
link |
So that's a theory.
link |
I don't know that that's ever been tested directly,
link |
but that's one idea.
link |
The other idea is that it's simply
link |
to harbor more resources for sake of repair.
link |
And I want to talk about that
link |
because we are all told to get extra sleep
link |
when we aren't feeling well or to rest.
link |
But just like any good two or three-year-old
link |
constantly asks, why, why?
link |
Good scientists, good people who are interested
link |
in health information should always be asking,
link |
why, why should I get more sleep?
link |
What happens in sleep
link |
that I should get more sleep when I'm sick?
link |
Why shouldn't I just push through this?
link |
And there are a couple reasons for this
link |
that have been established in the literature.
link |
The first is that there does seem to be something useful
link |
about slowing circulation when we are ill.
link |
One idea that has some data to support it
link |
is that when we slow our circulation,
link |
our blood circulation,
link |
so not running around so much or running at all,
link |
but rather lying down, getting extra rest,
link |
maybe sleeping, maybe even just remaining still
link |
is that the lymphatic system,
link |
which carries a lot of the immune-related cells and fluids
link |
is able to ramp up its levels of activity.
link |
So this is interesting, right?
link |
So reducing circulation of the blood,
link |
but increasing circulation of the lymphatic system.
link |
You've all probably been familiar with the lymphatic system.
link |
When you're combating an infection,
link |
your lymph nodes can get sore.
link |
You've got lymph nodes behind your ears
link |
and your groin, your armpits, around your throat,
link |
around near your thyroid, in your throat, et cetera.
link |
So that's the other reason.
link |
Now, some people, when they get sick,
link |
psychologically go into a very vulnerable state
link |
where they really, really want people,
link |
other people to take care of them.
link |
You've probably witnessed this
link |
or you feel this way yourself.
link |
About 50% of people have that response.
link |
They really want to be taken care of.
link |
Now, when you think about it from an adaptive perspective,
link |
this makes sense, right?
link |
A member of our species is ill
link |
and they more or less will cry out for help
link |
in one form or another to the other members of their species
link |
to take care of them.
link |
And of course, this will be especially apparent
link |
in cases where people are young enough
link |
or incapacitated enough
link |
that they can't actually get resources on their own.
link |
If you've ever been really sick,
link |
just getting up and going to the fridge
link |
or to the restroom can feel like a monumental task.
link |
So about 50% of people report or describe
link |
seeking of help and support when they are sick.
link |
But you could also imagine
link |
how this would be a very non-adaptive response
link |
because it increases the opportunity
link |
to spread infection to the caretaker.
link |
So that's an interesting consideration.
link |
Another 50% of people seem to have the opposite response
link |
when they're sick.
link |
So somehow, regardless of how they were
link |
prior to getting ill,
link |
the sickness behavior that's engaged
link |
by these neural circuits in the brain,
link |
they are indeed neural circuits in the brain,
link |
create a stay away from me.
link |
I don't want to be bothered.
link |
I want to be left alone.
link |
I don't want to be taken care of, right?
link |
It's not stubbornness.
link |
It's literally a lack of interest or a disinterest
link |
in social connection when one is sick.
link |
And you see this in animals too.
link |
Some animals will seek out other members of their species.
link |
Others, like my unfortunately now passed away,
link |
Bulldog Costello, when he was sick,
link |
I always knew because he would go around
link |
the back of the house and he would just hide there.
link |
He would just take himself away from everybody else.
link |
He did not want to be taken care of.
link |
And it was just a natural response to him.
link |
I don't think he was trying to prevent me
link |
from getting whatever it was that he had.
link |
So if ever somebody doesn't want to be taken care of,
link |
or if they do want to be taken care of,
link |
realize that people tend to fall into these two bins naturally
link |
and animals tend to fall into these bins,
link |
regardless of what species they are, it's about 50-50.
link |
And again, this sickness behavior is a motivated state.
link |
It's designed to slow circulation of the blood,
link |
increase circulation of the lymph
link |
and the other killer cells in the body,
link |
reduce the probability of infecting others
link |
by reducing its thought, diarrhea and vomit,
link |
but also breathing on others, interacting with others.
link |
And in some cases it will activate this,
link |
I don't want to call it a regressed state,
link |
but many people feel somewhat more if they are adults,
link |
they feel more childlike when they are ill
link |
and they want to be taken care of very badly.
link |
Some of it might be learned,
link |
some of it might be innate, we don't know,
link |
but the sickness behavior is very interesting
link |
for a couple of reasons.
link |
First of all, it mimics another state
link |
that has been described in the neuroscience literature,
link |
which is major depression.
link |
And in both sick individuals,
link |
sick from bacterial viral infection,
link |
and in people with major depression,
link |
it's been shown that there are robust increases
link |
in the levels of interleukin-6
link |
and tumor necrosis factor alpha.
link |
So there is an idea now circulating that depression
link |
involves these inflammatory cytokines being very active.
link |
And we know that illness involves inflammatory cytokines
link |
being very active.
link |
So if you think about it,
link |
the similarity between major depression and being sick
link |
ought to be able to point us in a direction of interventions
link |
that could help us either prevent illness
link |
or move through illness more quickly.
link |
But as we head in that direction,
link |
because indeed that's the case,
link |
I just want to emphasize that sickness behavior
link |
is what provides this bridge
link |
between the immune system and the nervous system.
link |
And what we'll soon see also is that healthy behavior,
link |
behavior that allows us to avoid infection
link |
also points to a clear bridge
link |
between the nervous system and the immune system.
link |
That it isn't just that we have a brain
link |
and body and our organs,
link |
and then we have an immune system.
link |
That's true, but they're interacting all the time.
link |
And this is going to lead us to a place
link |
where it's going to be very clear
link |
and not at all surprising how certain patterns of thinking
link |
and certain behaviors that we can elect to take
link |
can help enhance our immune system function and vice versa.
link |
There are two other features of sickness behavior
link |
definitely worth pointing out.
link |
One is a theory, which is that the reduced appetite,
link |
in particular appetite for protein-rich foods when sick
link |
is thought to be an attempt,
link |
a subconscious attempt of the organism
link |
to reduce the amount of iron that it's taking in.
link |
Now, typically the amount of iron intake
link |
that's recommended or more or less is for men,
link |
it's about eight milligrams per day.
link |
For women, it's anywhere from 18 to 27 milligrams per day,
link |
depending on whether or not they're pregnant,
link |
lactating or menstruating, et cetera.
link |
The ranges can vary.
link |
But, and indeed it's true that if iron levels in the blood
link |
go too high, like over 45 milligrams per day,
link |
it can be very toxic to the system.
link |
But the theory that's prominent in the biology literature
link |
and in the health literature is that the reduction
link |
in appetite is actually an attempt to reduce iron intake
link |
specifically because many bacteria
link |
and other forms of infection seem to thrive
link |
when levels of iron in the blood are high.
link |
Now, I don't want to see anyone take this to extreme
link |
and suddenly do an iron deprivation diet
link |
in order to get well.
link |
But it's an interesting theory that I'd be remiss
link |
if I didn't mention, because it makes good sense.
link |
Iron is actually attached to hemoglobin
link |
and red blood cells in the bloodstream.
link |
Normally that can help us quite a lot.
link |
It's also in muscle.
link |
I should mention that iron can be sequestered into muscle
link |
and iron serves a lot of important health promoting roles,
link |
but by reducing appetite and thereby reducing iron intake,
link |
it does reduce the capacity of certain things,
link |
including infections to travel
link |
in certain compartments within the body.
link |
So again, that's just theory,
link |
but I think many of you are probably familiar
link |
with not having an appetite when you're sick.
link |
The other thing that's very typical
link |
of people with major depression is loss of appetite.
link |
Not always, but often loss of appetite.
link |
So here again, we have loss of appetite
link |
in sickness behavior, loss of appetite in major depression.
link |
And perhaps not surprisingly,
link |
one of the major symptoms of sickness behavior
link |
and major depression that map more or less onto one another
link |
is loss of libido or interest,
link |
not just in social interactions,
link |
but in sex and reproduction.
link |
if you think about sickness behavior and depression,
link |
they are very, very similar.
link |
Okay, so sickness behavior and major depression
link |
have certain core features in common.
link |
We need to therefore ask ourselves why and how
link |
does being sick influence the way that we think
link |
and perceive our environment and impact our appetite,
link |
whether or not we want to be cared for more
link |
or cared for less.
link |
Again, people tend to diverge
link |
into two different bins there.
link |
And believe it or not,
link |
the pathway for this has been identified.
link |
When we have an infection someplace in our body,
link |
and it could be up in our head,
link |
it could be a sinus infection,
link |
it could be an ear infection,
link |
or I should also mention many of these same mechanisms
link |
can also be the consequence of a wound
link |
or an injury to the body,
link |
you know, a back injury or a slipped disc,
link |
or I guess it's called a herniated disc
link |
is the way that you hear it described.
link |
When we have that, we can be kind of irritable.
link |
We don't want to do certain things
link |
and we just want to be left alone.
link |
Things are harder.
link |
Well, there's a known pathway,
link |
which is the so-called vagus nerve
link |
that connects the body and the brain,
link |
signals to particular brain sites
link |
to engage this category of motivational state
link |
that we call sickness behavior.
link |
Many of you have probably heard of the vagus,
link |
The vagus nerve is a very extensive nerve pathway.
link |
It's the 10th cranial nerve
link |
comes out of the back of the brainstem,
link |
heads into the body and branches out extensively
link |
to innervate or connect to many of our organs,
link |
including our lungs, our heart, our gut, et cetera.
link |
And all of those organs are able also
link |
to send neural signals back up to the brain.
link |
We sometimes hear the vagus
link |
as the route to calming ourselves down.
link |
Unfortunately, that's more or less a myth
link |
that I don't know how it got propagated.
link |
You have lots of different pathways in the vagus.
link |
Usually vagal stimulation
link |
actually creates more arousal and alertness,
link |
although it does have multiple pathways.
link |
But there have now been many studies of the vagus
link |
in various contexts, including in sickness behavior.
link |
And it's very clear that the vagus nerve
link |
is the fast pathway by which an infection in the body
link |
is signaled to the brain
link |
to a particular location in the brain
link |
called the hypothalamus,
link |
which harbors a lot of different types of neurons.
link |
Neurons, for instance, in the preoptic area
link |
that increase body temperature and fever, right?
link |
That's one of the most important things
link |
is to increase body temperature
link |
in order to, it's the body's attempt
link |
to kill off this invader
link |
because many viruses and many bacteria
link |
don't survive well at elevated heat.
link |
That's the function of a fever.
link |
A fever actually has a functional role.
link |
So in biology, we like complicated words.
link |
So we call anything that increases body temperature
link |
or creates a fever a pyrogen.
link |
Many years ago in my undergraduate years,
link |
I was working on pyrogens,
link |
injecting something called lippy polysaccharide
link |
into the belly, which then gives you a fever.
link |
The way it does that is LPS causes
link |
an inflammation response in the gut.
link |
The gut doesn't know what is happening.
link |
The stomach cells don't know what's happening.
link |
So they just start secreting the IL-6, the IL-1,
link |
all those cytokines, the killer cells migrate into the gut.
link |
That's why you sometimes get a stomach ache
link |
when you don't feel well,
link |
you have a flu or something like it.
link |
So a neural signal, electrical signals get sent up
link |
to the hypothalamus.
link |
The hypothalamus says,
link |
oh, I don't know what's going on out there,
link |
but there's a signal something's going on.
link |
Let's just heat up the body.
link |
Let's just start cooking whatever it is out there.
link |
And of course, you don't want fever to go too high
link |
because you can kill brain cells,
link |
but within a particular range,
link |
the fever is a functional and adaptive response, okay?
link |
So if you're taking drugs to try and lower the fever,
link |
that might make you feel more comfortable,
link |
but actually that's limiting the response
link |
that your body is creating
link |
in order to try and kill off that invader.
link |
And again, you don't want fever to go too high.
link |
This is going to vary depending on age.
link |
You can look up online
link |
what the tolerable ranges are for fever,
link |
but when you're trying to lower body temperature,
link |
when you have a fever,
link |
unless you're heading into dangerous levels of heating up,
link |
that's actually the wrong way to take your system
link |
if you do indeed want to kill off that invader.
link |
Okay, so the vagus nerve is the quick response.
link |
It also sends input to areas of the brain
link |
that change your perception of the outside world.
link |
One of the most obvious of these,
link |
obvious once I tell it to you, is photophobia, right?
link |
I love bright sunshine.
link |
I love bright lights when I want to be alert.
link |
We all have different levels of light sensitivity,
link |
but most people, when they are sick,
link |
when there's an inflammation response in the body,
link |
they feel like bright lights are kind of aversive.
link |
They get a well-described kind of classical photophobia.
link |
And that's mediated by a pathway that goes from your eye
link |
to an area of your thalamus
link |
called the anterior nucleus of the thalamus.
link |
This is work that was done by Clifford Saper
link |
at Harvard Medical School.
link |
It's really beautiful work.
link |
And then from there up to the outer lining of the brain,
link |
which is the meninges,
link |
just sort of on the outside of the brain
link |
where the brain starts to interface
link |
with some of the other connective tissues.
link |
We'll talk more about these later.
link |
It can actually create a photophobia and a headache
link |
So here's the pathway.
link |
Some invader gets into your system
link |
because you wiped your eyes or it got in through your mouth.
link |
You didn't listen to your mother
link |
and got in through your eyes.
link |
You're feeling sick.
link |
Something's going on there.
link |
You have a stomach ache
link |
because of all the inflammation there.
link |
The signal goes up from your vagus nerve.
link |
You're heating up with a fever.
link |
You've got photophobia
link |
because you've activated this pathway
link |
by which what would normally be tolerable light
link |
is triggering this thalamic nucleus, the anterior thalamus.
link |
That's projecting up to the meninges.
link |
You've got a headache in response to looking at light.
link |
It's basically triggering an overall pathway
link |
to get you to go into a quiet, dark place and rest.
link |
And the last element I'd like to talk about is the rest.
link |
There's something that gets triggered
link |
from the body to the brain to the hypothalamus.
link |
And we think we know which hypothalamic area it is.
link |
It's the supraoptic nucleus, we think.
link |
Supraoptic because it's right above
link |
your so-called optic chiasm.
link |
If you want to look up where that is,
link |
it's right above the roof of your mouth.
link |
And there are nuclei there that promote the desire to sleep
link |
even during the daytime,
link |
what would normally be the active phase
link |
of your circadian cycle.
link |
Now, that is really interesting
link |
because what's happening here
link |
is you've got multiple pathways that are saying,
link |
avoid light, reduce your amount of behavior,
link |
heat up all the things that are making you sick.
link |
This is sickness behavior,
link |
and it's going from your body to your mind
link |
to make you do the right thing.
link |
Now, there's also a slow pathway
link |
that's purely mediated by the blood,
link |
so-called humoral factors, not because they're funny,
link |
but humoral factors are factors of the blood.
link |
As you have an infection for many hours or days,
link |
the amount of IL-6 and IL-1 and tumor necrosis factor
link |
and other inflammatory cytokines
link |
is starting to increase such that the total amount
link |
in your circulation gets high enough
link |
and is communicated to the brain.
link |
And it tends to enter the brain
link |
through a particular type of tissue
link |
that's really interesting called choroid,
link |
Choroid is really interesting.
link |
It's kind of this fluffy tissue
link |
that sits in your ventricles.
link |
The ventricles are the spaces in your brain,
link |
and the spaces in your brain
link |
have what's called cerebral spinal fluid in them.
link |
The cerebral spinal fluid contains
link |
a number of important things,
link |
but the choroid starts releasing and responding
link |
to these cytokines, the inflammatory cytokines,
link |
and then the brain actually starts to experience
link |
all sorts of changes in terms of inflammation to neurons.
link |
Your memory tends to get poor.
link |
Your cognition tends to get poor.
link |
These are transient things most often.
link |
Eventually these things will pass,
link |
but this is deep into sickness
link |
when you're really feeling lousy.
link |
You can't read, you can't watch a movie,
link |
you can't do anything.
link |
So if you ever get sick
link |
and you just can't be bothered by anything,
link |
it's probably because you've had that fast response
link |
from the body, and you've also had this slower response
link |
where you literally have a set of tissues in your brain
link |
that are sending out these inflammatory signals,
link |
and now your whole brain is starting to cope
link |
or is trying to cope with this infection.
link |
So you've got a slow pathway and a fast pathway.
link |
That all sounds really terrible.
link |
So now I'd like to talk about what you can do
link |
to reduce the probability of getting sick,
link |
and there are actually things that one can do
link |
as you start to get sick and once you're sick
link |
to accelerate the healing process by flipping the equation.
link |
Up until now, we've been talking about
link |
how the body activates certain areas in the brain
link |
to create sickness behavior
link |
that's very much like depression.
link |
You're probably all familiar with this
link |
from any time you've had a cold or a flu
link |
or something really lousy or an injury.
link |
Now let's flip the equation and ask,
link |
what can we do with our nervous system
link |
in order to enhance the function of our immune system
link |
in order to be able to heal and recover
link |
from illness and injury more quickly?
link |
So let's say you are in that unfortunate circumstance
link |
of waking up one day or coming home,
link |
and you've got that tickle in your throat,
link |
or when you breathe, your nasal passages
link |
don't feel the same way,
link |
you've got a little bit of a headache,
link |
you're feeling kind of off.
link |
We all know what we should do.
link |
We should all hydrate, drink some water, and go to sleep.
link |
Right, that's what we are all told.
link |
But there are actually things that you can actively do
link |
in order to get your immune system
link |
to deploy a more robust response
link |
at that early phase of potential infection.
link |
Let's focus first on the rest component.
link |
Yes, of course, we are all told
link |
that we should take a hot shower and go to sleep,
link |
and get nine or 10 hours of sleep.
link |
But there's an interesting way of looking at sleep
link |
specifically for its role in enhancing the immune system.
link |
And there's a wonderful review.
link |
I'll put the review in the captions
link |
that looked specifically at the literature
link |
surrounding sleep that is different
link |
because it occurs in support of the immune system.
link |
So normally when we go to sleep,
link |
we have slow wave sleep predominantly
link |
in the early phase of the night.
link |
And then over time, as we sleep longer and longer,
link |
we get more so-called REM, rapid eye movement sleep.
link |
Talked all about this on the episodes on sleep.
link |
Of course, you have slow wave sleep and REM sleep
link |
throughout the night always,
link |
but it's the fraction of slow wave sleep
link |
to REM sleep that shifts.
link |
And they have different functions, et cetera.
link |
There is some evidence that the sleep
link |
associated with an infection,
link |
in particular early stage of infection,
link |
is associated with elevated levels of serotonin in the brain
link |
that either through an adaptive mechanism
link |
or for whatever reason,
link |
the brain, the neurons in the brain
link |
of the so-called raffae nucleus
link |
start releasing more serotonin.
link |
And that that serotonin and its related pathways
link |
can help enhance some of the immune system function
link |
that could combat the infection.
link |
There is starting to be some data,
link |
and I emphasize starting
link |
because it's not a very robust literature yet,
link |
looking at whether or not supplementing precursors
link |
to serotonin like 5-HTP,
link |
which can be taken in a supplement form,
link |
or consuming foods that increase serotonin naturally.
link |
So these would be any foods
link |
that contain high levels of tryptophan.
link |
You can look up what those are.
link |
So white meat turkey, for instance,
link |
certain complex carbohydrates
link |
can often be rich with tryptophan.
link |
That consuming those foods
link |
can enhance the amount of serotonin
link |
that's available in the brain and blood,
link |
and thereby lead to the particular quality of sleep
link |
that allows for more deep healing,
link |
or for, when I say deep healing,
link |
I mean for a more robust immune response.
link |
Now, again, those are still emerging data.
link |
What is very clear, however,
link |
is that during sleep,
link |
and in particular during sleep
link |
that's associated with the early stage
link |
of any kind of viral or bacterial infection,
link |
the so-called glymphatic system
link |
is much more active than it would be normally.
link |
What's the glymphatic system?
link |
The glymphatic system
link |
is actually a relatively recent discovery.
link |
I mentioned lymph and the lymphatic system earlier.
link |
The glymphatic system with a G
link |
is a system in the brain
link |
by which debris that accumulates throughout the day,
link |
but in particular,
link |
debris that accumulates under conditions of neuroinflammation
link |
and inflammation of the body
link |
is cleared out or is washed out of the brain.
link |
And the activity of this glymphatic system
link |
is extremely important
link |
for the recovery from infection of any kind.
link |
And it's now becoming clear
link |
is important for recovery from traumatic head injury
link |
and maybe even from psychological trauma.
link |
So the glymphatic system
link |
can be thought of more or less as a plumbing system
link |
that runs through the ventricles,
link |
but also mainly through the lining
link |
that sits between the brain and the skull
link |
and some of the other tissues and things of that sort.
link |
The choroid is involved as well.
link |
Brain imaging reveals the glymphatic system
link |
is very active during deep sleep,
link |
and there's this kind of washout of the glymphatic system.
link |
And I'm aware of some studies that are ongoing now
link |
where augmenting the serotonin system
link |
through either supplementation of tryptophan or 5-HTP
link |
or even serotonin itself, these are laboratory studies,
link |
is being looked at for its capacity
link |
to increase the amount of circulation
link |
in the glymphatic system.
link |
And the idea is that it might, and I want to underscore,
link |
might potentially lead to more rapid recovery
link |
from injury and illness and potentially ramp up,
link |
if you will, the activity of the immune system.
link |
So it essentially is a ramping up
link |
of the activity of the immune system.
link |
Now, regardless of whether or not you decide to,
link |
for instance, supplement with 5-HTP before sleep or not,
link |
I'll talk about what that might look like in a moment,
link |
there is a way that you can increase the activity
link |
of your glymphatic system under normal circumstances.
link |
Because of the mechanics of the glymphatic system,
link |
it turns out that if you elevate your heels
link |
by about 12 degrees,
link |
it doesn't have to be exactly 12,
link |
as you sleep by putting maybe a rolled pillow
link |
or two pillows underneath your feet,
link |
by having the head below your legs,
link |
it seems that there's more glymphatic washout
link |
or clearance during sleep.
link |
And this is without taking any compound
link |
to adjust the serotonin system.
link |
So I would say, if you're not feeling well,
link |
yes, take the hot shower.
link |
Yes, get into bed and go to sleep,
link |
but elevate your feet to try and increase the activity
link |
of the glymphatic system.
link |
Some might even consider that if you have to be awake,
link |
that you might want to be awake with your feet
link |
elevated above your head.
link |
Now that might not be practical for the workplace,
link |
but it might be practical for a short nap during the day
link |
or something of that sort.
link |
The glymphatic system is not just active during sleep,
link |
it's also active during certain phases of waking,
link |
in particular, when we are in a deep state of relaxation.
link |
So as many of you probably know,
link |
I'm a big proponent of self-hypnosis
link |
because of the quality scientific literature on this.
link |
If you're interested in self-hypnosis,
link |
you can go to Reveri, R-E-V-E-R-I.com.
link |
Reveri is a cost-free app for Apple and Android
link |
that was developed by my colleague, David Spiegel,
link |
and others at the Stanford University School of Medicine
link |
based on quality studies and peer-reviewed data
link |
showing that deep states of relaxation can be used
link |
to improve pain management,
link |
improve transition time to sleep,
link |
and a number of other things.
link |
You can select the various sort of outcomes
link |
that you're seeking using Reveri.
link |
It's a great thing that,
link |
especially for people that are challenged
link |
with meditation could use
link |
because you just listen to the script,
link |
involves deep relaxation.
link |
I would suggest using that script,
link |
or the script for sleep,
link |
but with feet elevated to increase activity
link |
of the glymphatic system.
link |
Now, if you do decide that you want to test out
link |
this serotonin hypothesis on your own,
link |
obviously check with a doctor.
link |
I'm not a doctor, I'm a professor,
link |
so I'm professing things, not suggesting things.
link |
But 5-HTP is a supplement that I've talked about before
link |
on this podcast that I actually do not recommend
link |
for most people for sake of sleep
link |
because it can disrupt the normal architecture of sleep
link |
and create a deep sleep early in the night
link |
and then a spontaneous waking
link |
with some trouble to get back to sleep.
link |
And that's because of the way that the serotonin system
link |
and the melatonin system interact.
link |
However, under conditions where one is feeling
link |
like they might have an infection
link |
or an early stage of illness,
link |
in that case, 5-HTP might be a useful supplement
link |
in order to access these states of sleep
link |
that are not typical.
link |
They're not the typical deep sleep that you would achieve
link |
when you're feeling healthy.
link |
These are states of sleep that are specifically there
link |
in order to try and repair some of the immune system
link |
related inflammation that's occurring.
link |
If you'd like to explore the 5-HTP approach
link |
and you feel it's right and safe for you
link |
and you've talked to your doctor,
link |
it's 300 to 500 milligrams taken about 30 to 60 minutes
link |
before going to sleep for the night.
link |
That's the typical protocol.
link |
increasing serotonin is also one typical approach
link |
for the treatment of major depression.
link |
This is the basis for things like SSRI,
link |
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
link |
like Prozac and Zoloft and so forth.
link |
The 5-HT approach is a much milder approach
link |
than prescription drug, of course,
link |
but will allow more serotonin to be synthesized
link |
Now, for those of you that are interested
link |
in learning more about the glymphatic system,
link |
it's a fascinating system,
link |
and you might want to do a deep dive there
link |
in terms of the behavioral protocols
link |
and what's known about it.
link |
There's a wonderful article called
link |
The Glymphatic System, A Beginner's Guide.
link |
This is a scientific article.
link |
The first author is Jessen is the last name, J-E-S-S-E-N.
link |
If you put in Jessen, the glymphatic system,
link |
A Beginner's Guide,
link |
you can access the full length manuscript easily online.
link |
It'll show up immediately in your search.
link |
And in a really interesting way,
link |
the glymphatic system has now also been tied
link |
to the iron deposition system.
link |
Earlier, we were talking about iron
link |
and how, of course, getting enough dietary iron
link |
is important, but if levels of iron are too high,
link |
it isn't good for a number of reasons.
link |
There's a very interesting article
link |
that just came out last year called
link |
Dysfunction of the Glymphatic System Might Be
link |
Related to Iron Deposition in the Normal Aging Brain.
link |
So we're starting to see these links
link |
between iron levels being too high,
link |
the glymphatic system not being active enough,
link |
and so forth, leading to sickness behavior,
link |
inflammation, and maybe even damage to neurons
link |
associated with aging.
link |
We can flip that on its head and say that
link |
increasing the activity of the glymphatic system,
link |
feet elevated during deep sleep,
link |
maybe even feet elevated above the head,
link |
while awake during a nap or doing a reverie script
link |
once a day or something of that sort,
link |
could increase the activity of the glymphatic system,
link |
lowering iron to a point that's probably below
link |
the typical intake during periods of infection,
link |
perhaps, perhaps I should say,
link |
can enhance the glymphatic system and vice versa.
link |
And then you've got this specialized sleep
link |
that's related to sickness behavior
link |
that seems to have heightened levels of serotonin
link |
that might be augmented by increasing, excuse me,
link |
that might be augmented by ingesting 5-HTP.
link |
Again, not on a regular basis.
link |
I don't suggest that people take compounds
link |
that increase serotonin unless it's prescribed to you
link |
for depression or something,
link |
but not doing it by supplement with tryptophan or 5-HTP
link |
on a regular basis, but only under conditions where,
link |
as I mentioned, you might be starting to feel sick
link |
or you're coming down with something
link |
or you're combating some sort of infection.
link |
So if we consider the advice that we typically get
link |
when we're not feeling well of take a hot shower,
link |
get into bed and go to sleep,
link |
and we've now touched on ways to potentially increase
link |
the efficacy of the sleep part through the glymphatic
link |
and the serotonin system.
link |
What about the take a hot shower part?
link |
Is that good advice?
link |
Well, it turns out it is,
link |
and there's actually a way to do even better.
link |
There's a study, very interesting study.
link |
The title reveals where I'm going with this.
link |
It's effect of a single finish sauna session
link |
on white blood cell profile and cortisol levels.
link |
In this case, it was done in athletes and non-athletes,
link |
which is kind of nice.
link |
This involves taking athletes and non-athletes
link |
and exposing them to sauna.
link |
It wasn't particularly hot.
link |
It was 96 degrees, which isn't cool,
link |
but it's not really hot.
link |
Nowadays, you hear about people doing very, very hot sauna.
link |
The humidity of the sauna, if you want to know,
link |
is 15 plus or minus 3%.
link |
But basically what they found
link |
was that just one 15-minute sauna session
link |
could really increase white blood cell profiles
link |
and could adjust cortisol levels in ways
link |
that were beneficial for combating infection.
link |
And now there are many other studies like this.
link |
Now, this should immediately make sense
link |
based on what we said before about fever.
link |
Heating up can actually help combat infection.
link |
But for those of you that have listened
link |
to the episodes on temperature,
link |
what you probably know is that when you get into a sauna
link |
or any kind of hot environment,
link |
your body is also going to be actively pushing
link |
to cool itself off.
link |
So there's probably an increase in heat.
link |
There is an increase in heating,
link |
that then afterwards your body will cool off,
link |
maybe even with a dip below baseline.
link |
I do want to provide a cautionary note
link |
that if you are already running a fever,
link |
getting into a sauna could take your body temperature
link |
into dangerously high levels,
link |
dangerously meaning you can kill neurons.
link |
And once you kill neurons, they do not come back.
link |
So please don't kill your neurons.
link |
I don't recommend getting into a sauna
link |
if you're already running a fever.
link |
So this would be something to do
link |
at the initial stage of an infection
link |
or if you're feeling a little bit off.
link |
So this is kind of a ramping up or a super protocol
link |
of the typical advice of take a hot shower
link |
That is good advice.
link |
Now we're talking about a hot sauna,
link |
probably showering off and then getting into bed,
link |
maybe augmenting serotonin.
link |
I know many people don't have access to sauna.
link |
So in that case, a very hot bath or shower,
link |
don't scald yourself of course,
link |
but as hot as you can comfortably tolerate
link |
or right at that edge of what you can tolerate
link |
would be a good idea.
link |
Some people I've heard are creating saunas in their bathrooms
link |
by running hot water and creating a ton of steam.
link |
Anything that really heats you up,
link |
but not to dangerously high levels
link |
is going to be beneficial.
link |
If you have access to a sauna, terrific.
link |
This again was only 15 minutes.
link |
They'd had a cool off session.
link |
Would you get more of an increase?
link |
People always want to know if you did it twice as much,
link |
would you get twice increase?
link |
Those data don't really exist yet.
link |
However, if you are interested
link |
in maximizing the effects of sauna,
link |
it is clear that a cool off period is important.
link |
So it's not that a 15 minute sauna is good
link |
and a 30 minute sauna is better.
link |
If you are going to take that route of exploring more,
link |
it does seem that doing a 15 minute heating period
link |
followed by a five to 10 minute cooling period
link |
and then getting back into the heat can be beneficial.
link |
And this is interesting.
link |
It gets to the mechanisms by which the hypothalamus
link |
that areas, the areas of the hypothalamus that is,
link |
that generate increases in body heat.
link |
The activation of those neurons occurs as you heat up.
link |
And then were you to just stay in that heated environment,
link |
they would actually shut off
link |
and some other neurons would be handling the job,
link |
But by getting in and out of the heated environment,
link |
you actually force that system to send repeated pulses
link |
of these cortisol lowering
link |
and white cell stimulating signals to the body.
link |
Some of you have probably heard the phrase,
link |
feed a fever, starve a cold.
link |
I don't know who first said that.
link |
I couldn't find the citation, but we hear this
link |
and we can speculate that the reason that phrase,
link |
feed a fever, starve a cold came to be
link |
is because of the adaptive function of fever
link |
that increases in body temperature,
link |
make it challenging for intruding viruses
link |
and bacteria to survive.
link |
Even though of course,
link |
highly elevated body temperatures pose a danger
link |
to the host organism, to you.
link |
Feeding, eating does cause an increase in body temperature
link |
through the so-called thermogenic effect of food.
link |
So I can understand the logic of feed a fever.
link |
It would mean that when you have a fever,
link |
it's your body's natural attempt
link |
to heat up and kill some invading thing.
link |
you would further increase your body temperature.
link |
Why you would want to starve a cold, I don't know, however.
link |
Maybe it's because when your nasal passages are congested,
link |
it's uncomfortable to eat or something of that sort.
link |
So the feed a fever part makes sense to me
link |
that the starve a cold part is still mysterious to me.
link |
I couldn't find any logical reason why that would be good.
link |
There are communities out there
link |
that believe that fasting is a viable way
link |
to combat certain types of infection.
link |
Fasting in particular prolonged fast
link |
do increase the amount of adrenaline,
link |
also called epinephrine in the brain and body.
link |
And as we will next explain epinephrine,
link |
adrenaline does have a powerful effect
link |
on the various inflammatory cytokines
link |
and on the immune system in general.
link |
So let's talk about a behavioral protocol
link |
that anyone can use.
link |
It doesn't involve any equipment.
link |
You don't need a sauna.
link |
You don't need anything at all
link |
that has been demonstrated
link |
in excellent peer reviewed research
link |
to enhance the function of the immune system
link |
and actually allow people to combat infection
link |
in very dramatic ways.
link |
Next, I'd like to do an in-depth analysis of a study
link |
that has achieved some prominence out there,
link |
not just in the scientific literature, but on the internet,
link |
because it relates to how particular types of breathing
link |
can impact the immune system
link |
and the ability to combat infection.
link |
The title of this paper is voluntary activation
link |
of the sympathetic nervous system
link |
and attenuation of the innate immune response in humans.
link |
This is a paper that was published in PNAS,
link |
which is the Proceedings of the National Academy
link |
It's a very prestigious journal.
link |
For those of you that know PNAS,
link |
you know that there are certain papers published in PNAS
link |
or there used to be that were not peer reviewed.
link |
I think all of them have moved to peer reviewed papers.
link |
So this is a peer reviewed, very high quality study.
link |
And I just want to describe the basic contour of the study.
link |
I'll explain the findings,
link |
and then I want to go in depth
link |
and explain the mechanistic basis for these findings
link |
and the protocol that we can all export from these findings.
link |
First of all, a couple of terms
link |
so that everybody is on the same page.
link |
The sympathetic nervous system
link |
is one division of our nervous system.
link |
It's a set of neurons down the middle of our spinal cord
link |
and in our brain that generally lead to a heightened state
link |
of arousal and alertness.
link |
It's associated with epinephrine release in the brain
link |
and adrenaline release in the body.
link |
It's the so-called fight or flight system
link |
when it's really active,
link |
but it's the system that's active when we are wide awake.
link |
And we already talked about the innate immune system.
link |
That's that first line of defense
link |
after the skin barrier, of course,
link |
whereby some infection comes into the body
link |
and there's this rapid response of increasing inflammation.
link |
And that's also about the time that you first feel lousy.
link |
So when you start to feel like,
link |
oh, I think I've got something.
link |
I don't feel right.
link |
I have a headache.
link |
I don't feel good.
link |
That's the innate immune system kicking in.
link |
That's what they did in this study.
link |
And by the way, I should say they,
link |
this is the first author is Cox, K-O-X,
link |
last author, last name Pickers, P-I-C-K-K-E-R-S.
link |
What they did was they exposed human subjects
link |
In other words, they injected people with E. coli,
link |
there's a bacteria,
link |
which makes people, all people feel terrible.
link |
See nauseous, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, very unpleasant.
link |
These people voluntarily signed up for this study.
link |
However, some of the subjects in this study
link |
performed a behavioral protocol
link |
that can best be described as cyclic hyperventilation.
link |
My lab works on these types of breathing protocols.
link |
This is not work that my lab did,
link |
but basically subjects hyperventilate,
link |
followed by breath retention, by breath holds.
link |
And I'll explain exactly what they did.
link |
They also looked at other forms of behavioral protocols,
link |
but let's focus on that one.
link |
So they're comparing controls
link |
that do just sort of a basic meditation
link |
versus people that do this intense breathing
link |
followed by some breath holds.
link |
I'm just paraphrasing here.
link |
In the intervention group, the breathing group,
link |
plasma levels of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10,
link |
so this is a cytokine that lowers inflammation,
link |
increased after endotoxin administration,
link |
and that was triggered by an increase
link |
in epinephrine and adrenaline.
link |
So in other words, doing a particular pattern of breathing
link |
allowed an anti-inflammatory cytokine to be turned on,
link |
whereas that was not the case in the subjects
link |
that did not do this particular breathing protocol.
link |
And they discovered that levels of pro-inflammatory
link |
TNF alpha, tumor necrosis factor alpha,
link |
IL-6, interleukin-6, and interleukin-8,
link |
which you should all be familiar with now,
link |
as pro-inflammatory cytokines
link |
were lower in the intervention group,
link |
whereas these IL-10 levels
link |
that are anti-inflammatory went up.
link |
Finally, flu-like symptoms were lower
link |
in the intervention group.
link |
So this is an amazing finding, right?
link |
These are human subjects.
link |
One group of subjects is doing this breathing protocol.
link |
The other group of subjects is just meditating.
link |
They both, both sets of subjects
link |
have been injected with E. coli,
link |
so you know everyone's getting the same amount
link |
placed into their system.
link |
This is very, very interesting,
link |
and it leads to the question that every good scientist,
link |
two-year-old, or health information seeker asks,
link |
How in the world does this work?
link |
Why does this work?
link |
Well, to make a long story short-ish,
link |
because I am going to go into depth here,
link |
the reason it works is because
link |
the sympathetic nervous system,
link |
the so-called stress part of our nervous system,
link |
it's not really called that,
link |
but the part of our nervous system that triggers stress
link |
from mild stress to severe stress, even to panic,
link |
causes the release of adrenaline and epinephrine
link |
in the brain and body.
link |
And under normal circumstances,
link |
when we have some sort of invading infection,
link |
our body is able to push back on that to resist it
link |
by engaging the stress response.
link |
So what's happening here is there's a behavioral protocol
link |
involving the nervous system,
link |
because all behaviors are generated
link |
from the nervous system, of course,
link |
a behavioral protocol that people are deliberately employing
link |
that allows them to activate the sympathetic nervous system,
link |
which in turn allows them to activate the normal pathways
link |
by which immune system function is enhanced, okay?
link |
Now, the reason I'm underscoring this is that
link |
the common interpretation of this study is that
link |
somehow it blocks the normal immune response,
link |
but that's not really what's happening here.
link |
Yes, there's a reduction in inflammatory cytokines
link |
and there's an increase in anti-inflammatory cytokines,
link |
but that's not really the same thing
link |
as blocking the immune response.
link |
This could just as easily be viewed
link |
as enhancing the immune response
link |
and combating the intruder, in this case, E. coli.
link |
So let's parse this study a little bit more closely.
link |
First of all, what is this magical pattern of breathing?
link |
Some of you may recognize this
link |
as so-called Wim Hof breathing.
link |
Wim, of course, the Dutchman.
link |
I think his occupation online
link |
used to be listed as Daredevil, believe it or not.
link |
On Wikipedia, that's a pretty cool occupation.
link |
Wim is best known for his activities with cold exposure.
link |
He holds multiple world records for that,
link |
swimming under icebergs and other incredible feats
link |
that you definitely don't want to try
link |
unless you're extremely skilled
link |
and really know what you're doing as he does,
link |
but also for the use of breath work.
link |
The breathing that is so-called Wim Hof breathing
link |
is very similar, not exactly the same,
link |
but very similar to Tummo breathing
link |
as it's been described historically.
link |
In the science and physiology community
link |
and in my laboratory, because I run a university laboratory,
link |
we refer to it as cyclic hyperventilation,
link |
which just means repeated deep breaths in and out,
link |
and then there are these retention.
link |
So because I'm here in the hot seat anyway,
link |
I might as well demonstrate it for you
link |
so you know what this looks like.
link |
There are variations on this.
link |
So with respect to Wim, with respect to Tummo practitioners,
link |
with respect to the cyclic hyperventilators everywhere,
link |
this is one general theme of it.
link |
It involves 20 to 30 deep inhales
link |
and then exhales through the mouth,
link |
followed by a exhale of all one's air and a breath hold.
link |
That's the retention.
link |
And then at some point, 15 to 60 seconds later,
link |
repeating the 25 or 30 breaths,
link |
and then again, a breath hold with lungs empty.
link |
There are variations on this, but in our laboratory
link |
and in this particular study,
link |
it looks something like this, okay?
link |
I'm not going to do the whole thing right now,
link |
but it goes something like this.
link |
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
link |
Okay, so let's assume I did that for 30 breaths.
link |
I can already feel myself perspiring a little bit.
link |
You're heating up, that's the release of adrenaline.
link |
It's caused by that breathing pattern
link |
and then exhaling all of one's air,
link |
no speaking in between like I'm doing.
link |
And then sitting, lungs empty
link |
until one feels the impulse to breathe
link |
and then repeating for several rounds,
link |
two or three or even four rounds.
link |
Now, some people will also introduce
link |
a big inhale and breath hold at the end
link |
and find that indeed they can hold their breath
link |
much longer than they normally would be able to
link |
because the trigger to breathe is normally activated
link |
by increases in carbon dioxide in our blood.
link |
We have neurons in our brainstem
link |
and in our various regions of our brain actually
link |
that respond to when carbon dioxide is too high
link |
and trigger the reflex to breathe.
link |
But when we exhale deeply,
link |
we blow off a lot of carbon dioxide
link |
so we don't feel that impulse to breathe come quite as soon.
link |
Basically, this study looked at people doing
link |
these cyclic hyperventilation with retention,
link |
25 or 30 breaths, then the retention,
link |
25 or 30 breaths, then retention, 25 or 30 breaths,
link |
then the retention.
link |
So three rounds of 25 to 30 breaths followed by exhale,
link |
hold in between of various duration,
link |
but in general, 15 to 60 seconds is typical.
link |
What happened physiologically?
link |
This is one of the reasons I like this study.
link |
What happened physiologically?
link |
Well, a couple of things.
link |
Of course, blood oxygenation drops.
link |
You would expect that based on hyperventilation
link |
and especially based on the exhale
link |
of so much carbon dioxide.
link |
We could explain why that is,
link |
but blood levels of oxygen drop.
link |
The pH, the alkalinity of the body goes way up.
link |
This is very interesting.
link |
If you look up this paper,
link |
you can look at figure one, panel C.
link |
The pH goes way up.
link |
People become alkaline.
link |
You've heard before of alkaline water.
link |
I hate to say this.
link |
I probably lose some friends for this,
link |
but yeah, don't waste your money
link |
on drinking alkaline water.
link |
You can't really shift the alkalinity of your body.
link |
There are cases where some compartment in your body
link |
needs to be more alkaline than the rest.
link |
Your gut is a different alkalinity
link |
than other areas of your body, et cetera,
link |
but ingesting high alkaline water
link |
isn't going to shift your overall alkalinity.
link |
If someone can send me a quality reference
link |
that shows different,
link |
then I'm happy to revise that statement,
link |
doing that pattern of breathing that I just described
link |
greatly increases the pH.
link |
Greatly, I should say,
link |
it doesn't send it off into dangerous levels.
link |
It takes it from 7.4 to 7.6,
link |
which is a significant increase in alkalinity.
link |
for those of you who remember high school
link |
or college chemistry,
link |
as the numbers on the pH go down,
link |
you're becoming more acidic.
link |
As they go up, you're becoming more alkaline, okay?
link |
So the subjects went from 7.4 to 7.6 during the breathing,
link |
and then afterwards it returned to normal.
link |
But that shift in alkalinity
link |
is thought to be important here.
link |
So what's going on here?
link |
How is the breathing leading to these shifts in,
link |
or I should say reduction in inflammatory cytokines
link |
and an increase in the liberation
link |
of these anti-inflammatory cytokines?
link |
Well, the authors make some good arguments
link |
as to why it's not the shift in pH per se,
link |
or the shift in carbon dioxide levels in the blood,
link |
but rather it's the release of epinephrine.
link |
And there's some good reason to believe why that's the case.
link |
It's beyond the scope of this discussion,
link |
but that it's actually the release of epinephrine,
link |
that's causing this reduction in inflammation.
link |
And that's actually supported
link |
by something that you've probably experienced before,
link |
which is if you've ever worked, worked, worked,
link |
worked really hard,
link |
or you've been a caretaker for somebody else
link |
or studying for exams,
link |
and people around you are getting sick
link |
and you're just powering through it
link |
and you're not getting sick,
link |
but then you stop, you turn in your final exam,
link |
you stop taking care of somebody else,
link |
or you finally stop and rest,
link |
or you go on vacation and then you get sick.
link |
Well, you've just experienced the effect
link |
that adrenaline, epinephrine can have
link |
in activating your immune system
link |
by way of the nervous system
link |
in order to keep fighting and combating infection.
link |
And that brings us to a larger theme,
link |
which is that stress and combating infection or a wound
link |
is not one unique system.
link |
It's the same stress system
link |
that you use to combat psychological stress.
link |
So when you're very, very stressed,
link |
at least in the short term,
link |
because you release so much adrenaline and epinephrine,
link |
you're actually better able to combat infections
link |
and you reduce inflammation
link |
and the whole feeling lousy response, right?
link |
Remember, reduced flu-like symptoms here.
link |
So this pattern of breathing is actually a very useful tool.
link |
And I confess, I use this pattern of breathing
link |
anytime I am at the initial stages
link |
of getting some sort of bug.
link |
If I feel like I've been running myself ragged,
link |
or if I somehow, for whatever reason,
link |
have a tickle in my throat,
link |
or I have that kind of sensation in my nose,
link |
like I might've caught a bug of some sort,
link |
I will do this pattern of breathing.
link |
I've been doing it consistently, gosh,
link |
for the last four years or more.
link |
You know, now this is just anecdotal reports,
link |
but I find that it allows me indeed
link |
to either have those early symptoms disappear,
link |
or it allows me to just kind of push through
link |
and harder longer.
link |
I don't suggest people continue to push through
link |
exposure to infections.
link |
Obviously you don't want to infect other people,
link |
nor do you want to crash
link |
and suddenly get a massive illness of some sort
link |
because you stopped doing this breathing.
link |
But I do think it's a useful tool.
link |
It's a purely behavioral intervention
link |
that has been shown here,
link |
and now there are additional studies on the way
link |
to enhance the function of your immune system
link |
and to reduce inflammation.
link |
And this is to me,
link |
one of the most concrete examples of a zero cost tool
link |
that bridges the activation of the nervous system
link |
through breathing with the immune system
link |
by way of releasing adrenaline
link |
and thereby reducing the terrible effects
link |
or feelings of lousiness from a,
link |
in this case, an E. coli infection.
link |
Now I'd like to focus on a couple of important points
link |
that I haven't heard discussed broadly elsewhere,
link |
which is that the hyperventilation
link |
and the breath retention are both important.
link |
So you can't simply hyperventilate
link |
to get this effect at the level of epinephrine release
link |
and reduction in inflammatory cytokines.
link |
It's been shown before that the hyperventilation phase
link |
which is a kind of low oxygen saturation
link |
due to the breath retention,
link |
they both combine to increase epinephrine adrenaline levels.
link |
So you have to do the 25 or 30 breaths
link |
and then the retention, 25 or 30 breaths,
link |
then the retention,
link |
meaning that the exhale with the breath hold
link |
in order to get the full effect.
link |
I also want to provide a critical cautionary note.
link |
Don't do this anywhere near water or while driving a car.
link |
These things might seem kind of obvious,
link |
but obviously in the off chance that you black out
link |
or something like that, it could be disastrous.
link |
So please be careful.
link |
And again, don't try and push the breath hold.
link |
The moment you feel the impulse to breathe, just breathe.
link |
And it did seem that the three rounds
link |
of 25 to 30 breaths with interventions,
link |
excuse me, with breath hold retentions in between
link |
was the ideal protocol.
link |
There's one last very interesting feature of this study
link |
that I want to emphasize.
link |
And that was that they actually measured
link |
the so-called catecholamine concentrations.
link |
Catecholamines are things like dopamine,
link |
epinephrine, norepinephrine.
link |
These are chemicals in your nervous system
link |
and body that promotes states of alertness.
link |
Dopamine, of course,
link |
part of the reward and motivation pathways.
link |
They explored the levels of these molecules in blood,
link |
in plasma, during and after this breathing protocol.
link |
And as interesting, as I mentioned,
link |
before epinephrine showed robust increases
link |
compared to the control group,
link |
norepinephrine, significant increases occurred
link |
in the breathing group,
link |
but in the cyclic hyperventilation,
link |
retention breathing group, of course, but less so.
link |
And dopamine levels actually dropped somewhat.
link |
But this is very interesting
link |
because there's a new and emerging literature
link |
largely from ISA, A-Y-S-A, Rolz Lab in Israel.
link |
What her laboratory has shown is that
link |
motivational state and mindset has a powerful impact
link |
on various aspects of the immune system
link |
that were thought to be independent
link |
of the brain and mind and thinking.
link |
So this brings us back to something that we discussed
link |
at the very beginning of this episode,
link |
which is that 20, 30 years ago,
link |
the idea that you could heal the body with the mind
link |
was considered kind of quackery.
link |
I think that there was an intervening period up until now
link |
where people might've said,
link |
sure, if you're stressed out, it's going to make things worse
link |
I mean, I think everyone agrees
link |
that stress makes everything worse at some level,
link |
outcomes to neurodegeneration,
link |
performance in physical endeavors and mental endeavors.
link |
If stress is too high for too long,
link |
people experience different challenges
link |
and essentially every major psychiatric disorder,
link |
everything suffers.
link |
But in the short term, stress can actually be beneficial
link |
in the ways that we just described.
link |
And stress, if we break it down
link |
is really a neurochemical state, right?
link |
It's the release of these catecholamines.
link |
And what ISA, Rolz's laboratory has shown
link |
is that when the so-called dopamine system,
link |
and at several episodes I described
link |
there are multiple dopamine systems,
link |
but the so-called mesolimbic reward pathway
link |
involving areas like the nucleus accumbens, et cetera.
link |
When the reward system that's associated with dopamine
link |
and norepinephrine is activated,
link |
you see incredible effects, including for instance,
link |
highly significant reduction in tumor size in cancers.
link |
Now, why would that be?
link |
How is it that mindset dopamine and tumors growth
link |
are somehow linked?
link |
We now know how this occurs,
link |
largely through the incredible work of ISA, Rolz and others.
link |
So now I'd like to turn our focus to how it is specifically
link |
that certain mindsets impact the immune system
link |
in ways that we can actually point
link |
to specific biological pathways
link |
and also specific protocols related to mindset.
link |
I guess a simple way to frame all this would be to say
link |
that most of us are aware that yes, indeed,
link |
you can worry yourself sick.
link |
We've been told that.
link |
You're going to worry yourself sick.
link |
And actually there was a paper published in Science,
link |
again, one of the top three journals out there,
link |
the top three really being Nature, Science and Cell.
link |
And then other, of course, excellent journals exist,
link |
but this was a paper that came out in Science last year.
link |
First author is Kataoka, K-A-T-A-O-K-A,
link |
describing psychogenic stress and fever.
link |
So this was looking or asking the question,
link |
are there areas of the brain that actually underlie
link |
this notion that we can worry ourselves sick?
link |
And they discovered a new pathway
link |
and they were able to both activate this pathway
link |
independent of worry and stress and see illness occur.
link |
And they were able to inhibit this pathway,
link |
block activity in this neural pathway
link |
and prevent psychogenic fever
link |
and the worrying of oneself sick.
link |
So they were able to do this in a very controlled way.
link |
I'll just mention the pathway in case
link |
you want to look it up in more detail.
link |
This is a corticolimbic pathway.
link |
So for just to orient us,
link |
the cortex is more or less the outer shell of the brain.
link |
It's involved in thinking and sensation
link |
and perceptions and learning
link |
and maintenance of a lot of memories are stored there.
link |
We all hear that you learn and remember in the hippocampus,
link |
that's the initial side of learning and memory.
link |
But then that information, believe it or not,
link |
is passed off to the cortex
link |
where it's stored in kind of a long, long-term
link |
hard drive type storage.
link |
So the corticolimbic pathway is one in which your thoughts,
link |
your prior experiences can literally in a structural way,
link |
feed down onto the areas of the brain
link |
that control very basal processes,
link |
including temperature regulation.
link |
So this is a corticolimbic hypothalamic pathway.
link |
We talked earlier about the hypothalamus
link |
is controlling temperature
link |
and a lot of sickness-related behavior, right?
link |
Remember vagus up to the hypothalamus
link |
and all the sleep more, less appetite, fever, okay?
link |
That's all in the hypothalamus.
link |
This is a top-down corticolimbic hypothalamic pathway,
link |
and it has a fancy name.
link |
It's the dorsopeduncular cortex, dorsotonia tecta.
link |
The short of that is the DPDTT.
link |
So let's just call it the DPDTT
link |
to the dorsomedial hypothalamus.
link |
It shouldn't mean anything.
link |
Doesn't really matter what we call it,
link |
but what's important is conceptually,
link |
it's a pathway that originates in sites of the brain
link |
that are associated with thinking,
link |
with emotion and with prior history,
link |
and feeds directly into an area of the brain
link |
that's involved in basic physiological,
link |
subconsciously controlled processes.
link |
So that's incredible, right?
link |
And it points to a physical pathway
link |
by which the way we think about something
link |
changes something core about our physiology.
link |
Now, in some ways that shouldn't be surprising, right?
link |
If you think about something that excites you,
link |
your heart rate can increase.
link |
You think about something that terrifies you,
link |
your heart rate can increase.
link |
So the idea that thinking controls our physiology
link |
is not a new concept at all,
link |
but somehow human beings,
link |
we have been challenged with the idea
link |
that we could actually think ourselves into being sick.
link |
But this paper from Kataoka shows that
link |
if you expose somebody to a psychological stress,
link |
you can actually activate this pathway and create a fever.
link |
And how did they do that?
link |
Well, you can do this by exposing subjects
link |
to a very stressful real event,
link |
and you cue it through associative learning.
link |
So maybe like my pilot V5s, which I love so much,
link |
we could traumatize me to the pilot V5.
link |
If I had some horrible experience happen to me
link |
while I'm looking at and concentrating on the pilot V5,
link |
then you take away the horrible experience,
link |
you give me the pilot V5,
link |
and I start to experience a lot of the symptoms
link |
associated with that terrible event.
link |
They were able to do this
link |
using sickness-inducing stimuli and so forth.
link |
They did all the various derivations
link |
and identified this pathway that when activated,
link |
even in the absence of some horrible event,
link |
could create fever and illness-like behavior and so forth.
link |
And if they blocked certain stations
link |
along this neural pathway, they could block that effect.
link |
So this is really concrete evidence, proof, if you will,
link |
that there are dedicated pathways in the mammalian brain,
link |
your brain and mine,
link |
that allow us to turn thoughts into illness.
link |
That's kind of a depressing idea.
link |
What about the inverse?
link |
What about turning thoughts into health?
link |
Well, that's the work of ISA roles.
link |
They explored the well-established psychological phenomenon
link |
that when cancer patients or very ill people
link |
or people who are suffering from very debilitating injuries,
link |
when they had or when people had or reported a sense of hope,
link |
their rates of recovery were much higher, right?
link |
Sounds very subjective.
link |
But what is a sense of hope?
link |
A sense of hope is a sense of the future.
link |
A sense of the future is tightly associated
link |
with the dopamine system.
link |
Dopamine, again, being this molecule of reward
link |
and motivation and movement,
link |
but movement and motivation are about things
link |
that are beyond the confines of our skin
link |
and are about the future.
link |
And so what they've discovered and through other studies
link |
from other groups have discovered is that stimulation
link |
of the dopamine pathway,
link |
either simply by thinking about a future,
link |
ideally a positive future,
link |
but thinking about a positive future leads to activation
link |
of this so-called mesolimbic reward pathway
link |
and could reduce the size of tumors,
link |
could accelerate wound healing,
link |
could greatly accelerate the passage from a state of illness
link |
to a state of health and wellbeing.
link |
So there are many, many studies now starting to wick out
link |
There's also the idea that augmenting the dopamine system
link |
can increase the rate of healing.
link |
And so there are individuals out there who opt,
link |
for instance, to take things that increase dopamine.
link |
Now, obviously drugs of abuse would not be a good idea
link |
in this context, even though they increase dopamine,
link |
they lead to big crashes,
link |
they have addictive properties, et cetera.
link |
I've talked before on this podcast about things
link |
like L-tyrosine, take it anywhere from 500
link |
to 750 milligrams can increase dopamine
link |
because tyrosine is a dopamine precursor, of course,
link |
things like micuna purines, which are L-DOPA,
link |
the immediate precursor to dopamine.
link |
Some of these will lead to somewhat of a crash
link |
in certain individuals,
link |
other people tolerate them a little bit better.
link |
Again, you have to talk to your doctor,
link |
you have to figure out what's right for you.
link |
If you have bipolar or mania or schizophrenia,
link |
these things are, I would not recommend them at all.
link |
I'm not recommending them all,
link |
I'm just mentioning them for potential exploration
link |
if it's safe and right for you.
link |
But the point is this, the dopamine system when activated
link |
can accelerate healing.
link |
It can accelerate the recovery from injury of all kinds.
link |
And that shouldn't come as a mystery or surprise result
link |
to us, it's because this reward pathway
link |
and the fact that it's related to a sense of the future
link |
seems to liberate entire systems within the body
link |
that make inflammatory cytokines go down
link |
and anti-inflammatory cytokines go up
link |
exactly as was demonstrated in the beautiful PNAS study
link |
where breathing, cyclic hyperventilation
link |
was used to increase epinephrine, increase norepinephrine,
link |
and to augment the catecholamine system.
link |
So I think that the bridges between these studies
link |
are really relevant.
link |
In one case, I'm talking about
link |
potentially taking an over-the-counter compound
link |
to increase dopamine to accelerate healing.
link |
In another case, we're talking about using breathing.
link |
There's also the use of cold water exposure
link |
to increase dopamine.
link |
I talked about this several episodes ago,
link |
but it's been shown that cold water,
link |
immersing oneself in cold water up to the neck or so,
link |
how cold, well, it depends on what you can tolerate,
link |
but uncomfortably cold,
link |
but not so cold that you become hypothermic,
link |
but where it's challenging to get in,
link |
but you can stay there for three to 10 minutes or so
link |
has been shown to lead to very significant
link |
doubling or more of baseline dopamine levels
link |
and epinephrine levels that go on for several hours.
link |
This may be the basis for why people will do cold showers
link |
or ice baths and then get into a sauna.
link |
So what's called contrast, cold heat contrast therapy
link |
as a way to augment these neurotransmitters.
link |
Today, we've been talking about how these neurotransmitters
link |
can be used to enhance the function of the immune system.
link |
And so just keep in mind that anytime you're talking about
link |
increasing neurotransmitter levels,
link |
that can be done pharmacologically through supplementation,
link |
or it can be done behaviorally through exposure
link |
to cold water, for instance,
link |
or it can be done even just simply by breathing
link |
in a particular way, cyclic hyperventilation
link |
followed by retention.
link |
The catecholamines, noradrenaline, dopamine,
link |
and norepinephrine are the bridge of activation
link |
for the immune system and the nervous system.
link |
They are the way that the nervous system calls out
link |
to the immune system, aha, we have a problem,
link |
we need to counter this.
link |
So you can think of them,
link |
them meaning dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine
link |
as being able to deploy larger amounts of immune cells,
link |
all the types of immune cells that we talked about
link |
at the beginning of the episode.
link |
Okay, so thus far, we've been discussing
link |
how one can prevent getting sick
link |
or when one starts to feel ill,
link |
how one might be able to shorten the course
link |
of that infection by ramping up the activity
link |
of the immune system.
link |
But what about when you're already experiencing symptoms,
link |
the runny nose, stuffed up nose, congestion,
link |
headache, et cetera?
link |
Well, there are many ways to address that
link |
at the symptom level.
link |
You're probably aware of all the over-the-counter
link |
medications, many of which focus on the epinephrine system.
link |
Things that are of the Sudafed variety prevent
link |
or reduce congestion because of the way
link |
that they cause release of epinephrine
link |
and some of the effects on dilating the bronchioles
link |
and dilating the nasal passages and so forth.
link |
I'm not going to speak to whether or not
link |
those are good or bad choices.
link |
They do have a couple of effects that are not so great
link |
for the course of treating the underlying cause,
link |
which are, first of all, they can cause dehydration.
link |
So you have to make sure that you're hydrating well,
link |
both fluids and electrolytes.
link |
And they also can interfere with sleep
link |
because as I've talked about in the episodes on sleep,
link |
one of the hallmarks of deep sleep and in particular,
link |
REM sleep is that epinephrine adrenaline levels are low.
link |
This is what allows you to have intense,
link |
often very emotionally laden dreams during REM sleep
link |
and not act those out.
link |
And low adrenaline epinephrine during REM sleep
link |
is basically a signature, a neurochemical signature
link |
of the REM sleep state, which is so vital
link |
for emotional and physical repair and so forth.
link |
So the fact that they can inhibit sleep,
link |
the fact that they can cause dehydration,
link |
the fact that they can make people
link |
feel kind of lightheaded and jittery
link |
makes them not terrific choices for a number of people.
link |
There is an interesting alternative choice.
link |
And when I say alternative, I do mean alternative.
link |
The choice I'm referring to is spirulina,
link |
which is actually a form of algae.
link |
Years ago, I think when I first heard about spirulina,
link |
it sounded very much of the kind of 1970s, 80s,
link |
health food store variety.
link |
It seemed really kind of mystical and wacky,
link |
but actually now there are some really nice studies
link |
and some data and also an understanding of the mechanism
link |
by which spirulina can have potent effects
link |
in reducing what's called rhinitis,
link |
which is a fancy word for congestion of the nose
link |
and inflammation of the nose.
link |
Basically, anytime you hear a word that includes itis,
link |
at least if it's in the medical or health context,
link |
it generally means inflammation of some tissue.
link |
So rhinitis just being inflammation of the nasal passages,
link |
but that's one of the most uncomfortable symptoms
link |
of any kind of infection.
link |
So there are two studies I'd like to highlight
link |
just very quickly.
link |
One is the effects of spirulina on allergic rhinitis,
link |
and the other is a clinical comparison
link |
to the efficacy of spirulina platensis,
link |
that's a technical name,
link |
and cetirizine for the treatment of allergic rhinitis.
link |
These looked at humans, so this is not a mouse study,
link |
this is a study on humans.
link |
Both sexes, so males and females,
link |
in one case looking at 100 plus subjects, 129 subjects,
link |
the other 65 subjects, so a decent number of subjects,
link |
randomized trial, double-blind,
link |
both cases saw significant decreases in nasal obstruction,
link |
improved ability to smell, improved sleep,
link |
daily working, cytokine,
link |
inflammatory cytokines were reduced as well,
link |
reduction in nasal itching,
link |
all the stuff that you'd like to experience, I can imagine,
link |
after taking two grams, two grams, not milligrams,
link |
but two grams of spirulina,
link |
sometimes had to be taken for a short while
link |
before the effect kicked in.
link |
So that's pretty impressive, I would say,
link |
but it doesn't really speak to mechanism,
link |
but in exploring the underlying mechanisms
link |
for spirulina's effects on reducing rhinitis,
link |
it's interesting to find that spirulina
link |
actually can inhibit the formation and or activity
link |
of so-called histaminergic mast cells, M-A-S-T, mast cells.
link |
We haven't talked a lot about mast cells,
link |
but they are a very interesting cell type
link |
in the immune response,
link |
essentially what they are, little packets of histamine,
link |
and when we have some sort of injury
link |
or irritant, rather, to the skin,
link |
so a mosquito bite, for instance, or poison oak
link |
or poison ivy, something that causes an itch
link |
or something that causes inflammation internally,
link |
doesn't just have to be on the skin,
link |
these mast cells are these little bubbles
link |
that contain histamine that go to that site
link |
and release their histaminergic contents
link |
and cause swelling and inflammation
link |
of whatever cells are affected locally.
link |
That's caused, you might think,
link |
well, why would I want to have a mechanism in my body
link |
that would cause swelling and inflammation?
link |
Ah, well, then those cells in turn send out cytokine signals
link |
that recruit the very cell types that we were talking about
link |
way back at the beginning of the episode,
link |
the cells that are characteristic
link |
of the innate immune system that come in,
link |
the macrophages and the other types of cells
link |
that will come in and gobble up the foreign invaders
link |
or will help sequester and move away,
link |
say, the poison from a bite or from whatever irritant.
link |
Again, it doesn't just have to be at the skin surface.
link |
I'm describing an example at the skin.
link |
For instance, if you've ever had hives of any kind,
link |
that almost certainly involved mast cells.
link |
So when you take an antihistamine, antihistamine,
link |
in order to deal with seasonal allergies, for instance,
link |
you're dealing, you're, excuse me,
link |
you're taking a compound that's reducing histamines
link |
in mast cells, and spirulina has also been used
link |
quite effectively as a way to treat seasonal allergies
link |
and some of the symptomology,
link |
equally on par with some of the major prescription
link |
and over-the-counter drugs for that.
link |
One cautionary note, spirulina does,
link |
can carry some side effects for people
link |
that are, have a genetic mutation
link |
leading to something called PKU.
link |
These people know who they are.
link |
They're very sensitive to phenylalanine.
link |
These same people cannot drink any sort of
link |
nutrients to eat or diet soda for reasons
link |
that they understand it could be quite dangerous.
link |
It's a rare genetic disorder, but nonetheless,
link |
spirulina can be an issue for those people.
link |
For most people, the side effect profile is pretty minimal.
link |
And just to be clear, I don't have any relationship
link |
to a spirulina company or anything.
link |
I just find it interesting that there are these compounds
link |
that sound rather, forgive the phrase,
link |
but rather new agey because they come from a algae,
link |
from a plant, but when you look at the underlying mechanism,
link |
it makes perfect sense.
link |
So that's often what we like to point out here
link |
is that if there are these so-called alternative therapies,
link |
alternative because most people haven't heard of them,
link |
it's always nice if they map to a specific logical mechanism
link |
and framework by which that compound would work
link |
as opposed to just some anecdote of,
link |
oh, I hear spirulina is great for allergies.
link |
Well, now we know why.
link |
It inhibits mast cells and histaminergic mast cells
link |
Earlier, I mentioned a new and very exciting study
link |
published as a full article in Nature.
link |
Full article means that it is a major finding.
link |
It, at the journal Nature, they have letters,
link |
which are important findings.
link |
They're still very high stringency
link |
for getting a letter in Nature published,
link |
but the full articles,
link |
generally there's only one or two per issue
link |
in the weekly edition of Nature.
link |
And just last week, there was a very exciting article
link |
published from Chufu Ma's lab at Harvard Medical School.
link |
Chufu, I've known for a number of years.
link |
His group has done phenomenal work
link |
on the mechanisms of itch and pain
link |
and discovering some of the receptors and pathways
link |
for itch and pain.
link |
And more recently, they've been exploring
link |
the mechanistic basis of acupuncture.
link |
And the title of the article
link |
is a neuroanatomical basis for electroacupuncture
link |
to drive the vagal adrenal axis.
link |
And while that's a mouthful,
link |
now most all of you are probably familiar
link |
with what I mean when I say vagal adrenal axis.
link |
Vagal, meaning of the vagus,
link |
and adrenal of the adrenal glands.
link |
And so perhaps we should not be surprised,
link |
although excited nonetheless,
link |
that Wen-Chufu's lab looked at stimulation
link |
of the body with so-called electroacupuncture.
link |
So these are needles
link |
where a small bit of electrical current,
link |
low level of electrical current is passed into the needle
link |
and therefore into the body.
link |
They located sites on the body
link |
that can increase inflammation
link |
by way of releasing inflammatory cytokines.
link |
These areas included the abdomen.
link |
And they found areas on the body,
link |
such as the lower limbs,
link |
the hind limbs in this case,
link |
that can stimulate the vagal adrenal reflex
link |
and can lead to reduced inflammation.
link |
And what was really interesting
link |
is that they figured out
link |
that it was activation of nerve endings
link |
that resided in the fascia.
link |
I mentioned earlier what fascia is,
link |
but just to remind you,
link |
the fascia is a really thick sheath of tissue
link |
that surrounds muscle.
link |
If ever you've heard of rolfing,
link |
rolfing is a form of very intense massage.
link |
I've never had this done,
link |
but I've heard about this.
link |
It involves, among other things,
link |
actually separating the muscle away from the fascia somewhat.
link |
So it's a very, very deep tissue massage.
link |
Actually, a good friend of mine
link |
who had this done told me
link |
that it was probably the most challenging experience
link |
at physical experience that he'd ever been through
link |
going through this rolfing procedure.
link |
Maybe some of you have been rolfed, as they say,
link |
and can report to the experience
link |
whether or not it was pleasant or unpleasant
link |
or you felt benefits or not.
link |
In any case, this study isn't about rolfing per se,
link |
but it is about the fascia.
link |
And so what they discovered is
link |
there's a specific population of neurons.
link |
Those neurons have a name, as they often do in science.
link |
Name isn't important, but if you want to look it up,
link |
it's the Prok R2 neurons, P-R-O-K R2 neurons.
link |
And they send a connection
link |
deep into the limb fascial tissue, okay?
link |
And then they send another connection.
link |
The connections we're referring to are axons.
link |
Neurons have axons, so a wire in one direction
link |
that goes into the deep fascial tissue
link |
of the lower limb and near the calf and thigh.
link |
And then they send another wire up into the spinal cord
link |
and to a region of the hindbrain
link |
in the back of your brain, kind of near your neck,
link |
called the medulla, in the medulla oblongata.
link |
That neuron also has a name called the DMZ, doesn't matter.
link |
And that neuron connects to the adrenal gland
link |
to release our good old friends,
link |
the catecholamines, noradrenaline, adrenaline, and dopamine,
link |
or norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine.
link |
And their release causes a reduction in inflammation,
link |
even in response to an injection
link |
of something called lipopolysaccharide,
link |
which can actually induce fever.
link |
So what is all this saying?
link |
This is saying that activation of the deep fascial tissue
link |
causes a chain of neural reactions
link |
that leads eventually to the release
link |
of norepinephrine, noradrenaline, adrenaline, and dopamine,
link |
and once again, lowers inflammation,
link |
very much like the breathing study
link |
that we talked about earlier
link |
in the pattern of cyclic hyperventilation with retention,
link |
leading to reductions in inflammation.
link |
I can't tell you how happy this makes me.
link |
I had nothing to do with this work,
link |
but the reason it makes me happy
link |
is because I have a particular fondness
link |
for when practices that have existed for many centuries
link |
or even thousands of years, such as acupuncture,
link |
such as respiration work,
link |
start to converge with some of the
link |
hardcore mechanistic science.
link |
And the reason this excites me
link |
is not because we want to take science
link |
and erase the previous tools and methods
link |
of these ancient practices, not at all.
link |
And it certainly isn't the case
link |
that we just want to name things or rename things
link |
with modern science.
link |
What's very exciting is when we can discover mechanism
link |
that explains why certain practices work.
link |
First of all, that validates those as legitimate practices,
link |
maybe even insurance will start to cover them,
link |
whereas maybe they previously had not.
link |
I don't know what the current status is
link |
for insurance coverage of acupuncture.
link |
I'm guessing there are places that do it,
link |
maybe others that don't.
link |
I personally am not somebody who receives acupuncture.
link |
I have in the past, but I'm,
link |
it's not that I'm a particular fan of it,
link |
but I think that there are a number of people
link |
that have benefited from it.
link |
So I think that's wonderful.
link |
Breath work and respiration work
link |
is something that I've cultivated as a practice
link |
I mentioned earlier how I use it to push back
link |
on incoming infections and so forth.
link |
And now that doesn't sound like total,
link |
like just a figment of my imagination.
link |
There's actually a mechanism,
link |
published mechanism to explain it.
link |
But the most exciting thing to me about all this
link |
is that practices that traditionally have been shrouded
link |
in complicated language or were the unique domain
link |
of the practitioners and relied on phrases
link |
like the meridians or the chakras,
link |
of which I think is perfectly valid language,
link |
but doesn't inform mechanism.
link |
And then in a separate community,
link |
the community I come from, the community of scientists,
link |
have used language like our two neurons,
link |
medulla oblongata, vagal adrenal axis,
link |
and basically no one can communicate with one another
link |
because the language is shrouding.
link |
What we're now starting to see is that
link |
at their convergence is a common mechanism.
link |
And with that understanding,
link |
what's going to be really terrific
link |
is as new protocols start to emerge.
link |
So in understanding mechanisms and pathways
link |
and in being able to understand the base set of practices,
link |
like breathing, like electroacupuncture and so forth,
link |
we can now start to daydream in a very realistic way
link |
about the development of new protocols,
link |
more effective protocols,
link |
protocols that perhaps one can do at home without needles,
link |
perhaps protocols such as the breathing
link |
that you can do anywhere, anytime,
link |
and be confident that you're actually impacting
link |
the IL-6 and the IL-8 pathways,
link |
reducing those and increasing IL-10.
link |
So we are no longer wandering around in the fog,
link |
hearing about these magical techniques
link |
without understanding why they work,
link |
nor are we just seeing a bunch of science
link |
that is descriptive but not mechanistic
link |
or pointing to specific protocols.
link |
So I'm just delighted.
link |
Again, I had nothing to do with this work,
link |
but really terrific work, Chufu and colleagues.
link |
And I also want to acknowledge a journal
link |
as prominent as nature for featuring this upfront
link |
because I think it really does mark the beginning
link |
of a new path in medicine.
link |
And just to underscore that point a little bit further,
link |
the National Institutes of Health, of course,
link |
has a cancer institute, an eye institute
link |
that deal with trying to combat cancer
link |
and to cure blindness and so forth.
link |
And now they have what's called NCCIH,
link |
which is complementary health.
link |
And so there are good tax dollars being put
link |
to the kinds of explorations that we're talking about
link |
that undoubtedly are going to lead to better treatments
link |
for immunological diseases, neurological diseases,
link |
the convergence of the immune system and the nervous system,
link |
very exciting times.
link |
And I hope that by learning about some of this new
link |
and emerging science and hearing about some of the protocols
link |
that are either zero cost or low cost,
link |
certainly for respiration, that's the case,
link |
or for the use of heat or cold
link |
or maybe even electroacupuncture,
link |
if you have access to that,
link |
that we can really see that we're starting to evolve
link |
as a field of health and medicine and science
link |
and ancient practices,
link |
and that they're really starting to converge
link |
and have a vector, as we say,
link |
in a new and more exciting direction.
link |
Once again, we've covered a lot of information.
link |
Today, we learned about the immune system,
link |
the adaptive immune system, the innate immune system,
link |
and the nervous system and how those interact.
link |
And throughout, we discuss protocols that can allow you
link |
to tap into this relationship
link |
between the nervous system and immune system
link |
and hopefully avoid and or shorten the course
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of any illnesses, injuries, or inflammation
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that you might encounter.
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If you're enjoying and or learning from this podcast,
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please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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And also on YouTube, please leave us a comment.
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One of the best forms of comments you can give us
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are suggestions for future topics and future guests to have
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on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
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Please also subscribe to our podcast on Apple and Spotify.
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And on Apple, you can also leave us up to a five-star review
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and leave us a comment there as well if you like.
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In addition, please check out our sponsors
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that we mentioned at the beginning of each episode.
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That's the best way to support this podcast.
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And we have a Patreon.
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It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
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And there you can support the podcast
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at any level that you like.
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A few times during this episode
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and in many previous episodes, I mentioned supplements.
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Not everybody needs to take supplements,
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but many people find benefit from them.
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A key thing if you're going to take supplements
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is to know that the quality of the supplements
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that you're taking is very high.
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And that's not always the case with many supplement brands.
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That's why we partnered with Thorne.
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That's T-H-O-R-N-E.
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Thorne supplements are known to be
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of the very highest quality
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and the specificity of the ingredients is very high as well,
link |
meaning what they list on the bottle
link |
is actually what's contained in that bottle.
link |
They've worked with the Mayo Clinic,
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all the major sports teams.
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So trust is very, very high with Thorne products.
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If you'd like to see the supplements that I take,
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you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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And there you can see all the supplements that I take.
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You can get 20% off any of those supplements.
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And if you enter the Thorne site through that portal,
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you can get 20% off any of the supplements that Thorne makes.
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That's T-H-O-R-N-E.com slash the letter U slash Huberman
link |
to see the supplements that I take
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or get 20% off any of the supplements that Thorne makes.
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If you're not already following Huberman Lab on Instagram,
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There I teach neuroscience and health-related topics
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sometimes, but not always overlapping
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with the content of the podcast.
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We are also Huberman Lab on Twitter.
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And last but not least,
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thank you for your interest in science.
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I'll see you next time.
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I'll see you next time.