Using Your Nervous System to Enhance Your Immune System

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Life Sciences, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 30.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2021

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode teaches you a lot about the immune system, immune-brain interactions and offers 12 potential tools for enhancing immune system function. I discuss how our immune system works and science-supported tools we can use to enhance our immune system. I discuss the innate and adaptive immune systems and our various microbiomes-- not just in our gut but also in our nose, eyes and mouth and how to keep them healthy. And I review how specific patterns of breathing and foods maintain a healthy mucosal barrier that is crucial for fighting infections. I discuss how certain neurochemicals called catecholamines enhance our immune system function and how to use specific breathing protocols, types and timing of heat and cold exposure, and, if appropriate, supplementation to activate catecholamines. I also discuss the role and use of serotonin for the sake of accessing the specific types of sleep for recovering from illness, and I discuss how to increase glymphatic "washout" of brain debris during sleep. I also review fever, the vagus nerve and the use of atypical yet highly effective compounds for rhinitis (nasal inflammation). Read the full show notes for this episode at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 The Mind & Immune System, New Findings: Acupuncture & Fascia 00:03:16 Sponsors: AG1, LMNT & Waking Up 00:07:41 Foundational Tools & Practices for a Healthy Immune System 00:11:20 Immune System Basics: Skin/Mucous, Innate & Adaptive Immune System 00:17:08 Killer Cells, Complement Proteins (“Eat Me!” Signals), Cytokines (“Help Me!” Signals) 00:21:06 The Adaptive Immune System: Antibodies 00:28:00 Tool 1: Nasal Microbiome and “Scrubbing” Bacteria & Viruses; Nasal Breathing 00:30:33 Tools 2 & 3: (Not) Touching Your Eyes; Gut Microbiome & Fermented Foods 00:34:20 Some Interleukins Are Anti-Inflammatory 00:34:56 Sickness Behavior 00:39:08 Some People Seek Care When Sick, Others Want to be Alone 00:42:00 Sickness Behavior & Depression: Cytokines 00:43:40 Reduced Appetites When Sick: Protein, Iron, Libido 00:46:45 Vagus-Nerve Stimulation: Fever, Photophobia, Sleepiness 00:53:03 Humoral (Blood-Borne) Factors, & Choroid Change Your Brain State 00:55:04 Tools 4, 5: Reducing Sickness: Glymphatic Clearance, Pre-Sleep Serotonin, 5HTP 01:07:03 Tool 6: Hot Showers, Saunas, Baths & Cortisol, Heat-Cold Contrast 01:10:53 Feed a Fever & Starve a Cold (?), Adrenaline 01:12:36 Tool 7: Activating Your Immune System w/Cyclic-Hyperventilation, Alkalinity 01:29:10 Brain Chemicals & Cyclic-Hyperventilation; Catecholamines, Dopamine 01:32:10 Mindsets & Immune Function; Yes, You Can Worry Yourself Sick 01:37:00 Tool 8: Healthy Mindsets, Hope, Dopamine; Tool 9: Tyrosine; Tool 10: Cold Exposure 01:42:05 Once You’re Already Sick: Accelerating Recovery; Tool 11: Spirulina, Rhinitis 01:46:09 Histamines, Mast Cells 01:49:22 Tool 12: Acupuncture: Mechanism for How It Reduces Inflammation; Fascia, Rolfing 01:53:40 Mechanistic Science & Ancient Practices 01:58:00 Synthesis, Ways to Support Us (Zero-Cost), Sponsors, Supplements, Social Media Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.9	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.4	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing the immune system and we are also discussing the nervous system
0:20.4	which is the brain spinal cord and the connections of the brain and spinal cord with all the organs of the body.
0:25.4	We are also going to discuss how the nervous system can be used to activate and control the immune system.
0:33.8	About 10-20 years ago, somebody said that the mind could control the immune system.
0:39.5	It'd probably get laughed out of most academic conferences and certainly the work wouldn't be published in quality journals.
0:45.4	But nowadays, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of quality peer-reviewed studies on how the mind and how the nervous system
0:54.2	can control activation of the immune system.
0:57.5	This is a wonderful growing body of research and just to give you a hint of where we are headed with this,
1:03.9	just this last week. There was a paper published in Nature, which is the Apex Journal for Scientific Publishing,
1:11.0	Premier Journal, Extremely Strangent.
1:14.1	A paper published in Nature from Chufu Maz Lab at Harvard Medical School,
1:18.7	explored how acupuncture can reduce inflammation in the body.
1:24.5	And I will describe this study in a bit more detail later.
1:27.9	But what they discovered was that by stimulating the body in particular ways,
1:33.6	at particular sites on the body, they were able to liberate certain cells and molecules that enhance
1:41.8	the function of the immune system and potentially can be used to combat different types of infection.
1:46.8	And just to give you another little hint, they found that a particular type of organ tissue called fascia.
1:54.2	Some of you may have heard of fascia.
1:55.5	Fascia surrounds our muscles.
1:57.8	Just to look at it, you might think it's a kind of useless tissue.
	...

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