Foods and Habits That Keep Your Immune System Resilient

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what happens is you you you develop these cells called zombie cells. They're cells. And and what they do is they tend to spread inflammation like a wildfire throughout your body. And you end up with a lot of these senescent cells running around your body that are causing you to age fast.

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Well, immune rejuvenation essentially trains your immune system to work better at every level. Your immune systems turn over fast. Your white cells turn over fast. You build a new immune system regularly. Everything comes from your blood and bone marrow, right?

So your hemipatic stem cells are generating new white cells and all the different types of cells. So you really need to kind of learn how to build the right immune system and not have it degrade as we age. Now, what happens as we age typically is not immune rejuvenation, but a concept called immunosenescence, which is the aging of our immune system. And that's damage that occurs in our body as a result of a dysfunctional immune system, one that generates more inflammation, that causes aging and less immune support that actually helps you fight infection and cancer. And what happens is you, you, we develop these cells called zombie cells.

So they're terrible cells. I wrote about them in my book. It's one of the hallmarks of aging. They're also known as senescent cells. And, and what they do is they tend to spread inflammation like a wildfire throughout your body.

And they make other cells, zombie cells, just like zombies make other people zombies. It's the same idea. And you end up with a lot of these senescent cells running around your body that are causing you to age faster. So how do we deal with them? How do we actually get rid of them?

How do we rejuvenate our body to get rid of the zombie cells to make room for healthy new cells? Well, we're, we're kind of in a, in a, in a challenging moment, in history for human immune systems because we are dealing with things we never had to deal with before. And, and the worst, is our diet, which is a highly inflammatory diet. Our processed food diet, high sugar and starch diet, high refined oils, lack of enough phytochemicals and medicines in food, anti inflammatory compounds in food, and omega-three fats in our diet. We are really having a horrible dietary experience in America and around the world globally.

And we're seeing that effect on driving all the inflammatory diseases, obesity. And then there's not just our inflammatory diet, but all the environmental toxins that we have to deal with. And we're also having, you know, increased spread of globalization of microbes through, like we saw with COVID and the pandemic. It happens, you know, one in one country a thousand years ago, wouldn't get anywhere because you couldn't get anywhere, but now it spreads like a wildfire. So we also have other things like stress, psychological stress, physical stresses, all, all create stress on the immune system.

So this really sets the stage for this chronic inflammatory state. It makes us more susceptible to infections, more susceptible to food sensitivities, allergies, and autoimmunity, as well as rapid aging. So the question is how do we lose the science of, immunology, the emerging science of, of, of understanding immune rejuvenation to help the body to reset, to help the body fight this process of inflammation as we age, to help deal with the zombie cells and to basically make our immune systems more resilient. Well, it's the way basically, you know, we do cleaning up of our cells is through killing of the bad cells or they die. And then we have to clean and recycle them up.

And this is called autophagy. And this something I've talked a lot about, but autophagy is simply this process of self cleaning, like a self cleaning oven where your, your sort of body has this process to kind of gobble up like with Pac Man little things called lysosomes, gobble up all the old cells or damaged cells or damaged proteins, digest them and break them down into component parts and then reuse them like recycling. And it's quite a, an amazing process. And we often have a degraded process of autophagy as we age and there's lots of things we can do to stimulate it. And, and there, a lot of the ways we can do it actually is through food and through the right nutrients in food and through the right phytochemicals in food.

So we also have to actually understand how to also rejuvenate our mitochondria because our mitochondria are the energy factories of our cells or the place where we make ATP that drives all of our biological processes. So, when our mitochondria age, we age and we need to rejuvenate our mitochondria as well. So again, this is like, mitophagy is similar to autophagy. It's a process of recycling and getting rid of the old mitochondria, getting building new ones. And you need a good immune system to do that because any kind of inflammation will cause mitochondrial dysfunction.

So when, when you look at the body's ability to rejuvenate, it's quite remarkable. We have our own built in process of rejuvenation. We have stem cells. We have immune cells that can help us rejuvenate. We can actually activate all these processes, but we have to learn how.

So the question is, what can we do to activate our own body's immune rejuvenation system? What are the, what is the research showing us about how do we cultivate a healthier immune system? Well, a few things. Food, right? So food is so important.

And so eating an anti inflammatory diet that's plant rich, that's full of phytochemicals, that has medicinal properties in them that actually can kill some of the zombie cells, rejuvenate your immune system, can reduce the inflammation is so important. So lots of call for fruits and vegetables. One of the things that I like, are prebiotics and polyphenols, and they're in various kinds of foods. One of the most important foods for immune rejuvenation is something called Himalayan tartary buckwheat. Now this is an ancient grain, not even a grain, it's actually a flower.

So it's not even a grain, even though it's called wheat, it's not wheat. So that's confusing. But anyway, it's grown in the Himalayas and it's got over 132 phytochemicals, many of which are not found anywhere else in nature and have a powerful ability to regulate immunity. And some of them like Corsetin, we've seen reverse biological age. And in some preliminary data, they've shown that using Himalayan turmeric buckwheat, we can actually reverse our biological age by rejuvenating our immune system.

So really important. Next is stay active. So moving your body, exercise, interval training, really powerful for actually rejuvenating your immune system. Over exercising actually can cause a problem, but the right amount of exercise actually helps build immunity. Also make sure you get the right omega-three fats because essential fatty acids are so important.

And most fish oils are not that great because they process the fish oil in a way that degrades some of the most anti inflammatory components we call pro resolving are mediators, which are basically like breaks on the immune system. And they also take out a lot of the important things like astaxanthin, which is important for, inflammation. It is an antioxidant that is found in a lot of the omega-three fat containing fish like salmon. So wanna make sure you have the right omega-3s. Also, you wanna fertilize your microbiome.

So both polyphenols from colorful plant foods, but prebiotic and probiotic foods are really important. So, and there's, there's a lot of them out there. We've talked a lot about it on the podcast, but wanna make sure you're increasing pre and probiotic foods. Also get rid of all the junk, right? The processed food, fried foods, sugary foods, junk foods.

These are things that are just driving inflammation and actually worsening your immune system. Also sleep, really important. If you don't sleep, your immune system's not gonna work well. So seven, eight hours of good sleep, really important. Now, the other thing is that there are positive things that are gonna help you improve your immune system, like stress stressors, for example.

We know that a stress isn't always bad, that there are good stresses that activate your body's own healing response. So basically, this kind of stress is called hormesis. And hormesis is the idea that there's a stress that doesn't kill you that makes you stronger. So essentially it takes, some kind of insult, which could be exercise or fasting or a sauna or a cold plunge, and it tricks your body into thinking something bad's happening. And then your body responds by creating a defensive response by activating all its healing and rejuvenation and repair systems.

So, it's really important. And I think there's a lot of ways to do this. So, and these positive stresses are important. They help you become more resilient. So the goal is to become more resilient, more stress resilient, more immune resilient, be able to adapt to a lot of changes and actually, deal with what has to happen.

Now, one of the ways we can actually stimulate the process of healing in the body is through sort of plant compounds that they have used and developed to protect themselves. These are the plant's own protective defensive mechanisms, and they're called phytochemicals. And when the plants are stressed, they make more of these. They're their own defense system. They're their immune system.

So it's great to eat these things because they actually activate your body's own healing system. So when plants have to deal with bad soil or temperature extremes or or, you know, insects that are trying to fight off or floods or droughts. They create all these incredible molecules that are part of their own defense systems. And, and when we actually eat these, it's like eating a little bit of adversity and then they activate our body's own healing systems. And it's really powerful.

Now, Doctor. Bland has come up with an approach to immune health that I think is quite brilliant because it deals with three key categories of foods and components in our food that can really rejuvenate our immune system. The first are polyphenols from plants, things like quercetin, luteolin, asparagin, all these bioflavonoids that are that are found in food that can really rejuvenate our immune system. And they they they're found in abundance in this Himalayan powdery buckwheat. The second is eating the the right amounts of omega fats, omega three fats, and and the right kind.

And and again, I know I'm an investor in Big Bold Health, but they've they've come up with a model of getting fish oil and extracting the omega-3s from it and keeping the proresolvent mediators, preventing the degradation is purified. There's no toxins in it. It's cold process, so it retains all its benefit. And it's quite a different omega-three fat. The next is, your microbiome.

And this is supporting your microbiome through pre and probiotic foods. Actually Himalayan tallowary buckwheat has these amazing microbiome supporting fibers that are quite amazing. And, and basically you wanna make sure you get these from all sorts of foods, not just obviously Himalayan tallowary buckwheat, but omega-three fats from fish, polyphenols from plants, fibers, and pre and probiotics from our food. And they basically help us to build our own immune system. So what are the kinds of other positive stressors other than food that we can use to upgrade our immune systems and immuno rejuvenate ourselves?

Well, is hormesis. So hormesis is, like I said, this idea that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And some of them are pretty simple to do. For example, temperature extremes, hot and cold. So you can do a sauna for thirty minutes at, you know, 170 degrees, a regular sauna for thirty minutes, and you can go in and out, hot and cold, hot and cold.

That doing that four times a week has enormous benefits for your health and longevity. Cold plunge, if you get one, great. You can just fill up your bathtub with cold water or get a buck, big horse trough and fill it with ice and water and go in that. You can even just take cold shower. That also helps rejuvenate your immune system.

Not overeating and actually having a diet that is, is time restricted can be very important. So don't eat three hours before bed. Give yourself at least, you know, sixteen hours, maybe twelve, fourteen, if you're, you know, thin and you can't tolerate a longer period, but most people can deal with a sixteen hour overnight fast. That's eating dinner at six and having breakfast at, you know, ten in the morning. So it's not, it's not terrible.

And it's powerful to actually drive the activation of autophagy, mitophagy, and killing some of these zombie cells, rejuvenating your immune system. Do stuff that's also challenges you in other ways, whether it's, you know, learning a new sport, whether it's, you know, bike riding or tennis or horseback riding. You know, do something that kinda puts you out of your comfort zone, makes you learn new stuff. And I picked up tennis when I was 45, and it was I'm still learning, and I'm still improving and growing. So it's it's amazing.

And, also, try something crazy like public speaking. I do it. It's it's pretty easy for me. But if you're not used to it, it creates a stress in your system. It may actually be a good stress.

Tell us, Liz, about some of your patients that you've discovered how to actually work with it. Because it's something I also have seen in my practice. People get sick over and over again. You're gonna see these people like, why are you always getting sick? And then you start digging and are the kinds of things you What

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
are out of balance? What's out of balance? So for the first person I wanted to talk about, he was a 10 year old boy and he was coming in because he was getting every cold and flu that was going around. So his mom was getting frustrated because he was out of school almost a couple of weeks a year, if not more, because he kept getting sick. And she, of course, had to take off work and it was causing some disruption in their house.

But she was also really just worried about him. Why was he picking up every cold and flu going around? I got a good detailed history from him, and he had multiple ear infections as a younger child. So when he was his first few years of life, even up to five, he was getting lots of ear infections and often treated with antibiotics, right? So he would get an ear infection and he would take antibiotics and they would get another ear infection and he would take more antibiotics.

He had a lot of congestion in nose

Dr. Mark Hyman
even when he wasn't sick.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Even when he wasn't sick, he was dealing with it. And that's an issue we know because when there's a lot of congestion floating around, sometimes it gets stuck, Right? So kids that have a lot of congestion in their nasal passageways and their eustachian tubes, more likely for

Dr. Mark Hyman
it to

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
They get have more inflammation, and it's more likely to get stuck. And then another infection grows and you get an ear infection, for example. So he had these he had these recurrent chronic irritations.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So this is just to break it down a little bit. So what you're saying essentially is that if you're living a lifestyle or you have food sensitivities or something that's causing congestion and inflammation in your sinuses and your nose and your throat, that sets the stage for recurring infections. Yeah. Right? So maybe the treatment isn't to fix the infection, it's to figure out why there's this problem.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Right. Because the the congestion gets stuck and then it's is a breeding ground for a virus or bacteria to overgrow and an infection to take hold and for it not to be able to get out of the system. And for him, he had these chronic ear infections, but now is getting everything. But so when he had the chronic ear infections, it's important to note that he given lots of antibiotics. So for his first five years of life, he was on multiple rounds of antibiotics, two, three times a year getting antibiotics for these ear infections.

And that is something we often see, right? We'll see that somebody gets an infection, right? For this kid, was his ear infection or for somebody else, it might be a urinary tract infection or sinus infection. They are given antibiotics, but those antibiotics get rid of the infection, but they also can get rid of all that good bacteria that's lining the sinus passageways, the digestive system, the bladder area, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
The microbiome.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
The microbiome, right? And we know that those good bacteria, they're like the first line of defense. They're like that army on the front line. Right? They can say, okay, virus, don't get into my body.

Okay. Another bacteria, don't come into my nose. Right? Those good bacteria are aligning all the passageways in our body. That when

Dr. Mark Hyman
we see

Dr. Mark Hyman
They're part of our defense system.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Huge part of our immune system, huge part of that innate immune system, that immune system that's gonna attack right away when something new or different comes into the body. And so when we've been on a lot of antibiotics in the past, we will often see people whose immune system is not working as well as we'd like it to. And I

Dr. Mark Hyman
think So what you're saying is that antibiotics, even though they treat infections, somehow seem to mess up your immune system.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
I think they do. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's good studies to show that. Sometimes an antibiotic is necessary, but there's definitely been multiple times with lots and lots of people. And of course, all the antibiotics in our food supply, they're damaging a lot of that good protective, good bacteria that are that are first, you know, first line of our immune system.

So absolutely

Dr. Mark Hyman
They make you even more susceptible on the next round.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Exactly. And that's, I think, one reason why we see these chronic infections with people because they take the antibiotics, but then, gets rid of a lot of the good bacteria. So it's easier then next time for that virus or bacteria to take hold and to become an infection again. And so we see this sort of cyclical thing going on with people. And so I think that's important for us to pay attention to and say, okay, let's step back and say, do we absolutely need to use this antibiotic this time for this situation?

And I think we, you know, as physicians, it's important that we're making that we're being more careful with the use of antibiotics. But I think that's an area that we see issue with. And I think one reason for him, one of the reasons why he was more susceptible to these colds and flus. But I don't think it was the only reason.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. What was the

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
other thing you that that's important to note. Right? We always wanna find one thing. We always wanna say, oh, it's the one reason why somebody's immune system isn't working as well. But many times, it's multiple things coming together.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And I just wanna stop you for a minute there because in traditional medicine, we were trained to think about the one thing.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
We call it Occam's razor. What's the simplest explanation that could explain all of it? And we sort of do that a little bit in functional medicine, but is it the the problem with traditional medicine is very reductionist. It's like this, you know, this is one thing. And the truth isn't body is complex.

It is a system. Yes. And it's many things. It's more like a web than a razor.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Absolutely. And many times there's, you know, 10 different things going on are contributing to why this person's immune system wasn't

Dr. Mark Hyman
working So their microbiome, diet, nutritional deficiencies, So sorts of

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
for this child, you know, we realized also because of all of this congestion and frequent infections and a lot of ear infections as a kid, I said, well, you know what? Maybe we need to think about some food sensitivities that may be causing a lot of congestion for this kid and putting him at increased risk for these ear infections as a kid and infections now, because we do know that dairy and cow's milk is associated with increased risk of ear infections for some kids.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And also mucus production, congestion. Mean, I know by dairy, might immediately get runny nose and congestion.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It doesn't affect everybody by that way, but it does affect a lot of people that way.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yep. And he was willing, He was willing to say, okay, I'm gonna the kid, he was ready to say, I wanna stop getting sick all the time. And so he was willing to go off of, know, to do an elimination of dairy from his diet. And so that is one of the things we really focused on and we worked on. And it really did help.

His congestion decreased. He wasn't getting as sick as much, but we did more than that because we also realized that he, you know, I did some, nutritional biomarkers. I realized he was a little low in zinc, which is, you know, not uncommon to find. You know? So I

Dr. Mark Hyman
Zinc is so important for your immune function. In fact, in COVID nineteen, they're finding they're actually treating patients with zinc because Mhmm. It helps to interrupt the viral replication and the viral binding to this sort of cells and and the insertion into the host DNA. So I think I think it's really interesting to see that, you know, just even in this this crazy horrible infection of COVID nineteen, we're going back to basic principles of what's required to help the immune system. Zinc and vitamin c, which are being being used intravenously in studies.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yes. And so for him, you know, we added in, like, twenty milligrams of zinc and five hundred milligrams of vitamin C, a day. And and that was very helpful too to help him break this cycle. In addition, we found out we found out that he had some elevated levels of heavy metals. So his lead was a little bit high.

He was living in a home. He'd grown up in a home that was built in the early 1920s or so. So it had more just lead in the water and in the walls of the house. So, I mean, it had been it had been refurbished, but it's still you know, his lead levels were higher than we'd like them to be. And we know, right, what we know about heavy metals, we know that high levels of lead are really a problem for both the neurological system and the immune system.

But I think we also know that, you know, low levels can can result in people's immune systems not working optimally.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And also, mercury and lead also affect the gut. So they interrupt the gut function and cause leaky gut, growth of bad bugs in there. So you've got other reasons for this.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yes. Right. That's true. That's very true. So we also, you know, not only did we pull away dairy from his diet, we put him on a really good probiotic because he had been on so many antibiotics in the past.

And probiotics, there's really, really interesting studies on how well they help the immune system. I mean, we need to do a lot more research here and figure this out a lot more, but they can really help with breaking some of the cycles for people who are chronically getting sick.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, I remember this study I read years ago. It was a pregnant woman who took antibiotics I mean, took probiotics

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And compared to another group that didn't. And the women who took the probiotics during pregnancy, their offspring had dramatically less eczema and asthma

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And allergies Yes. Because the mothers took it. So same thing when you give it to kids, it also helps dramatically with these problems.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yeah. Absolutely. And can help with with it can help improve the functioning of the immune system for for some kids in certain situations. And then, of course, we gave him that zinc and vitamin C, but then I gave him I put him on a detoxification protocol. I really helped with getting these heavy metal levels down.

We we did a protocol that that had multiple different components in it. But that was because we tested and we found that his heavy metals were a little bit high. So we worked to really bring them down with, you know, glutathione, liposomal vitamin C, some binding agents, things that help support the detoxification system in his body. And, you know, that comprehensive approach really helped his immune system improve. And it helped him get out of that cycle of getting sick, you know, two to three times every winter.

And think it's really fun to watch and see that because we

Dr. Mark Hyman
I hear get somebody else, Doctor. Hyman, I don't get sick anymore. My sinuses, don't get this is the first year I've gone without having antibiotics for my sinuses.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
I know. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's just simple. I mean, remember this kid, this reminded me of the story when was in the emergency room years ago and I was working at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Mass and the this woman came in with her toddler who was probably like maybe about two years old and had just so many ear infections. One after the other after the other. And I I said, well, when did this all start? And she's like, well, he was about a year old.

I said, what happened when he was

Dr. Mark Hyman
a year old? He said,

Dr. Mark Hyman
well, I switched him from breast milk to regular milk.

Dr. Roger Seheult
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and I was like and this is before I knew about functional medicine or anything. Was like, oh, well, that's interesting. Why don't you take him off dairy and see what happens? And the kid was fine. I think I think we sometimes it's sort of that simple.

Yeah. But I I think often it's more comprehensive because you you, one, you change his diet. Mhmm. You optimize his nutrient levels.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And you also went a little deeper to look at his detoxification and his mental burden, which which is also a factor. So you did diagnostic tests that can help pinpoint these issues, and you can really create a precision approach to each individual. So this is his problem, but there may be somebody else who might have a different reason for their immune system not working. I think it's really important to understand that we at the Ultra Wellness Center and in functional medicine take a very different lens at looking at these chronic problems Yep. And and say, is the cause?

How do we get rid of the cause? And why isn't the body working properly?

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and and, you know, and and

Dr. Mark Hyman
when I learned functional medicine, one of my mentors was a guy named Sydney Baker who's sort of a Yale pediatrician, just brilliant guy. And he he he was incredibly good at at taking incredibly complex ideas and simplifying them into a few principles. And and one of the most important principles that guides me every day still today is a very simple question is, what do you need to get rid of in your body that's making it unhappy?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what does your body need to get in order to get healthy?

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So what are the things that are the problems that cause disease and what are the missing factors that you need to have a resilient system?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so this is for the amusement of the same. So this kid, it was he had too much dairy that was bugging him.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
He had too many metals that were bugging him. So you got rid of those things. Yep. And then you added in the things he body needed to function.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Needed added in the probiotics. Probiotics.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And you add in the zinc and the vitamin c. And the body knows what to do. It's like when you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff. It's just that simple. And sometimes it's a tough job to figure out what the bad stuff is that you need to get rid of and what the good stuff is that you need to get.

And that's the that's where, you know, the real, you know, meat of functional medicine is is being able to investigate those things properly.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Out.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right? And and we don't we don't learn that in medical school. And so functional medicine, we learn how to dive deep into being an expert in what are the things that cause disease and how do you create a healthy human.

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
And I think that's the I think that's really the power of supplements. You know? Sometimes people are like, oh, you know, what is supplements matter? A multi is this helpful?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Is this this Expensive urine?

Dr. Elizabeth Boham
Yeah. But when you can identify what deficiencies people have or what because of their genetics, they need more of, right? When you can really specialize and give a personalized program for somebody, it makes a world of difference. You know, I remember in my undergraduate degree in nutrition, and they were just like, oh, you know, don't bother with supplements. You know, it was really food first kind of a program.

So I never took supplements. I remember the first time I took a multivitamin, I was like, woah, this is amazing. And it was a good quality one with good methylated vitamins. I had so much more energy because I needed that extra methylation because of my genetics. Right?

But like so when you specialize and give a personalized approach, it really makes a huge difference for people. So

Dr. Mark Hyman
now whether it's boosting your immune system or improving your gut health, polyphenols are just an essential part of any health focused diet. So let's jump in and discover how you can eat your medicine and give your body the support it needs to thrive. So let's start by diving into one of nature's most powerful immune supporting agents, polyphenols. Now what are those? Polyphenols are a type of phytochemical.

Phyto means plant, chemical means chemical or phytonutrient. And these are found in our diet if we're eating an abundance of whole real plant foods. They're definitely not in ultra processed food at all, which is a real problem and partly why we're so sick. Not just the bad stuff, but not enough of the good stuff. So this is the good stuff, my folks.

Not only do these polyphenols provide a trove of benefits for health and for longevity, but they also support our immunity and our gut health, which is so important for our immune system because they feed our good gut bugs. They're literally fuel for your intestinal microbiome. And if you don't feed your inner garden right and you don't tend it right, it's not going to be nice to you. It's going to cause all kinds of issues from chronic disease and many other things, all connected to inflammation. So polyphenols reduce inflammation and they also are beneficial for modulating our immune system.

All right. So what is the impact of polyphenols on immunity? Well, there's over 8,000 polyphenolic compounds that have identified to date. Now, many more phytochemicals, but these are just the polyphenolic compounds. Now, are a diverse group of bioactive phytochemicals that have been extensively studied for their antioxidant and their anti inflammatory properties.

They modulate immune cells and they turn on our anti inflammatory pathways, which then helps reduce inflammation, which is the scourge of everybody as far as chronic disease and acute disease. They combat oxidative stress, which leads to rusting and aging, and they protect against all sorts of chronic diseases. So how do they do this? Is this really kind of cool idea called phytohormesis. Now hormesis is this stress that doesn't kill you, that makes you stronger.

It's a process where a low dose of a potentially harmful thing like exercise or strength training and ripping muscle fibers actually stimulates a positive beneficial adaptive response, like building new muscle. Same thing with cold therapy or cryotherapy or saunas. There's a whole bunch of different hormetic therapies. I talk about these in my book Young Forever, and they're a key part of longevity. But what's interesting is that these phytochemicals are tiny little stress molecules because they're the plant's defense systems.

They're not there for us. I mean, the plant didn't create these for us, but we've adapted with them to use them in our bodies to activate healing responses. It's really amazing. So it's like a little stress that makes us stronger and it's very powerful. So these polyphenols, which are actually the plant's defense mechanisms, make them a little sort of stressful in our body.

They create a little bit of a stress response, but that activates in response our healing system. And it's super important to remember because these polyphenols are rich in plant foods, but they're richer in wild foods. They're richer in foods that are grown regeneratively and then organic and then conventional. So it's sort of hierarchy because we basically have bred these out of our modern diet literally by breeding for starch and for yield and for drought resistance and for, you know, transportability and shelf stability, but not for nutrition. So we have a real issue of nutrition security here.

Food security is not having enough food to eat, but nutrition security is having enough nutrients to eat. We are definitely not having those. And I think of these polyphenols as conditionally essential nutrients. We're not seeing deficiency diseases like, you know, scurvy or rickets if you don't have them. But over the long term, if you don't have them, they actually accelerate all of our aging processes.

And by using them, they activate our longevity pathways and switches to help us live a long, healthy life. All right. So what happens when we consume them? Our bodies respond by ramping up our own defense mechanisms. They increase the production of our own antioxidant enzymes.

They enhance our detoxification pathways. They boost our immune system. They help our mitochondria. They help prepare DNA. They're doing all kinds of amazing things that help us live longer and healthier.

They basically trigger a mini workout for your cells, making them more resilient to stress and damage. Now one of the key benefits of this hormetic response, this hormesis I'm talking about, is the reduction of free radicals or oxidative stress. You know what that is. It's rusting. It's when your apple turns brown in the air or are your face wrinkles from the sun.

Right? These are all oxidative stress reactions. And polyphenols can directly reduce oxidative stress by fighting off damages caused by these free radicals. So when you incorporate a polyphenol rich set of foods into your diet, you can mitigate this damage to your cells and the harmful pro inflammatory disease causing effects that come with it. So it's really powerful to include these because they sort of are, you're working with your body to activate healing systems.

So when you do this, when you activate enhance your body's antioxidant defense systems, these polyphenols actually protect ourselves from the things that cause rapid aging and disease, inflammation and oxidative stress. Now, what about gut health? Now, until recently we thought, oh, you need prebiotics, which is fiber, and you need probiotics, which is true. But recent discoveries have made it really clear that polyphenols are essential for creating a healthy gut microbiome. And why do you need a healthy gut microbiome?

Because it regulates everything in your body. There's probably a third to a half of all your blood metabolites that come from your gut. They interact with all your biological systems and abnormalities in your gut microbiome, meaning having bad gut bugs by not eating enough of the right foods and too much of the wrong foods and not having enough polyphenols linked to everything from heart disease to cancer, to diabetes, dementia, to autism, autoimmune disease, to asthma, to fibromyalgia, to chronic fatigue syndrome. The list goes on and on and on, even aging itself. So polyphenols are kind of newly understood to have a huge role in the microbiome and they help support our microbiome by basically feeding and growing the good gut bugs, which produce anti inflammatory metabolites and also for other compounds we call postbiotics.

Now, are postbiotics? Well, you've heard of prebiotics, you've heard of probiotics. Postbiotics are basically compounds that are made by the bacteria in your gut that have a role in our physiology and our biology in a good way that makes us healthier. And these are really beneficial. They're quite amazing.

That's why I said about a third and a half of all the things floating around your blood, all the molecules floating around your blood come from the gut bacteria. Now, postbiotics support something called the innate immune system as well as the adaptive immune system. These are our two immune systems that help fight off infection. Now it's super important to keep these good gut bugs around and keep them happy because they strengthen the gut barrier, which prevents a leaky gut, which causes a lot of inflammation. And that leads to a healthier, stronger, more robust immune system.

Why is this important? Why is protecting your gut barrier important? About 60 to 70% of your immune system is in your gut. Why? Because that's where your body comes into contact with a lot of foreign stuff and your immune system is supposed to help you identify and fight off foreign stuff like bugs or weird proteins or food proteins, things that leak into your system.

The more polyphenols you consume, the stronger and more resilient your immune system. And many studies have shown that there's an inverse relationship between viral infection and polyphenol rich diets. Meaning if you're eating a lot of cauliflower fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to get a virus and get sick from it. Not bad. Just from eating a bunch of good food.

Now let's talk about a few foods that you can start including in your diet that will help protect you against the cold and flu foods and foods that contain these compounds. The first is a category of compounds called catechins. Catechins are powerful polyphenols that are found in green tea and they have shown to have significant benefit to reduce the incidence of influenza and the common cold symptoms. Now catechins are also abundant in dark chocolate, apples, gooseberries, grape seeds, kiwi, strawberries, red wine, oh, I wouldn't use that. Beer also, wouldn't use that.

Chocolate, cocoa, all that is a source of some of these catechins, although green tea is one of the highest sources. And they have a lot of benefits, right? These catechins are anticancer compounds, they fight obesity, they're antidiabetic compounds, they're anti inflammatory, they're detoxifying compounds, they're antiviral, and they have a role in preventing colas and flus. And that's really important. In fact, research shows that regular consumption of green tea catechins, either by drinking green tea or taking it as a supplement, or gargling with green tea, I've never done that, but sounds interesting, And that's been linked to a decrease in the flu.

So just just drinking green tea or taking green tea supplements or just gargling with it lowers your risk of getting the flu. That's great. I, by the way, I never get the flu shot for many reasons. But I think if your immune system's healthy and your vitamin D levels are up and you're eating a healthy diet, you're, you're really not going to get the flu or it's going to be very mild. Obviously, you're chronically ill or sick or some other reason you might need a flu vaccine, that's fine.

But for most of us, I think it's overkill. And then basically when you drink green tea, it's been linked to a reduced incidence of influenza infection and cold symptoms. So when you're looking to beat that seasonal cold, just have a cup of green tea or better yet, have a piece of dark chocolate. That's my favorite.

Dr. Roger Seheult
There is a plethora of evidence that exercise does a tremendous amount, not only for our mental health, but also for inflammation and for feeling feeling well. I mean, it it affects so many aspects. And that's why I group it as to going outside as being a package deal.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, it's so good. Yeah. It's so good. Well, yeah. So exercise is great.

What's the mechanism that exercise improves your immune system?

Dr. Roger Seheult
Yeah. So so we know, of course, that the that exercise is beneficial in terms of cardiovascular. How does it work in terms of our immune system? And it has to do with cortisol levels. They because they've measured this and and people have lower cortisol levels.

It has to do with something called BDNF, which is brain derived neurotrophic factors. These things go up and it improves brain function as well. There's something in the immune system called inflammasomes. These inflammasomes are what sort of sets things off. And what they find is that exercise modulates this.

There was an amazing study that was done at McMaster University by Jennifer Heiss. She was the director of the FIT lab. And what she showed was she looked at the last six weeks of the school term and these students that were under a lot of stress, she divided them into three groups. One was a control group. They didn't do anything different.

The other one was a moderate intensity. And the other one was a high intensity group. And she basically did this for six weeks. The exercise was twenty minutes a day. It was in one group, they got their heart rate up to about 80% of predicted.

The other one, it was only like 50 to 60% of max predicted. And at the end of the six weeks, she'd measured multiple endpoints. She looked at depression scales, by the way, moderate exercise had the best depression scale versus control group. But she also looked at IL-six, which you mentioned before. IL-six is this measurement of a cytokine inflammatory measure, which is used and a very high in COVID-nineteen.

Those levels in the exercise group were lower than they were in the control group. So to say all of that to say, is that people who engaged in moderate or low impact exercise three times a week, about twenty minutes a day, had less depression than those people. In other words, they had less depression at the end of those six weeks than they had at the beginning of those six weeks, which is just phenomenal. In other words, not only was exercise able to completely eliminate the depression associated with stress, it was actually able to make them happier despite the fact that they were under stress. I think that's incredible.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's pretty amazing. I think you talked about the inflammasome, the NLRP three inflammasome, which is part of our innate immune system that is not antibody related, and gets activated in COVID really bad. Not just the antibodies. It's this this ancient part of our immune system that's been there forever that just creates a massive storm of inflammation. It's nonspecific.

And and I think a lot of it a lot of it gets triggered through, you know, lifestyle factors, through, obviously, infections, and there's there's inhibitors of it. Like you're mentioning, that's why you sort of inhibit it through exercise, which is accessible to all of us. All you need to wear shoes. And even if you don't have shoes, you can still exercise. I mean, I and there's so much you can do at home with body weight stuff and just dancing in your living room to, you know, see me wonder like I like to do.

Whatever. So the the other the other thing that's important to think about, and you're an expert in this, is sleep. And you mean

Dr. Roger Seheult
sleep. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and, you know, I think a lot of us are deprived of sleep, but probably seventy percent of Americans don't get enough sleep. We used to sleep nine hours. Now the average is seven. And I think that sleep deprivation plays a big role. And we know when we're run down or we're stressed and we're tired and we are more likely to get sick.

So how what is the mechanism of that? How does how does sleep regulate our immune system, and how much should we be getting, and what what what should we be doing to upgrade our sleep game?

Dr. Roger Seheult
Oh, wow. Okay. So that's huge. Huge topic. So

Dr. Mark Hyman
And you did you did a whole fellowship in it. So I'm like yeah. Yeah. I get it.

Dr. Roger Seheult
So so everyone needs to understand this, and it's very important to understand. And that is is that there is a clock in your brain that tells you when everything needs to happen. So the best analogy I can use is Disneyland. Okay. I had a friend that used to work at Disneyland, but he didn't work there in the day.

He worked there at night. And that should tell you something. During the day, everything's open. People go on the rides, you buy snacks, you do all that. At night, There's a complete, complete different activity that goes on at night that gets it ready for the next day.

So they can do that again. And so people need to realize that sleep is not just an off switch. Sleep allows the body to do processes during the night that allows to do what you normally do during the day. And if you don't allow the body to do what it does at night, you're not gonna have a good day the next day. All of that is orchestrated.

Cortisol levels, melatonin levels, stress, exercise, all of those things, even eating and food. All of those are coordinated like a conductor of a very large symphony about what happens at what time in the night. And so what happens is, is that when you go to bed at night, when you go to sleep, when the sun sets, your body has been trained to go to bed and to go to sleep. And what happens is, is that we're staying up, we're watching TV, we're looking at videos, we're on social media. And the problem is that light, which is one of the sources that the body uses to entrain that rhythm, is going into the eyes.

It's going back to the master clock and it's saying, it's still day. And so what happens is the body gets confused. It still thinks it's day. So it starts to delay the circadian rhythm. And when it's time for you to go to bed, you're going to bed at eleven, 12:00 at night.

And what happens is that, that now all of those processes that were supposed to occur at night are now getting started at twelve, 01:00 in the morning of getting started at nine, 10:00 at night. What happens? You still wake up at the same time and you're not allowing those processes to go. So the number one problem just to start off is the number of hours of sleep you should be getting. For an adult, it should be at least seven hours of sleep.

Okay? Most of us gets much fewer than that. So we're chronically sleep deprived, number one. Number two, is that when it's when you start to go to bed later and later and later, 01:00 in the morning, 12:00 at night, you still have to get up early to go to work in the morning. So you're not getting the full hours of sleep.

But it's even worse than that. Because if you decide that you wanna go to bed earlier now that you've heard this talk, you say, hey, I need to get more sleep. I'm instead of going to bed at 01:00 in the morning, I'm now gonna go to bed at 10:00 at night. You are now trying to go to bed when your master clock has been set further back. You now need to start to move your clock back.

And one of the ways of doing that, two ways of doing it. Number one is stop looking at light at night so that your clock rhythm starts to come back. And number two, another way of doing that is to when you wake up in the morning is to expose your eyes to bright light. That has the opposite effect. So light in the morning tends to advance your circadian rhythm back to where it was, But exposing your eyes to bright light at night tends to delay it back, back, back further so that you're getting to sleep later.

And so that's a major major issue is light at the wrong time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So, basically, if people listen to you, Netflix stock would just take.

Dr. Roger Seheult
No. Netflix stock is this is the beauty of Netflix. You can record it and watch it whenever you want.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I know. If you want at the end of the day, they're not working, we wanna come home, relax, watch TV. It's like, I get it. Mean, I I it's tough because that's what I like to watch and, you know No. It's interesting because I think that that that we we have such a a culture of nonstop twenty four seven check emails at 11:00 at night, be on your phone, be on Instagram and social, and it's really messing up our biology because we are we are light sensitive beings that respond to our environment in not just sort of psycho emotional ways, but in physiologic ways that disturb our normal biological rhythms that lead to disease.

It's not just about not sleeping well. It's about the immune system. It's about the risk for heart disease, the risk for obesity, diabetes, cancer. All of it is connected to to sleep. So now we understand we should be getting sleep, and it's important for cleanup and repair at night.

It's important for immune system function. You know? But a lot of people struggle with sleep. So what are your as a sleep doctor, because you're also a sleep doctor and usually being a critical care medicine doctor and a million other things, what should we be doing to upgrade our sleep? What are the top tips you'd give your patients?

Dr. Roger Seheult
Before we go out and just tell everybody you need to get seven hours of sleep, we gotta give them the tools that they need to be able to get the seven hours of sleep. And as I mentioned, if you go to bed at twelve, 01:00 in the morning, you know, normally, if you go to bed at ten or 11:00 at night now to get that seven hours of sleep, you're just not gonna be sleepy. And so what we need to do is we need to shift that circadian rhythm, advance that circadian rhythm. So the number one thing that I would say is you need to get the right type of light at the right time of day. So that means turning down the lights after 09:00, making sure you're not on a e reader reading at night.

Use a very dim light and open up a regular book. What you have to put the light on, make sure it's low down. Make sure it's more in the red spectrum of light. And then, in the morning time when you get up, make sure you're exposing your eyes to bright light. Get outside.

Let the sunlight hit your eyes. You don't have to look at the sun, but get outside and get exposed to bright light in the morning. Now in the wintertime, that might not be the case depending on where you live. You might not have sun. So it might be worthwhile to invest in a light box.

They're known as SAD boxes or SAD boxes. SAD standing for seasonal affective disorder, which is actually not uncommon for people to have in the wintertime because they're not getting exposed to light and that can cause depression. But these boxes Are about thousand lux. That's how we measure light. And if just twenty minutes in the morning in front of one of these light boxes about 11 to 15 inches away from it would be a good substitute to get that light into the eyes.

You'll feel better at night. You'll feel like you're ready to go to bed. You'll sleep better. There's been a number of studies that have actually shown this, that that this type of light exposure is better for quality of sleep and for length of sleep. That's where I would start off.

The other thing is if you're having difficulty going to bed at night, falling asleep, making sure that your bedroom doesn't have a television in it, making sure you're not reading in the in the bedroom, doing other things, use that for sleeping. And, you'll notice that you'll be able to go to bed and that subconscious tie that you have to the bedroom will will help you fall asleep as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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