Recap: Tips for a healthy immune system | Jenna Macciochi

0:00Hello, and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today, we're diving into our immune health. You can think of your immune system as your body's personal physician, diligently working around the clock to monitor, detect, and repair anything that might disrupt your health. However, because this system is often seamless and silent, we can take it for granted. So how can we better support our internal MD? Immunologist Jenna Machoke joins me to explore how simple everyday actions from what we eat to how we breathe can profoundly enhance our immune health.

0:45If I asked you to say like, where is your digestive system? You could probably point to the location on your body. If I ask you to point to where your immune system is, you might not know where. I'm literally like, I don't. Yeah, that's because it's everywhere. Okay. From your brain to your big toe, it's absolutely everywhere. And that's because essentially it's helping keep your body safe. So it has to be everywhere. It's really enriched at the barriers to our body. So, you know, under your skin, because that's exposed to the environment, the lining of your nose, the lining of your mouth, all the way down your digestive tract, you have huge numbers of immune cells that are fortifying those barriers because those barriers are very delicate.

1:28So the airway lining and the digestive tract lining. They're very delicate and that serves a function that helps us exchange oxygen when we breathe. It helps us digest our food and absorb nutrients. But we need to have that extra fortification because that's vulnerable. You know, we can inhale germs or swallow germs and that could make us sick. So you will find immune cells everywhere. They're also swimming around in our blood. So they're performing a kind of surveillance function. And then you have immune organs where they'll like congregate and do a certain function. So we have lymph nodes which are all over our body and they're all connected with the lymphatic system.

2:05That's kind of like your blood circulatory system, except it doesn't rely on the heart to pump it around. So it relies on your muscles moving. And the lymphatic system is going to squeeze those immune cells around, allowing them to circulate all over your body. And they pass in and out the lymph nodes and that's a place where they can meet and talk and do various functions. It's a beautiful picture. I'm starting to think about all that's around me. You've mentioned the word immune cells quite a lot when I've asked what is the immune system. Is the immune system like a set of immune cells? Yeah.

2:37Immune organs, lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow, and the molecules that they're producing to communicate with each other. So you've got cells, molecules, and then organs. What can you do where you feel there is really strong evidence that is really going to make a difference? Have that long game in your mind. You know, we live on average to 80 years old, but our health span is 60 years old, and that's a delta of 20 years. And it's really emerging that the immune system is the key element to closing that delta. What you're saying is that you might only have 60 sort of quality years, and you're saying you get to 20 years when you're feeling quite sick.

3:17And you're saying the immune system you think is the most important thing for trying to make that a shorter period of time. Yeah, exactly. And the things that are going to help that are also the things that are going to help you get through winter in terms of the sort of more short term feeling well and less downtime. And to me, the biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone in terms of diet is to follow a really anti-inflammatory diet pattern and stop hyper-focusing on superfoods. if you eat five or six superfoods on repeat, that's not going to be as beneficial as a really diverse dietary pattern that's anti-inflammatory.

3:55And I often reference the Mediterranean diet only because it's the one that's perhaps the most studied and has the largest volume of evidence behind it. But it's bringing in all those elements. So a variety of fruit and veg using really good fats like olive oil, lean protein, oily fish, and fiber, making sure those gut bugs are fed and happy right from the outset and then across the life course. Because that's not only going to be supporting your immune system, it's going to be minimizing that unwanted inflammation that's going to be sort of taking energy away from your ability to fight infections.

4:34It's going to be reducing the driving of those hallmarks of aging. It's really, really important, I think, that the overall pattern of your diet is considered rather than like, you know, we want to think of one or two superfoods, one or two supplements that we must take. And Jenna, can I ask you a question about that? So I follow, you know, the guidance I get from Zoe in my app every day, and there'll be a lot of people listening who are members. And one of the things that has been most surprising to me, and I think was quite surprising to, you know, my co-founder and a lot of the other scientists is the health outcomes we're focused on were a lot about improving long-term health.

5:10But one of the things that's most surprising, actually, when we look at the results from the random clinical trials, is how many people feel much better very rapidly after just a few weeks. And one of the avenues that the scientists are sort of investigating is this idea that it's sort of the microbiome affecting the immune system that could be affecting how you feel. I mean, is that what's going on? what do you think? I think there's a really strong hypothesis there. One area that I used to work in was the gut barrier permeability. So how leaky and permeable the gut barrier is. And that happens as a natural physiological response every time you eat that you experience a certain amount of leakiness.

5:52And that's normal and natural and it's part of the digestive process. But when you create any sort of leakiness in that barrier, you're going to get bits of whatever's on the inside of your gut, so microbes and bits of microbes and whatever else leaking into the body. And as soon as they're in the wrong place, they become a problem for the body. And when there's a problem for the body, the immune system is going to be alerted and it's going to turn on inflammation. So you get this postprandial inflammatory response, which in a healthy individual, when it's happening in a really normal physiological way, is completely fine.

6:29But when we have a gut barrier that's not really robust because perhaps the gut microbes are a bit out of whack because of poor diet or medications, that barrier is already going to have more leakiness than it would normally. And the inflammation is going to be increased. And that burden of inflammation, if you think about across the life course, is going to have an effect on all the things that drive aging. and I think this is what we have to think about when we're looking at that sort of long-term health picture. And do we understand, because I started leading with this other question around like how it makes you feel, like the mood and energy.

7:09Is that back to the way this immune system can have this, you know, you described about illness. Is that linked or is this something completely different? It's completely linked because inflammatory molecules that are being produced, as we spoke about before with the sickness behaviors, are going into your brain and they're acting on your brain and they're making changes in how you feel. And we even know now that there's a subset of people with mental health conditions that respond to anti-inflammatory interventions because it's like a form of sickness behaviors. So the response that we have when we have the flu that's meant to keep us lying on the sofa recovering is happening at a sort of low grade level and making people feel depressed and have poor mental health.

7:52When I'm sick, I feel low. Like it definitely affects my mood. I very rapidly am like, I'm going to be sick forever. I'm never going to feel good. I just feel bad about everything in the world. Like that's a real thing that like my immune system is doing to me. It's not just, again, if I just had a better stiff upper lip like my parents, my grandparents, I would. I mean, you know, there might be some people who can really like dig deep and, you know, push through that. But it is a real physiological response driven by your immune system, communicating with your brain to adapt your behaviors. And so this is an example of how it really can be true that the food you eat can genuinely change your mood.

8:35Yeah. And why some of the terrible ultra-processed food we eat might be making us feel bad, but also how if you could shift that diet, which I guess is what we're trying to do with Zoe membership and with this podcast, you can see the explanation for why we see this shift in mood quite fast. Exactly, yeah. I would like to talk about stress. What can you do that could mean that you actually have an impact on your immune system by somehow reducing your stress? Is that possible? Yeah, this is probably the one I find most tricky from a very personal level because, you know, there's a lot of different stress reducing techniques.

9:11but often these are kind of adding another layer to the life load so I would say everybody needs to acknowledge the importance of stress as having this impact on your your physical health don't think of it as something that's in your head and start to develop an awareness of stress and how it might be impacting your health often it's the last thing we come to we'll you know audit other areas of our life, we'll audit our diet or sleep or exercise. And sometimes actually wellness becomes a stress because people are trying to do things perfectly. I speak to a lot of people who see advice online and they can't quite apply it to their own life because perhaps it's been a bit misdirected and that too becomes a stress.

9:54So I think it's really like remembering to put things in context. And I like to break it down and think of, you know, you have to have some in the moment stress tools. So if you have a really difficult meeting at work or a difficult phone call, you know, what can you do in the moment? And for me, it's things like getting outside, like widening the gaze. So we spend a lot of time hyper-focused and because our eyes are part of our brain, you know, when we change the gaze, it's giving a signal to the brain that, you know, you're more relaxed when you have this broad view on the horizon rather than the laser focused looking at a screen.

10:31So you're literally saying like, put the phone away, walk into the garden and that actually can affect your stress? Yeah, it can affect your stress. I mean, we're talking like little minute things, but it's all going to add up. There's not just one lever that we're going to pull. So we've got in the moment things, altering your breathing, you know, so when you are inhaling, your diaphragm's moving down, your heart has a lot of space, the blood flow is going to go faster. This is going to give a signal to your brain that you have to slow the heart rate down and then you exhale. And so you have this thing called the respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

11:05So it's a constant interaction between the heart and these mechanoreceptors telling your brain when you need to speed up and slow down the heart rate. And Jenna, you're a very serious scientist, I just want to check you are saying genuinely that changing your breathing could have an effect on your stress that could genuinely have an impact on sort of your immune system. This is not just completely crazy, woo-woo, like that's actually real? It does sound woo-woo, but when you think about the biomechanics of it, you know, when we inhale and exhale, we're sort of making more and less space inside our chest cavity.

11:45So the heart is going to pick up on that and that's going to give the heart more or less space. So the brain is going to tell the blood flow to speed up or slow down. And this is tapping into the two arms of the, what we call the autonomic nervous system. So that's your fight or flight response, which is kind of the stress arm and then the rest and digest arm, which is the more kind of relaxing, less stressed part of the nervous system. So the counterbalance to stress and elongating the exhale, so just taking a normal inhale and then making sure that exhale is slowed down through the nose, this is going to really tap into that rest and digest parasympathetic part of the nervous system.

12:25So it's helping to bring a bit of calm back to the whole nervous system and help take the edge off the stress. As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day. If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high quality hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber.

13:07Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion, and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives. Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life, becoming a daily healthy habit you'll always have time for. By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains four grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants.

13:44So, order yours today at zoe.com slash daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.