Foods and Habits That Keep Your Immune System Resilient

25:03I don't get sick anymore. My sinuses, this is the first year I've gone without having antibiotics from my sinuses. I know, right? It's just so simple. I mean, I remember this kid who just reminded me of this story when I was in the emergency room years ago, and I was working at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Mass. And 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 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 a year old?

25:34He said, well, I switched him from breast milk to regular milk. And I was like, and this was before I knew about functional medicine or anything. I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. Well, why don't you take him off dairy and see what happens? And the kid was fine. So I think sometimes it's sort of that simple. But I think often it's more comprehensive because, one, you change his diet. You optimize his nutrient levels. Yes. And you also went a little deeper to look at his detoxification and his mental burden, which was also a factor. So you did diagnostic tests that can help pinpoint these issues.

26:07And 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 and say, what is the cause? How do we get rid of the cause? And why isn't the body working properly? And when I learned functional medicine, one of my mentors was a guy named Sidney Baker, who is sort of a Yale pediatrician, just brilliant guy.

26:39And he was incredibly good at taking incredibly complex ideas and simplifying them into a few principles. And one of the most important principles that guys meet every day, still today, is a very simple question. What do you need to get rid of in your body that's making it unhappy? and what does your body need to get in order to get healthy? 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? And so this is for the immune system. So this kid, he had too much dairy that was bugging him. He had too many metals that were bugging him.

27:16So you got rid of those things. And then you added in the things the body needed to function. You added in the probiotics. And you added 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 where the real meat of functional medicine is being able to investigate those things properly. Figure that out, right? And we don't learn that in medical school.

27:46So 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. And 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 expensive urine yeah but but when when you 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 and give a personalized program for somebody it makes a world of difference you know i remember I remember in my undergraduate degree in nutrition and they were just like, oh, you know, don't bother with supplements.

28:27You know, it was really 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, whoa, 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. So when you specialize and give a personalized approach, it really makes a huge difference for people. 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.

29:08So let's start by diving into one of nature's most powerful immune-supporting agents, polyphenols. Now, what are those? is 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.

29:51They'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, these are a diverse group of bioactive phytochemicals that have been extensively studied for their antioxidant and their anti-inflammatory properties.

30:31They 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? It's 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 your strength training and ripping muscle fibers, actually stimulates a positive, beneficial, adaptive response, like building new muscle.

31:12Same 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. Obviously, 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.

31:51They 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 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.

32:29And we are definitely not having those. And I think of these polyphenols as conditionally essential nutrients. We're not seeing deficiency diseases like 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.

33:02They boost our immune system. They help our mitochondria. They help repair 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 your face wrinkles from the sun, right? These are all oxidative stress reactions. And polyphenols can directly reduce oxidative stress by fighting off damage that's caused by these free radicals.

33:40So 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 our cells 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.

34:20But 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 to dementia to autism to autoimmune disease to asthma to fibromyalgia to chronic Now, critique syndrome, and the list goes on and on and on, even aging itself.

35:00So 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 all sorts of other compounds we call postbiotics. Now, what 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 to half of all the things floating around your blood, all the molecules floating around your blood, come from the gut bacteria.

35:44Now, 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.

36:18and 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 colorful fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to get a virus and get sick from it. Not bad. It's 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.

36:57The first is a category of compounds called catechins. Catechins are powerful polyphenols that are found in green tea and that 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, kiwis, strawberries, red wine, although I wouldn't use that, beer also, I 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 anti-cancer compounds, they fight obesity, they're anti-diabetic compounds, they're anti-inflammatory, they're detoxifying compounds, they're antiviral, and they have a role in preventing colds and flus, and that's really important.

37:45In 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 it sounds interesting, that's been linked to a decrease in the flu. So just drinking green tea or taking green tea supplements or just gargling with it lowers your risk of getting the flu. That's great. 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 really not going to get the flu or it's going to be very mild.

38:19Obviously, if you're chronically ill, you're 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 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 oh it's so good yeah it's so good well yeah so exercise is What's the mechanism that exercise improves your immune system?

39:07Yeah, so we know, of course, 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, because they've measured this, 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. So 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.

39:52She 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 to 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 20 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 measured multiple endpoints.

40:26She looked at depression scales. By the way, moderate exercise had the best depression scale versus control group. But she also looked at IL-6, which you mentioned before. IL-6 is this measurement of a cytokine inflammatory measure, which is used and very high in COVID-19. 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 20 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.

41:09In 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. It's pretty amazing. I think, you know, you talked about the inflammasome, the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is part of our innate immune system that is not antibody related and it gets activated in COVID really bad. It's not just the antibodies. It's this ancient part of our immune system that's been there forever that just creates a massive storm of inflammation. It's nonspecific.

41:42And I think a lot of it gets triggered through, lifestyle factors, through obviously infections, and there's inhibitors of it. Like you're mentioning, there's ways to inhibit a true exercise, which is accessible to all of us. All you need to pair of shoes, and even if you don't have shoes, you can still exercise. I mean, there's so much you can do at home with body weight stuff and just dancing in your living room to see me wonder like I like to do. Whatever. So the other thing that's important to think about, and you're an expert to this is sleep and the immune system. And I think a lot of us are deprived of sleep, but probably 70 % of Americans don't get enough sleep.

42:23We used to sleep nine hours, now they average seven. And I think the sleep deprivation plays a big role. We know when we're run down and we're stressed and we're tired and we are more likely to get sick. So what is the mechanism of that? How does sleep regulate our immune system and how much should we be getting and what should we be doing to upgrade our sleep game? Oh, wow. Okay. So that's huge, huge topic. so you need a whole uh fellowship in it so i'm like yeah i get it 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 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.

43:12There'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 going to 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 of the night.

43:49And 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, 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 11, 12 o 'clock at night.

44:29And what happens is that now all of those processes that were supposed to occur at night are now getting started at 12, 1 o 'clock in the morning instead of getting started at 9, 10 o 'clock at night. And 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. Most of us gets much fewer than that. So we're chronically sleep deprived, number one. Number two is that when you start to go to bed later and later and later, 1 o 'clock in the morning, 12 o 'clock 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.

45:08But it's even worse than that because if you decide that you want to go to bed earlier now that you've heard this talk, you say, hey, I need to get more sleep. Instead of going to bed at 1 o 'clock in the morning, I'm now going to go to bed at 10 o 'clock 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.

45:41That has the opposite effect. So light in the morning tends to advance your circadian rhythm back to where it was, but 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. So basically, if people listen to you, Netflix stock would just take. No, Netflix stock is this is the beauty of Netflix. You can record it and watch it whenever you want. I know. But people at the end of the day, they're not working. We want to come home, relax, watch TV. It's like I get it.

46:15I mean, it's tough because that's what I like to watch. It's interesting because I think that we have such a culture of nonstop, 24-7, check emails at 11 o 'clock at night, be on your phone, be on Instagram and social. And it's really messing up our biology because we are light sensitive beings that respond to our environment in not just 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 sleep.

46:52So 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. But a lot of people struggle with sleep. So 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 give your patients? Before we go out and just tell everybody you need to get seven hours of sleep, we've got to 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 12, one o 'clock in the morning, you know, normally if you go to bed at 10 or 11 o 'clock at night now to get that seven hours of sleep, you're just not going to be sleepy.

47:30And 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 nine o 'clock, making sure you're not on an e-reader reading at night. Use a very dim light and open up a regular book. 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.

48:05You 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 10 ,000 lux. box. That's how we measure light. And just 20 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.

48:46You'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 this type of light exposure is better for quality of sleep and for length of sleep. So 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. Makes you sure you're not reading 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 help you fall asleep as well.

49:19If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer.

49:50This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

50:22It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.