Does the Immune System Influence Personality? Science Explains | Dan Nicolau | 5 Questions

0:00Welcome to the five questions. This is the pre-interview with my guests for you to connect more deeply with the person who is actually sitting in front of me. These episodes come out the day before to my main recording to the paid subscribers over on the Compassionate Cure on Substack. These are released months later to everyone, but if you want to hear them first, head to the show notes where you will find the link to my Substack. They're bite-sized, personal, and they are backed with a ton of help for advice. And they've slowly become my favourite part of Live Well, Be Well. Enjoy. What is the one small thing about you that makes you uniquely you?

0:37I have the curiosity of like a four or five-year-old, which was preserved not through choice, because I try to become less curious, be more focused and just sort of better at being an adult, but it just hasn't worked. So I basically have the curiosity and dilettante as a result level of a roughly four or five year old. Brilliant. I love that. I think the number one life lesson for me is to always be curious. And my niece is picking her GCSEs at the moment and she's very overwhelmed with the whole situation. And I saw her at the weekend and I said, it doesn't matter what you choose as long as you're curious.

1:15Just always be curious with where you're going and And that will lead you to what your heart wants, basically. Yeah. So I think curiosity is a big one. Curiosity leads to lower inflammation levels. I'll send you the paper after. I love it. Any scientist that comes out always goes. And it's because of this within my work that that's why. But it's true. And your life's mission is to look at the mind-body connection, which we're going to go into in the main show, and why inflammation is kind of at the pinnacle of all of your work. So number two is overcoming resistance. So what has been the most persistent area of resistance in your life and how did you overcome it?

1:55So I guess in work life, if I split them like that, the hardest thing is that I struggle to stay focused because I'm kind of like a little squirrel running around after acorns in different directions. It's gotten better as I've gotten older, but I still struggle to stay focused. and not kind of try to do too many things basically and in personal life something similar um you know I just want to do loads of things all the time it's like I want to experience like all of human existence in all its forms absolutely every microsecond of the day and that's not possible um so I just run around like a headless chicken a little bit a little bit but it's not horrible it's just yeah that that's probably what I what I what I fight I love that because I think so many people especially I relate to that in a very big way um and it's kind of a weakness and strength at the same time I guess that leads into your curiosity but also I guess at the same time you can probably become quite overwhelmed with it yeah because there's so many things that you're trying to process and and outreach that it can come to a point of maybe feeling overwhelming yeah and how do you deal with that in your work and personal life like how do you kind of maintain that persistence because I mean you do a lot as a job do you have six PhDs I have six degrees.

3:11Six degrees. I mean, that is... Well, one of them is my PhD. Okay, six degrees. I mean, I said that just because I remember reading your bio and thinking, wow, this is extraordinary. How do you... I mean, you've obviously managed to maintain an incredible high level of output, but how do you overcome that resistance that you just spoke about? I don't really have a good answer. Honest question, honest answer. I don't have a good strategy. Just sort of like kind of like plow through it, sometimes at a faster rate, sometimes at a less fast rate. this particular week I feel overwhelmed I've got a lot of stuff to get done in the next roughly 9-10 days and in fact over the next month I don't really have a good strategy I've gotten a lot better at things like meditation and not staying up too late traditionally areas in which that haven't been good especially with staying up late to try to finish things but I don't really have a I just kind of carry on I want to give you a better answer but I just don't have one No, I love that.

4:08We want honesty. We want honesty. We want to know that, you know, you're still figuring it out, which I think is very human. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think one thing that has helped actually since we're on the topic, there's an idea that you have to be productive. I'm not really sure what that word means. I don't think anyone really does know what it means. and that you have to, people use these words like deliver impact, you know, and like engage with stakeholders and make sure that things are tangible. These sort of like business words, they apply to business for sure, but they don't really apply to research life.

4:43I don't think they apply to like personal life. So some of it may be a little bit about shifting goals. Like I don't have to be hyperproductive all the time. Like that's not my role on planet earth to give like tangible outputs and engage with stakeholders like it's all right to suck sometimes but that's how you learn that's how you carry data it is also how you learn yeah exactly so maybe part of it is is that one thing that has gotten better is i i'm just not that judgy with myself anymore like it's okay to suck today yeah it's not okay to suck every day but it's okay to suck today but i think that's so important i mean i love oliver berkman who came on the show who talks about he has an an amazing newsletter called The Imperfectionist.

5:24And he talks about 90 minute bursts of productivity. But you also need a lot of space to be creative and allow your thoughts to be there. And so I think, you know, every time we fail, I say that in quotation marks, it's your data collection of learning. And as I think if you can fail quicker and faster, then that's actually quite successful. Because you're learning what's not working more quickly. I think it's when you stay down there and see yourself as that the whole time. You don't learn from that and recover quick enough to get the success that one might want. How do you do it? You seem like you're very productive.

5:57I look like it, don't I, on the outside. I definitely not fully got it down, but I think I am somebody who is curious, but I also am very in touch with what we're talking about today, the mind and the body. And I know when I'm pushing myself too much and I will retreat inwards. So although I can seem quite extroverted, I really need time to restore. And I really need that time on my own. So I've been better at some personal boundaries for me because I always, being a people pleaser, get worried about upsetting others. But I've had to really grasp actually like what is it that is my main goal here?

6:35And if I need time to restore, then that's my main focus. So yoga is a big thing in my life. And yeah, just my word this year has been feel. And so whenever I feel very overwhelmed, I ask myself how I feel. and if I feel very disconnected to my body then it's kind of an alarm signal to get back into my body that's very interesting so that's how I manage it the no matter how hard we try we talk about the brain and the body separately it's just so built up in our culture you know even the two of us trying to talk about the mind-body connection but one way to look at it mathematically is that the brain and the immune system let's say but you can say just say more body gen more generally than and immune system have sort of co-evolved to protect the organism from harm and to make you happy and healthy, right?

7:24So they're kind of like jointly optimizing over some happiness, homeostasis, balance function. So when you feel like something's a little bit off, that might just be kind of what an engineering would be called an error signal. Like on an airplane, it's like, well, it's not completely straight, right? So the autopilot kicks in to just kind of give it a little nudge. Yeah. And the implication of that would be that it's actually good to feel a bit off balance as means that the autopilot's working. Yeah. Signaling is telling you you're not so disconnected that you're numb from that feeling. Exactly.

8:00Yeah. Which I've been in. Which I've been in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that's a really good analogy, actually. Again, it's kind of the humanistic approach. Okay. I can't get into this too much because we're going to go into the whole episode. So the third one is small change is big impact. What's the smallest change that has brought the most ease into your life? Get rid of phones. Just get rid of them. I've actually never had any social media, so that part was easy. In fact, I'm disconnected from, people routinely tell me all sorts of things from social media that I just never heard of because I've never had one.

8:34But I still look into phones at night and stuff, you know? So we produce melatonin, I don't need to tell you, but we produce melatonin when it's dark. So you can sleep and you can rest and you can start the cycle. If you're looking into light, you're not producing melatonin. So yeah, so just get rid of the phone, get rid of it, get rid of screens, just put them as far away from, let X be the size of your house, maximize the distance between your bed and where, you know, make it as close to X as possible. Just, I put everything in the kitchen because it's the furthest away from the bedroom. Everything, laptops, phones, everything, just get rid of, get rid of artificial lights at night.

9:141 billion people worldwide are deficient in this nutrient that so many of you guys might not be aware of and women if you're listening you are more risk of being deficient in this nutrient so I'm going to first of all explain what the physical symptoms are if you have cold hands and feet pale skin extreme lack of energy or fatigue then you might be suffering with iron deficiency or anemia. Now, first off, please go to your GP to get your iron levels checked. Secondly, please explore a good iron supplement. Many people that come to me are worried about taking iron supplementation because it can cause constipation or GI distress.

9:54That's why I'm so incredibly proud to be partnering for this episode with Spartone, the number one iron-rich water supplement. Now I've personally been using these for years. The reason why is because they are naturally sourced, highly absorbable iron. That means it's much more gentle on your stomach. There's no harsh tablets. It's just one naturally sourced ingredient that works very well. You can pick it up in boots or buy online at Amazon, but please do not ignore this. It is really critical to make sure your iron levels are in check yeah yeah it's interesting I'm quite hypersensitive to light so I I am and I think that's maybe just something that's a quirk about me but I put a lot of candles on and I find scent very relaxing but the one thing I struggle with and I is to get rid of my phone and I definitely know and it's such a big thing I think everyone listening here will will find that a very hard thing to do as a tangible habit we all know this but I think your information today is actually maybe going to prompt people to hopefully do exactly this habit of putting it as far as way as possible because you're showing that inflammation can be caused by social media.

11:08And I don't know if you've seen it, the film Adolescence. I haven't seen it, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it just shows the worrisome increase of social media use in especially younger generations. It has to be content. Yeah. I don't see why you would have higher inflammation or mental health problems from watching, say, a nature documentary. In fact, I suspect you probably feel a lot better after watching a nature documentary. When I hear David Attenborough, I feel very relaxed. His voice is very relaxing. But it must be the ugly content, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, that's something that you're looking into.

11:45And we're going to hopefully touch upon that in today's conversation a little bit, as much as you can share with us anyway. so what's the one health related change that you've made that has significantly impacted your well-being this is about health transformation i want to say get rid of the phone at the risk of laboring the point because you don't think of that as a health intervention but it is a health intervention i mean one doesn't maybe you do but one generally doesn't people say that they mean something like exercise or you know eat more yogurt or something um so yeah you should eat more yogurt but um and you should exercise more but uh but if we kind of think more holistically about what things affect our health, then digital technologies have a role, but they make us stressed, they make us sleep bad, they make us worry all the time.

12:31So from a health point of view, the best thing I think you can do is just, you know, try to put some boundaries there. In some jobs it's harder, right? I appreciate that. So for example, in your job, I can totally see that you need to be on social media. Yeah. We are lucky, lucky you're in research that it's just not that important but um but if but if you if we wanted to concentrate on something um something health related uh like more kind of classically health related um it's something about regularity of exercise you know people go on crash including me go on sort of like okay christmas was you know loads of roast chicken and wine and stuff so now in january you're gonna go on a crash thing but it's quite hard to sustain like small little habits well even the word crash right feels so like detrimental in my world.

13:16And if you think about the word diet and you take tea off, you get die. Right. I had not thought of that. I will take that away with me. Yeah. And so I think, you know, we're going to talk about today's stress and inflammation and all of these things. And, you know, when you are in, and you're talking about this as a scientist, you know, it's not good to have a reductionist point of view. And I believe that very similarly with your diet. It's not good to have a reductionist point of view with your diet either. You need to have an expansive diverse diet to really help support your health um but i will go with what you said because i think you've just said exercise and this this moment came into my brain when you mentioned it that when i go to the gym and i have to say like i am part of this this is not me observing and looking down at people because i am this person but when i walk into the gym the majority of people that are like on the weights or stretching and every single person is connected to their phone you know we're either like looking at our music to pick or we're texting somebody or checking an email or someone's called us even in those moments of unless you're in a class and still then when i'm in a class people's phones go off um we're still even connected in those moments to to technology yeah so it is all consuming from an evolutionary point of view we were not designed i mean i i use that word writ large you know designed by evolution or by by a higher power to operate in this world at all.

14:39That's sort of obvious to everybody. Everybody walking around on planet Earth knows that, you know, we evolved to be in the savannah like half a million years ago. Genes change very slowly, as you know, and society has changed extremely quickly, even in the last few years. So we're operating in a world that we were not designed to be in at all. We weren't designed to have pollution and artificial light and work. Like, what's work? 90 % of the time we spend indoors what's tax yeah so we're necessarily underperforming because we're just not supposed to be where even ADHD you know something like that probably would have made someone a far far better hunter a couple hundred thousand years ago so it was probably a good thing to have ADHD but it's not a helpful thing in this society so maybe one thing is just to try to return a little bit to what the world would have been like that we were designed to inhabit.

15:36We're not going to be able to do it perfectly. We're not going to get rid of artificial lights. We're not going to get rid of computers. We're not going to get rid of, you know, society. And just as well that we don't because we would sort of collapse into going back to trees. But we can try to do some, some, we can take some steps towards having more fresh air and eating a little bit more like we were supposed to a couple hundred thousand years ago, like not tons of ingredients from tons of different places all at the same time. We can try to sleep a bit earlier. I'm very guilty of this, actually.

16:07I'm a night owl. But if we try to just return a little bit, I guess that's the lesson of some of the work we're doing in the lab. But if we just try to return closer to the world that we were actually designed to inhabit, then even absent other changes in your life, if you just kind of like simplify, simplify. Because we used to have a very simple life and now we have a very complex life. So the last question, peace with the past. Quite a big one. What's the hardest thing for you to make peace with about yourself or your life in general? The hardest thing? Oh, that's easy, actually. I don't know if it's a two-sentence answer, but so I struggle with the idea that I am myself, like I'm a continuation of my past self.

16:53And yet my past self made some decisions and, for example, said some things and did some things that I'm not proud of. but I wouldn't you know do them now right so I have made mistakes and I am but I am still that person and so on the one hand I am you know responsible for having said things that I'm not proud of and even done some things that I'm not proud of and at the same time I have to forgive that guy because it's not really you know I've evolved right like everyone can relate to this yeah everyone but I don't think you can just say you know what I'm just gonna forgive 25 year old Dan that was like a different guy he wasn't a different guy you know it's a continuation so I struggle with this idea I struggle with kind of regret but not not regret with a big R it's just you know if I had my time again I wouldn't you know maybe I would have done that better or I would have been kinder or something like that but at the same time it is me so should I feel guilty yep to some extent but not consumingly you know because it is a different person I really struggle with that actually wow on a sense of every day I'm like man why did I why did I say that you You know, why did I say this thing to this person 10 years ago?

17:59Like they hadn't done anything wrong. They were just tired. I don't know. I just snapped or something. So it's like, yeah, trying to like, I don't know. Yeah, I make this gesture with my hands, but this is kind of like trying to sort of have this conversation with my younger self. But my younger self did the best that he could with the information he had available at the time. Virtually by definition. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think that's such an important thing because I think there's not one person listening to this show or on planet earth that has gone through their life without making mistakes, speaking to someone unkindly, waking up on the wrong side of the bed, as we like to put it, and acting in a different way.

18:33And I think sometimes we can go through our entire lives and never take responsibility. And I think the beauty of taking responsibility and reflecting is that you learn very quickly, actually, the things that you maybe don't want to carry on in your life. But I think we all have to go through it. You know, I've done a lot of things in my life where I look back and go, well, well, maybe I shouldn't have acted in that way or maybe I shouldn't have treated that person in that way. But I don't think it comes from, it never came from a malicious, pointless view. You know, it always came from the tools that I had and how I understood myself at that time.

19:06And I know that going forth, there will be people that would treat me in a way that's unkind and unjust, but I very much guarantee that it won't be from a malicious point of view. Yeah, it generally isn't. And now I have an understanding that when somebody, for instance, somebody came on the show last week or didn't come on the show and turned up and we're actually I could tell we're in a really overwhelmed state and didn't come on with a microphone and didn't come on with any headphones which we don't really do virtual recordings anymore and they were very quick to kind of say I don't have my stuff here but the quality wasn't good enough and so we tried to figure it out and navigate it and I could tell that they were frustrated and overwhelmed and really stressed but they were biting being very reactive towards trying to find a solution to where we decided to not do the recording at all and I think five years ago I would have been very reactive back and taking that to heart and actually what I could see now is that person was really struggling with something and it was nothing to do with me and it was bad timing and they were doing the best that they could and they would probably look back and maybe say I handled that and maybe in an incorrect way but I didn't I didn't take that to heart, I could see that that person was struggling.

20:14And so I think if we can kind of forgive ourselves in the same way, that allows us to kind of really like let go and kind of move forward with what's most important things. Wisely said. Being an immunologist helps a little bit with that stuff because I think we don't usually think of it this way, but your immune system influences your personality and your personality influences your immune system. It's something that that hardly anyone ever says, but it's been known for not that short of a time. For example, people who are conscientious have higher levels of some inflammatory markers. And conversely, people with higher levels of some inflammatory markers have different personality types.

20:51And maybe it's not clear which way that causality is, right? So like maybe if you're someone who is careful because of your personality, your immune system is less used to having to respond to like silly things because you don't do as many silly things. Maybe somebody who's a bit more adventurous has a kind of a, you know, the immune system sort of taken a beating because they've done stupid things. And so we just had to learn to protect the person, right? But in any case, but it's interesting that they are completely, completely related throughout the life from when you're a child all the way up until you take your last breath, your immune system influences your personality and vice versa in a dynamic way.

21:27So it's changing. And also that, for instance, just to give you an example of, there are infections that radically change personality. I'll give you a very simple example, toxoplasmosis. Toxo is a bug that cats give to us. They give to us because, they give to mammals, because it makes mammals take more risks. Until recently, cats ate us. And in some parts of like, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa, they still do. So big cats eat gorillas, for example. When you have this infection, it lives in your amygdala. It doesn't do anything else to you. It doesn't make you feel sick, but it makes you take risks.

22:01And those risks include mice coming out of holes so the cats can eat them. Now, cats don't eat us anymore, but they still give us this bug. And a lot of the human population, a fair proportion, has it. It makes you way more likely to take risks. In fact, if you look at the number of deaths that we can attribute to this bug, from people running red lights and having unprotected sex and doing silly jumps off buildings and stuff, it makes a mockery of murder, war, terrorism combined. it's more deaths than tuberculosis, it's more deaths than malaria, things that we think of as serious problems, like a million people a year die essentially from the risks that they take from having this bug, which does nothing else, doesn't make you feel sick.

22:43And if it was that simple, we could simply just take some antibiotics and eradicate it, but that wouldn't be a good idea because it also makes you more likely to start startup companies. It also makes you better looking by mechanisms that we don't understand possibly in men through expression of testosterone. But basically the immune system and the brain are very, very intimately connected. And being an immunologist, just to put a bow around that, makes it a lot easier to forgive yourself and other people. Mic drop. Wow, that's fascinating. How can we figure out if we've got this bug? You can take a test.

23:13Oh my gosh. Everyone listening to this now is Googling what test can we take? You can take a test. It has some deep questions about, you know, if somebody punches someone in the face, should they be sentenced as someone who doesn't, you know, someone with toxo who does something violent or something silly like running a red light should they be treated the same way and sentenced the same way and punished the same way as someone who doesn't have toxo because you know people usually should have known better well maybe she she couldn't have known better because she had toxo yeah you know they'd ask some deep questions about how much of our free will really is just immune sort of driven basically gosh that is so interesting well i think that is the perfect way to end these five questions um which actually is human forgiveness of oneself.

23:56Thank you, Dan. I'm very excited now for our main episode, which is, whoa, that's the five questions. Who knows that we're going to go to the main episode. That was a warm up. Well, we're going to be looking at the mind body intersection with the immune system kind of at the forefront of it and how social media can play a huge role now today and increasing our information, how cancer might not be what people think it is. And I'm very excited to delve into this. So thank you for being open for those five questions. No, thank you for asking them. That's the week off to a solid start.

24:33Thanks so much for listening. To hear the full episode, there's a link in the description.