Using Your Nervous System to Enhance Your Immune System

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K 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). For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) The Mind & Immune System, New Findings: Acupuncture & Fascia (00:03:00) Sponsors (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, Heath-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 Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

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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