How to Prevent & Treat Colds & Flu
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I mean, huberman and am a professor of neutral logy and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine. Today we are discussing colds and flu.

We will talk about what a cold really is and what a flu really is in terms of how they impact your brain body. And of course, we will discuss how to avoid getting colds and flus. There are indeed some excEllent science supporting techniques to avoid getting colds and flus.

But of course, IT is impossible to completely avoid ever getting a colder flu in your lifetime. So we also discuss how to more quickly get over a colder flu should you happen to catch one. So during today's discussion, i'll talk about the immune system. I'll give you some mechanistic understanding of how your immune system works, and I promise to make that discussion accessible to everybody regardless of whether not you have a background in biology.

And with that understanding of how your immune system works, you will be a much Better position to understand which tools, that is, which protocols to implement should you be exposed to a colder flu or if you are trying to get over a colder flu more quickly than you would otherwise, you learn about some poor behavioral tools for bolstering your immune system. And we will also discuss various compounds that you might consider taking to enhance the function of immune system to ward off or treat colds and flus. I will also be dispelling a number of common myth about treatments for the common cold and for the flu.

There are also so many ideas out there about what one could take or do in order to avoid getting the colder flu or more quickly, get relief from a colder flu. However, many of those are pure myth. There's just no science to support them in.

Indeed, there are some science that counters those ideas, but the good news is there are indeed science supportive behavioral protocols in compounds that one could consider in order to avoid entry, cold and flux. Before we begin, i'd like to that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electorate drink with everything you need and nothing you don't.

That means plenty of salt magnesium in patashie, this so called electronic light, and no sugar. Now salt, magnesium um and potash are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electro lights need to be present in the proper ratios.

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Again, that drink element element t dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja sessions and nsd r non sleep depressed protocols. I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I start doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP, turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations.

And that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have few minutes to meditate. Other times I i've longer to medical.

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Again, that's waking up that com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. Okay, let's talk about the common cold first off. No, unfortunately, today I cannot tell you the cure for the common cold because indeed there isn't one.

One interesting question, however, is why don't we have a cure for the common cold? And the reason is that the cold virus, as is referred to, is actually a bunch of different viruses. Some codes are caused by one what's called stereotype of the virus.

Other codes are caused by a different serotype of the virus. There are over one hundred and sixty different types of what people call the cold virus. Now all viruses fall under the umbrella of general category of viruses called rino viruses. You can remember that easily because rhino sounds like rino horn, the rino srs. Schorn, which is, of course, in the center of the rhino's face, which is where your noses and cold almost always causes some degree of nails symptoms in humans, either running nose or sneezing or stuffed nose, or sometimes, unfortunately, all three. Now, the reason we don't have a cure for the common cold is that all of those different serotypes of the cold virus mean that the virus itself has a different shape on its outside.

And as a consequence, even if you've been exposed to a cold and you've developed antibodies against that cold virus, the next cold that comes along very likely has a different shape, and therefore your bodies antibodies to the cold virus that combined successfully before can't latch onto and defeat that next different serotype of the cold virus. Now little bit later, i'll talk about the immunity stem and how those different antibodies are generated. But for the time being, understanding that there are a lot of different types of cold viruses explained, first of all, why we don't have a cure for the common cold, but also why you can get multiple calls within a given year or even within a given season.

Because even if you develop antibodies against one serotype of the cold virus, a different serotypes can come along, and you can get sick again with that new serotype of the cold virus. So how do you catch a cold? Now, one of the problems with the cold virus being called the cold virus, and the fact that, indeed, there are more cold virus present and transmitted between humans in the cold winter months of the year, is that people generally assume that IT is the cold temperatures outside that actually give you a cold virus.

And that is simply not true. However, what you heard is a kid, if you're mom, most likely, but maybe your dad said, hey, don't go outside without a sweater or jacket on, you're going to catch a cold or you're going to catch cold, has prompted this a this myth that the cold temperatures themselves are the cause of catching a cold virus. And that simply not true.

The virus that we call the cold virus is spread by breathing or by sneezing or by people sneezing or cuffing or breathing onto their hands and then touching surfaces, and then other people touching those surfaces and then touching, most likely, their eyes in order to self. In fact, now we're going to get into the details of how far the virus can spread with a sneeze, how long you can survive on the hands at sea. But for the time being, know this, the cold virus is a pretty stable virus in that IT can survive on surfaces, non human, or human surfaces, meaning skin, or on a table, or on a glass, or on the door handle, for up to twenty four hours.

So for all you hypo contacts out there, I probably just gave you a little Spike in court as all. And for you non hyper contract, I hope what I just said, excuse you to the fact that just avoiding people who are sneezing and coffin is not sufficient to avoid getting colds and flus. However, the fact that a cold virus is alive and well on a given surface, let's say, on a door handle does not mean that if you touch that door handle that you will necessarily be infected with that cold virus.

And that's because your skin SHE provides an excEllent barrier against most viruses and bacteria. Your skin also includes a lot of anti viral substances on IT, even if you haven't put any of that alcohol stuff for the hands and titzer or stuff on your skin is a very important barrier component of your immune system. We're going to talk about that a little bit later.

But if somebody has a cold and the happy to perhaps you know, White their nose or sneeze into a tissue, hopefully into a issue, then discard that tissue. The cold virus particles are extremely small. How small? Well, most of us are familiar with thinking about centimeters or inches.

If you think about a millimeter being one, one hundreds of a centimeter, well, you can take a millimetre, and you can divide that up into a bunch of little slices also, such that you get the micron. The micron is one one thousand of a centimeter. And if you want to get a sense of how thick or thin that is the side of a credit card, the little thin side of a credit ard is about two hundred myrones thick.

So if you set your credit card flat on a table, and then you look at IT from the side, that tiny, tiny, thin law edge that's about two hundred microns, the cold virus is made up of particles that are probably in the range of about five microns or so. So it's extremely small. I mean, the cold virus, therefore, with a good sneeze or even a light sneeze, can spread really far.

Now the good news is those particles are relatively heavy. They don't tend to miss about in the air for very long. They tend to fall down onto the ground or onto surfaces. But as I mention before, they can survive a very long time on those surfaces.

So should you touch your hand to a door handle or table? Or shake the hand of somebody that has called virus on their hands, either because they themselves have a cold, or they contacted somebody else called virus and they somehow landed on their hands just because the other person sneeze. All these scenarios are very realistic.

That cold virus will not infect you unless you can get inside of your body. And one of the primary entry points of IT getting inside your body is via the eyes by wiping that called virus on your eyes. Now you may think, okay, i'm just not gona touch my eyes.

But a little bit later were going to talk about a study that shows that almost always, indeed almost always, when you meet somebody new, you touch your eyes and the frequency of people touching their face, that is, the region of the face around the eyes and their eyes throughout the day is extremely high. So this is one of the primary routes by which the cold viruses transmitted from one person to the next. But of course, there's also the around the world familiar with, which is the person that is seizing or cuffing or blowing their nose into tissues and then throwing them in the trash and not washing their hands after each and every time they do that.

So an important aspect of today's discussion that we will get into once I also present you what a flu is and how IT differ the cold is that we're going to need to talk about what stage of infection people are actually contagious with the colder flu. And there's actually a lot of mythology about this. In fact, there's a lot of just lying about this.

People will be caught ing or sneezing and they'll say, yeah, i'm not contagious any longer or people make up these things like, oh, you know, if you had the flu for two days, then you're no longer contagious or that you can't be contagious until you have symptoms. So we're going to go through all the aspects of condition and how coffin or sneezing or how long you've had a cold or flu actually relates to, whether not your contagious in a little bit, but for the time being, know that the cold virus is very, very small. IT can be transmitted through the air.

IT can be transmitted via contact from skin, skin contact and IT can survive on surfaces for up to twenty four hours. And when you touch those surfaces or a person with the cold virus, most often the way it's going to get into your body and infect you such that you get a cold is by touching your eye region. Although touching other regions of your body can also pass the call virus interference, ince the mouth lips.

But that's actually far less common. So we get into that in just a little bit. Now, different serotypes, that is, different types of cold virus, tend to create a different array of overall symptoms, such that, you know, one code might be a really good bad cold, others are more mild.

Some tend to induce more running nose, others more stuff my head and a little bit of fever, or in some cases, a lot of fever. One thing that's important understand is that if people are going to be infected by the cold virus, they tend to develop symptoms one to two days after they were exposed to the virus. Now the good news is, if you are exposed to the cold virus, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to catch that cold virus.

That is, if your immune system can fight off that cold, even if you've never been exposed to that serotype before, then you won't actually have that code and you won't transmitted. So put differently, IT is possible to avoid getting a cold virus, even if you've never been exposed to that serotype of cold virus and you happen to come in to contact with somebody who has that serotype pe of cold virus. Or you touch a surface of some object door handle eta that has a particular serotype of the cold virus on IT and got forbid you then wipe your eyes.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get sick. And a good portion of today's episode is going to focus on tools that are supported by science that allow you to bolster eur mune system and greatly increase the probability that even if you are exposed to A L serotype of the coal virus, that is one that's new to you, that your bodies never seen before, that you won't get sick. Another thing to understand about the cold virus is that you're generally most contagious other people when you feel at your worst, that is, when you're cuffing and sneezing and you the stuffy head water your eyes and so on.

But you can also be contagious to other people when you are starting to feel Better. That said, most of the data point to the fact that about five to six days after you hit your peak of worst symptoms, or I guess we should say your native, the dip of war symptoms because it's such an awful state to be in. You are probably exciting th Epace i n w hich y our c ontagious.

Now I want to be very clear. That does not mean that if you've had a cold for five or six days that you are no longer contains. If you continue to experience sneeze, zing and coffin water eyes in the evening, you're feeling much worse versing in the morning you're feeling especially groggy, said, well, then you are still contagious.

Another way to frame this is, you know, those people that continue to shop at the gym and shop at work, and they tell you, yeah, I got this coal, but i've had IT for a few days. I'm no longer contains. They wipe in their eyes and they are blowing their nose.

Frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. They are basically a walking, talking, breathing, sneezing, cough, fing called virus vector. A vector is a route for passage of a virus. So please, if you are ceasing, if you are caught ing, if you are still experiencing the symptoms of a cold, stay home, stay away from other people as much as possible. And I realized that some people simply cannot avoid going to work or cannot avoid interacting with other family members or other people if they have the cold virus.

But this mythology that if we've had a cold for a few days and we're starting to feel Better, but we're still exhibiting symptoms that were not contagious, that is, pure myths, is simply not grounded. In fact, now there's nothing that can be done about that first day or two, after which we're exposed to a cold virus where we are not experiencing symptoms. And it's quite possible to pass the cold virus on other people.

But I think that every workplace, every home environment, every gym, every society would benefit greatly if people who were sick with the cold did not expose other people do that call virus as much as possible. And indeed, this is a serious issue. It's not just about a few sniffin watery eyes.

There's an enormous financial and mental health cost and physical health cost to people getting the cold. And it's not just about people who are immune compromised or elderly people. What we're generally referred to as the cold today can be mild and can be moderate IT can also be very severe and IT can exacerbate health issues that people have.

We'll talk about that a little bit later in how to offset some of those health issues. okay. So now let's talk about the flu virus.

The flu virus is, as I mentioned, a virus. And just like with the cold, there are different serotypes of the flu virus. There are also different general categories of flu virus.

So you've got your a type flu virus, your b type flue virus and your c type flu viruses. And by the way, i'm saying flu viruses, but of course, i'm referring to influenza, but it's just kind of common place nowadays to refer to influenza as the flu. Similar to call viruses, the different types of flu viruses exist based on the different types of proteins that they express on their surface.

In fact, in the news over the last few years, there been a number of different flu virus strains that have been described according to their surface protein characteristics, things like the h one n one virus. What is h one n one? H one n one describes the different types of proteins that are expressed on the surface of that particular flu virus.

Now, the most common type of flu viruses are in that, a category of flu. This is the type of flu that caused the spanish flu. Now, the spanish flu, which, by the way, did not originate in spain.

People think IT probably originated in new york, perhaps elsewhere, but certainly not in spain, killed anywhere from seventeen to fifty million people, depending on which literature read. That's an enormous number of people. And IT occurred in four different waves of infection that occurred between the years nineteen and eighteen and thousand and twenty.

The spanish flu was a type A H one n one virus. And actually, it's worth noting that this winter season, and there have been some cases of h one n one already reported in the united states and elsewhere, of course, the goal is always to contain the propagation of those flu viruses, and that is done through a number of different approaches. The best and most reliable approach, of course, is to not come into contact with somebody that is caring the h one and one or any other type of flu.

yours. However, based on the way that the flu virus infects the body, the way that the symptoms is emerged in the ways that virus is propagate, that can always be avoided, one thing to know, and I consider this unfortunate aspect of flu virus biology, is that the flu virus, unlike the cold virus, can only exist on surfaces for about two hours. After about two hours, intends to die off.

So the flu virus is most typically passed by human human contact, or coming into contact, that is, walking into a cloud of somebody's sneeze that contains flu virus, or someone's cough that contains flu virus. And yes, IT is possible that shaking someone's hand could actually introduce flu virus to your hand. And then if you wipe your eyes, or i'll talk about a few other portals of entry for the flu virus and cold virus in a few minutes can get into your body and infect you.

And yes, you can pick up the flu virus from surfaces. However, that is far less common then the flu virus passing from human, human contact. Now there aren't as many different types of flu virus as there are types of cold virus, and that's why there have been attempts at making flu vaccines or so called flu shots.

I think most people are familiar with the signs and advertisements online and in the workplace and school saying you get your flu shot this season. The reason that flu shots can exist at all is because they're limited enough types of flue virus present in a given year that specific vaccines, that is, flu shots can be generated against that particular strain of the flu virus. So how effective is the flu shot? And I want to be a very specific care.

When we say the flu shot singular IT sort of implies that there's one flu shot that can combat all the different types of flu. And as you just learned, that is not the case. So we probably should be saying the flu shots.

But just for sake of simplicity, when I say the flu shot, I mean the flu shot that's given in a given flu season that is directed at specific strains of the flu because researchers have determined that that particular strain of flu, or strains of flu, are the ones that are most abundant for that particular flu season. Studies have shown that getting the flu shot reduces one's risk of contracting the particular flu that is most abundant that season by about forty to sixty percent. But of course, the flu shot is completely in effective in combatting any other forms of the flu virus and of course, codes or other types of upper respiratory infections.

Studies have also shown that taking the flu shot can reduce the severity of warm symptoms if they, in fact, get the flu anyway. Now personally, I don't typically get the flu shot, and the reason for that is that I don't tend to go into environments where I am particularly suitable to getting the flu. I don't work in a hospital or clinic.

I don't tend to interact with large numbers of people on a daily basis. So for me, i've opted not to get the flu shot. Now that doesn't mean that i've never contracted the flu.

As I mentioned earlier, I tend to get sick with a colder flu about once every eighteen to twenty four months in the severity of that colder flu has ranged from at one point of very high fever in one case, but typically a moderate fever, and usual symptoms of malaise that we've been discussing. And I managed to get over those without having taken the flu shop pretty easily. Now of course, we also don't know that those were actually flus.

Despite the distinct differences between the symptoms of cold and flu, most people don't really know whether not they have a cold or flu. So this is another thing to think about when considering whether not to get the flu shot. Ultimately, because, at least of mind knowledge, most workplaces do not mind that people get the flu shot.

I could be wrong about certain workplaces, but my experience is that most workplaces do not Mandate that people get the flu shot. When you take the flu shot, you're really hedging a bet. You're hedging a bet against the fact that you will be or not be exposed to that particular string of flu virus that most abundant that season or strains of flue virus that are most abundant that season and that the flu shot that you're taking is directed at those particular strength.

So again, in my case, I don't tend to take the flu shot, but of course, you need to make the decision. That's right for you. For instance, if you have family members that are immune compromised or you work in a school, or you think that you are exposed to a lot of, or you're concerned about transacting flu to any one, individual or group of individuals, those are all things that need to be taken in the consideration.

And of course, speak to your physician. I will also say this, which is that I mention that I ve tended to catch colds or flus at a rate of about once every eighteen, twenty four months. And when I say a colder flu, I mean a serious one, one that keeps me in bed where I have a fever and i'm sweating.

What I have done, and I continue to do, is because I pay pretty close attention to how well i'm sleeping, or different life events, my different workouts seta. And I put those into my calendar, and I have a short hand to do that. So IT only takes about thirty seconds each day.

Okay, did this work out? I was kind of level. Seven out of ten got good sleep last night or poor sleep.

And I know what good in poor sleep is for me. I mean, that's about the level that i'm charting these things. I have been able to go back and look at the events proceeding when i've come down with a colder flu.

Again, I don't know whether I was a cold or flu, but before I got sick and I ve seen, for instance, like i've ever done too hard workouts in the day, something I never do any longer, i've tended to get sick after that. If i've tended to do hard workouts and then exposed myself to call temperatures while traveling, especially traveling in overseas that tended to proceed those calls or floods, which again, for me, are very seldom. So it's a limited data set. This is early annic data, meaning related to my own history of getting colds and flus.

But it's something that I actually recommend people do, which is, you know, to pay attention to when you for starting to getting symptoms, pay attention to when you got over a given what you think is a colder flu, and then to look at what was happening in the days before in that day, I don't think it's possible to do hyper precise forensics on a colder flu, right? I mean, could have gone into the gas station, put your credit card in the machine to, you know, grab a drink out of the refrigeration, and picked up a colder flu from the handle of the refrigerator or from the credit card machine, or even from the gas pump, you simply don't know. However, if you look at the pattern of behavior, travel, sleep, exercise, sorts of interactions you are having prior to getting a bad colder flu, chances are you're going to learn something interesting and be able to avoid getting a serious colder flu, at least to some extent going forward.

And i've done that, I think, fairly successfully because I can tell you that the frequency calls are flews that i've come down with. Hasina's been dropping from year to year. So where as a decade ago, I tended to get colds or flus probably about once a year and in some cases, even twice a year, although that was pretty rare, that really expanded to about once every eighteen months.

And then in the last five years, I think i've gotten sick two times pretty badly with a colder flu, and then once with a kind of mild, colder flu. So I tell you all that just as an example of how you can start to think about how your immune stem interacts with different types of behavior is different types of situations such that you can learn something about your immune stem and what's going to best protect you against getting colds and flus going forward, which, of course, is a great thing to do. Because we all think that we can get out there, be around people that are coffin and sneezing.

We can go to the gym when it's crowded in winter. All that person over there is, you know, coughing. But I just, you know, stay if you feed away, no big deal and while I don't want to turn anyone to hyper contacts, that's how you get infected. That's how you get a colder flu at. And at the same time, I don't think anyone should you know get to the point where they're afraid to go into a gamer, afraid to go to the workplace.

But I will say once again, if you're sick with a colder flu, if you are coughing ing, sneezing, blown your nose, running eyes and you're walking into work or the gym or on the public transportation and you're telling people i'm not contagious, your line, i'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called ag one, is A A vitamin, mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic Greens since two thousand and twelve, so i'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

The reason I started taking athletic Greens and the reason I still take athletic Greens once are usually twice a day, is that IT gets to be the probiotics that I need for god. Health, our god is very important, is populated by got microbial to that, communicate with the brain, the immune system and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediately and long term health. And those probiotics and athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiology alth.

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And we'll give you a year supply of vitamin d 3k two again， that's a letter Green stock com slash huberman to get the five free travel packs in the year supply of vitamin three k two. Now, the ideology thing about the flu virus is that, just like the ideology thing about the cold virus, you start shein virus, that is, you are contagious about twenty four hours prior to the onset of her symptoms for you. So that means that you can be a flu viral vector even when you aren't having symptoms.

That's just the unfortunate aspect of these viruses. They're very clever. They don't have brains. But these viruses have adapted to propagate, from host to host to host. They have a drive to continue to stay alive and to infect more host.

So even though they don't have a brain, they have a sort of what's call IT, a viral intelligence. And as i've said several times now, if you are still exhibiting symptoms of the colder flu, you are contagious. However, with respect to the flu, you are most contagious during the three days when you feel the absolute worst.

When your fever is at its worst, we will talk about how to deal with fever a little bit later when you are puffing and sneezing, headache, all that when that is at its peak, that is, when you are most contagious. So again, I realized that people can't always avoid contact with other people, you know, live under the same roof, caretakers interacting with the person that has the colder flu. And I do want to remind you something I said earlier, which is just because you come in to contact with a colder flu does not necessarily mean that you will come down with, that is, be infected by a colder flu.

Whether or not you come down with a collar flu is, of course, dependent on whether or not you come in to contact with. You can a colder flu that you have never come in the contact with, just like you can get in by a shark if you never go in the ocean. However, the probability of coming down with that colder flu of IT, getting past your immune system barriers and infecting you is going to be strongly dictated by the different aspects of your immune system, for which there are three major aspects which will talk about next.

And of course, the things that you do to bolster those three aspects of your mune system. Okay, let's talk about your immune system. And I have to confess that even though I spent well over three decades being a student dove and a researcher of the nervous system, the immune system is also cool.

And I say that because IT hasn't incredible elegance and logic to IT, IT basically consists of three major lines of defense. There is a physical barrier, or rather a set of physical barriers, that exist between the organs of your body and the outside world. And you're probably immediately thinking, skin.

And yes, IT indeed, IT includes your skin, but also some interesting things like the new costa have your nose and mouth, and even some of the liquid ds that are on the surface of your eyes will talk about those in a moment. Then there's a second line of defense, which is for any virus or bacteria or fungus for that matter. But today we're talking about virus called info virus, any viruses that get past the physical barrier of your skin and the mu costal lining of particular regions of your body.

Well, then you have what's called the innate immune system. The innate immune system is this very generalized response system general in the sense that IT deploys a basic set of neurochemicals that are not specific to the particular virus that made IT into your body, so not only as IT not specific to a particular stereotype of the cold or a different type of flu virus, but it's not even discriminating between cold or flu virus. This thing we call the innate immune system is a generalized response system to go in combat viruses.

So IT could be a cold, IT could be a flu, IT could be a bacteria, IT could be a fungus that could be a physical object. And you're a nate immune system response by saying OK, let's go deal with this. Now, the third component of ummu system is what's called the adaptive immune system. And I looked to this aspect of your immune stem a little bit earlier.

The adaptive immune system is the aspect of your immune system that recognizes, because the nata mine system told IT that something has infected the body at some level, at some organ or set of organs, and there is an emergency, and the adaptive immune system goes in and in a very targeted way, figures out what sort ts of proteins that needs to produce, that is, antibodies to combat that specific serotype of virus. okay? So the immune system has a physical barrier component, and it's not just skin, some other things as well.

You got your innate immune system, which is this generalized response system, and then there's the adapt of immune system. Let's talk about the physical barrier component first. And this is actually a good opportunity for us to just take a brief step back and realize that anytime we're talking about our physiology, there's going to be a mechanical set of features and there's going to be a chemical set of features.

So right now, we're talking about the immune system and the mechanical feature, or the physical feature of the immune system, is this barrier between the organs of our body and the outside world. And the most obvious ous of those is the skin. You are contained in this bag of stuff that we call skin.

The skin isn't just for putting clothing on and for a doring with jury or tatoes, if that's your thing, watches. That said, a your skin is a living organ in in of itself. I think we're most of customer to think about the heart and the lungs and the liver in the brain as organs of the body.

But the skin is an organ of the body as well, has a bunch of different layers of cells from the outside to the inside. Actually, the skin cells themselves are made in the deeper layers of the skin, and they migrate outward, the surface of the skin and at the surface of the skin on top of those cells, and made by those cells are different types of chemicals that actually serve as anti bacterial and anti viral agents. Meaning, if a cold virus or flu virus or other type of virus lands on the skin, IT can neutralize and kill that virus.

So your skin is a very important physical barrier against virus, such as the colder food virus getting into your body and infecting other cells and tissues. Now your skin is not continuous, meaning there are holes in IT. So let's think about those holes for a second.

We go from head to foot. It's pretty obvious that your eyes have these two openings, and those are openings in your skin, right? As you open your islands, beneath there are your corneas, the shining part of your eyes.

And a little bit further back, at the back, in the lining of your eye ball, you have a very thin three cl thic piece of tissue that we call the neural retina. And I say this because the neural retina is actually a piece of your brain. So you have two pieces of brain that line the back of your eyes, and that's the light sensing tissue, the back of your eyes.

Now I say this because what this means is that it's a very short distance between the opening of your skin that we call your islands and your brain. Most of the brain, of course, is containing the cranial evolved within what most people call the skull. But your brain isn't far away from those openings that we call your island.

So as a consequence, on the surface of your eyes, those corners, the shiny part of your eyes, on the outside, there are a bunch of different chemical features. There are tears that are made by your lack of gLance. But there are also a lot of anti bacterial agents that actively kill off stuff that could potentially infect your body, could make IT into your body, maybe even into your brain if you ever woke him up in the morning.

And you have some crust on your eyes, and you look at that crust, that kind of yellow e stuff from them, yellow. I know this is kind of gross. That's actually dead bacteria that your eyes have successfully defeated during your nigh sleep.

So when you wiped those away, you're taking the casualties of a war that you won during your night sleep, and you're whisking those away. Now as we descend a little bit further down the face there, of course, the nostril openings in the nostril openings tend to be kind of sticky, right? Their moist cki in warm.

You want to put your fingers up them right now. You just know they're moi, sticky and warm. Get your fingers out your nose, please. The mucosal lining of your nose is actually a very important substance that is sticky in order to trap viruses such as calls, improve viruses, and then chemical components within the micro lining can neutralize them. That's the best case scenario.

There are, of course, scenario in which the colder flu virus takes residents in human costal lining and can make its way back into your science passages, and can then infect other cells and tissues of your body, because the virus replicates and spreads throughout the body. And then going little bit further down, I realized this is obvious. You have your mouth.

And what's really interesting is that your mouth also as new costal lining, which is sticky and IT, has chemical components to neutralize incoming viruses. But we know that the type of mucus and the type of bacteria that live in your nose and mouth that, by the way, are very healthy for you, and encourage healthy immune stem function, that is, act as ways to neutralize viruses within your nose and mouth are very different. So your nose in your mouth, they seem similar at the level of OK.

Well, warm, sticky in there. Others, mu ki s, but they are very, very different tissues. Fact, if you think about your mouth, is this incredible structure that not only lets you eat and breathe and all through, although I suggest most people be nasal breathers for most of the time of their day and night, if you can, of course, sometimes you have to mouths breathe.

But keep this in mind that you have this big opening in the front of your face and bacteria getting in there all day long. Viruses are getting in there all day long. And in most cases, you are successfully combating those viruses in bacteria because the mucosal lining of your mouth and your nose, for that matter, and the microbiota, those little micro organisms that have taken residents in your nose and mouth, are helping to contribute to fight off bacteria and viruses.

Provided the microbiota there are diverse and are of the type you want, which will talk a little bit more about later. And then descending further down the body, of course, the other openings into your skin barrier, namely the your retha of the penis or vagina, and of course the vaginal canal. So the genitals, of course, have their own mucosal lining.

And as you can imagine, IT is distinct in terms of its physical makeup and its chemical makeup from the mucosal lining of your nasal passages in mouth. And then, of course, we have the rectum anaya, which is the outflow pathway of your industry, which are post digestive. And there too, you have a new costal lining for which, yes, certain types of viruses and bacteria can infect that area.

But what we know is that the primary entry sites of the most common ways in which colds and flows get into your body, the way they breach that physical barrier that we call your skin is through your eyes, your nose or your mouth. And there are a lot of data, some of which conflict, and Frankly, there need to be more data in order to really resolve this. But they seems like the primary entry site for viruses to get into the body tends to be the eyes or the mouth.

And we can get into some of the reasons why that would be so. But if you think back to our conversation about the way that calls and includes existence in the world, either as a souls, or on surfaces of objects or on surfaces of skin, well, then what i'm about to tell you next will make IT also obvious why the eyes and the mouth are the primary size of entry for cold and flu. And if you keep that in mind, there's good chance you can avoid a lot of culture flows that you would otherwise catch.

Okay ay, so before I talk about the important roles of the innate and the adaptive of immune system in keeping calls influence at bay, i'll tell you that you have a problem. And that problem is that you tend to touch your eyes very often. In fact, you tend to touch your eyes most often after you shoot somebody else's hand.

Now why am I picking on you? Well, in fact, i'm not. I'm picking on all of you and i'm picking on myself included because there have been several studies now, primarily from no, i'm sobs lab at the Whiteman institute showing that when people encounter another person and they shake their hand.

They either touch their eyes or touch another region of their face very close to the eyes, or that they touched their hand to their mouth. Now there are a bunch of theories as to why people do this. There's the idea that people are actually sniping their own hand, and in particularly sniping their own hand more often after they shake someone else's.

And as a way to detect what chemo signals exist on the other person, not necessarily conscious smelling of the other person smell, but rather some sort of unconscious mechanism by which we take the chemicals of the person we come into contact with, and we bring them to our nose, our eyes, or in some cases, our upper lip. And that our factory system, that is, the neurons that exists just behind the back of our nose, are processing that information in getting all sorts of important information about how stress the other person is, their hormones, whether or not we recognize them, the fact that they are different from us. That's right.

We are also smelling ourselves all day long norms. Lab has shown this that people are kind of walking around in their own older cloud. We tend to touch our ARM pitts.

We tend to touch different aspects of our body, yes, and smell ourselves multiple times throughout the day. This is all being done unconsciously. Or suppose some people are doing IT consciously and that there is a lot of information about our physiology and health.

And when we do this after shaking someone's hand, that there's a lot of information about the other person's physiology and health, that our nervous system, our factory system and deep parts of our rain that involved in primitive type behaviors, but also some pretty sophisticated behaviors, are taking into account. Now, no one sobel was a guest on the huberman and lab podcast, encourage you to check out that episode if you have time. It's a fascinating voyage into the olfactory system and not just conscious smelling or sniping of things.

So we go, oh, that smells good or that smells bad, or that person, somebody I want to meet with or hang out with a avoid. It's also unconscious processing of so called chemo signals, chemical signals. But the reason I bring up these studies now in the context of colds and flus, and how to avoid getting colds and flus, is as a reminder that we are pretty much wired to contact our own face with our own hands at the level of our our eyes, nose and upper lipped and around the eyes very shortly after we touch somebody else's skin.

And if you are mindful of IT, you can actually avoid bringing colds or flus to your face. Now in doing so, are you're going to short circuit a bunch of other important biological processes involved in understanding what's going on in your environment because you're not bringing in those smells? I suppose that possible, but with respective of avoiding cold influence, that seems like a pretty good trade off to me.

So the point i'm trying to make yours that in order for you to catch a colder flu, that colder flu virus, the little particles of cold and flue virus need to make IT into your body, and the primary entry sites are eyes, nose, mouth. And the primary actions by which we bring cold and flu viruses to our eyes, nose, mouth are by touching other people or by touching other surfaces that have colder flu virus. Just remind you, cold virus can exist up to twenty four hours on a given surface.

Flu virus tends to die off after about two hours on a given surface. And we're bringing that to our face. We are literally bringing the virus to ourselves.

So a little bit more consciously warehouse about that fact means that you can probably avoid cold influence to some extent. How much? Well, it's unclear.

It's unclear because, as you recall, some people have and are passing along colder flu virus prior to any symptoms. And of course, it's possible that you can walk into an area, saw cloud of cold or flu virus. Even if a person is in there, you don't come in to contact with them. But some conscious awareness of these routes of passage for the color food virus, I do believe, can reduce the probability that you will catch a colder flu. And of course, i'm not encouraging people to never touch touches an important part of social connection and social bonding.

But if you start to think about these portals of entry for the cold and flu virus in to your body, well, then you you know perhaps my thing twice before how getting someone kissing them on the cheek during a time in which you're trying to actively avoid getting the cold or flu. Now I feel a little bit funny about sharing this information because, again, I don't want to encourage people always be at, you know, arms distance, you know, fake fish bumping, you know, keeping a gap between them. Again, touch is an important component of social connection.

But since today's topic is called influence and how to avoid getting calls, influence, just like you can't get eaten by a shark if you don't go in the ocean, there is a much lower probability that you're going to get a color flu if you're not touching a lot of hands and bring those hands to your eyes, nose or mouth. I suppose one way around the sort of do I hug, do I shake hands thing is to just be conscious of the fact that when you shake somebody's hand that you are very likely to touch your eyes or face within the next thirty seconds or so and maybe you end up being that person who put some hands and otis er on your hands, some means that can feel awkward to you do that right in front of somebody kind of sending a signal like hand. I want you to infect me, but guess what, you don't want them to infect you.

Okay, let's imagine that a colder flu virus makes IT into your system. IT reaches the physical barrier of your skin and mucosal lining. Now you have in mind all the different ways that could happen in all the different ways that could be prevented.

But we are starting at a point here, a hypothetical point whereby that colder flu virus has made IT into your body. Your immune system has an absolutely exquisitely sophisticated way of knowing you versus other, meaning, cells within your body that are of you, and sales of your body that are from other organisms or viruses from the outside world. And when virus, such as a cold or flu virus, are detected in your body, your body might not even recognize that it's a cold or flu virus, might not even recognized that it's a virus at all.

IT just knows that this thing that in me is of other, it's not me. I've never seen that before. This is not me.

These are not myself ves, these are not the chemicals that I am producing. And immune system is amazing in that way. And when IT occurs, your innate immune system launches a response.

What is that response? Well, first of all, the response is very rapid, right? Colder flu makes IT into your body, and your nate immune system immediately or near immediately launches an attack on that invader or invaders, because as soon as the virus cuts in into your body is going to start replicating as quickly as I can.

What happens? White blood cells that your body produces will go to the sites where those virus, S, R. And by the way, those viruses are basically getting into cells of your body and then hy jacking the genetic machinery of those cells in order to replicate within those cells, and then exit those cells and then go infect more cells.

That's how these viruses work. Your body's making White blood cells, things like neutral cell s natural killer cells, macrophages. These are what we call a factor cells that act as a kind of ambuLance system and go to the sites that those virus is exist and the cells that they have infected and start trying to physically barrier them in, and also use specific chemical mechanisms to neutralize and kill those viruses.

Again, anytime you're thinking about biology, think mechanical features and chemical features of a response. Now, a key compound of the innate immune system is what's called the compliment system. Not compliment like, oh, you look for a nice today, but compliment, okay. The compliment system, which exists in the plasm within your blood. These are chemicals in your bloodstream. They go in mark specific cells that have been infected or viruses with a signal, a chemical signal that essentially looks like an eat me signal to these other cell types of your immune system, such that those natural killer cells go through the body and go looking for the cells that have us eat me signal on them and trying destroy those particular cells.

The other thing that you are aiming une system does is that the cells that have been infected and that are undergoing image, remember, they have called their flu virus within them, in their hygiene, in the cellars machinery of those cells, and using IT to produce their own virus, more of the virus, and as a consequence, the genetic machinery of those cells is not able to do a bunch of other things that you Normally can do, or at least not as well. Will those cells that are really hurting released a help me signal? And then in response to that, helped me signal, your immune system releases what are called sidek, things like interlocking, one interlude, six tumor across this factor.

Alva, just fancy nerd, speak names for different types of molecules that go to the site of infection and try to help or assist to remove that infection. And they also try to assist the repair of the cells that have been infected by those viruses. Now, one of the mechanical or physical consequences of these chemical signals, like interlude, interlude, sixty, nf, alf, again, those are all sider kinds being drawn to a particular cell or region of cells that have been infected, is that IT creates some physical swelling of the area.

IT impacts the vague latter, the veins and capitalists that feed that area, and in response, that they put more blood there. So you get some swelling, or you'll get, in some cases, the release of system es, right? We think of anti histamine drugs.

Well, histamine are an aspect of your immune system. They move around in your body. These really cool cells called mast cells, M, S T, mass cells, and when the historians are released, that area becomes kind of hot and swelling.

IT will be called ada. And that whole areas is marked as really a site just like a crash side on the side of the roads, like, hey, we've got eat me signals to get the debris in the bad stuff out of here. Try get those viruses out of here.

We've got helpme signals to try and help the injured cells, just like you would try to help people at a car crash. And there's a bunch of swelling. So there's additional blood flow.

Sometimes there are some other physical features as well. Now the important thing to know is that the unite immune system is very fast and IT is agnostic. C. To the type of infection.

In fact, he doesn't even matter if it's a bacterial physical fungo or viral infection, but it's certainly is in paying attention to the exact serotype of cold virus or whether not in h one influence or another type of influenza. So the way to think about the ana immune system is that this is a very fast and nonspecific response to a viral or other type of invader. Now that's all a bunch of biology.

But if you think about IT, let's imagine a scenario where you go to a party hanging out the party, you don't see anyone caught ing or sneezing. But maybe one person there has a cold virus. So they have a flu virus and they aren't even aware of IT.

They are not going to come down with symptoms for another day or so. You talk to that person, you shake and maybe touch your eyes. Maybe you don't, but you're exposed to that colder flu virus.

You go home, go sleep, you wake up the next morning, you feel fine. And then sometime the next afternoon you start to feel a tickling your throat, and you start to feel just a little bit of fatigue or malaise. Do you have that colder flu? Well, possibly okay, we don't know for sure.

But assuming that that colder flu virus did indeed make IT into your system, then your nate mune system is starting to create a set of responses that we talk about a moment ago. But IT also tends to impact things at the level of your brain such that you can feel like, ah you I don't feel quite right. I feel like a little bit.

I don't feel great. And there are a lot of reasons why you would feel that way. We'll talk about those reasons a little bit later. But does that mean that you're necessarily coming down with a colder flu? Well, technically, yes, your native mune system is deployed to fight this foreign viral invader. But whether not you actually get a full blown colder flu, or put differently, how severe that colder flu infection is, depends on whether not your nate immune system can fight off that colder flu at the outset. And indeed, there are many cases, we believe, where you get exposed to a colder fluid makes IT into your body, but you're in late immune system is sufficient to beat IT to fight IT back.

This is one of the reasons why it's so important that if you're starting to feel a bit under the weather and you think you're coming down with a colder flu, that you do certain things in order to make sure that your nate immune system is both ready and that I can launch a full scale attack on that colder flu virus. We're going to talk about how to do that a little bit later. I'm not trying to, with it's important, understand that just because the virus maxed in to your body doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get a full bone colder flu and in fact, that innate immune system sometimes is sufficient to prevent that colder flu from replicating enough you get the full blown set of symptoms.

And that's kind of an ideal scenario. So we're definitely gone to talk today about what to do if you start to feel a little bit of malaise. What to do if you discover that, oh, you know, that person I was hanging out with at the party the night before, they're really sick with a colder flu, because there are things you can do to increase the probability that your a nate immune system can handle the battle sufficiently such that you never have to get to the next component of the immune response, which is the adaptive immune response.

Okay, so the third layer of your immune system is your adapt tive immune system. And this is an amazing aspect of you OK, the stuff we talk about up until now, the physical barrier, the immune stem, so, so cool. But the adapt of immune system is really a mind blow. The most important thing to understand about your adaptive immune system is that, as the name suggests, its job is to create antibodies specific to the very intruder that made IT into you and infected yourselves.

The very specific serotype of cold virus, the very specific type of influenza, such that you defeat that virus, but then in an amazing way, your adaptive immune system also maintains a memory of that battle and keeps within your body, believe IT or not, within a population of stem cells, which are cells that can rise to more cells, such that if you ever encounter that same serotype of cold virus, or same strain of influence, again, that your antibodies can immediately neutralize that called, or flu virus. The adaptive immune system has the ability to make proteins that have a particular shape on their surface that matches the shape of the thing that your immune system is trying to kill. Now the adaptive of immune system has two basic phases.

In the first phase, the adaptive of immunity stem makes these things called immune albums. I and the mu global lans coming different forms. There's igg, there's ig m, there other types of ig as well.

For sake of today's discussion, know that the initial wave of antibodies that the adaptive immune system makes, or of the I G M variety, the I G M and bodies can travel to and latch onto the surface of the colder flu virus. And IT matches IT pretty well. It's not perfect, but IT matches IT pretty well.

Think about, for instance, a particular shape types of cold virus, or the h one n one flu virus, having a very particular on tour on its surface, the igm approximates that control such that it's Better at fighting that colder flu virus then is the innate immune system, but it's not a perfect fit. However, the adaptive immune system doesn't stop with the production of those igm. The adaptive immune system takes that information about how precise or in precise that fit is between the igm, anybody, and the surface of that particular colder flu, yours, and then, in an amazing way, send signals back to the stem cell populations in the bone, mauro and other tissues.

And then more antibodies come out of the igg variety and the I G G proteins are very specific to the shape of that particular cold virus or flu virus, such that the ig then can define to and neutralize those viral particles. okay. So when we talk about the immunity stem, we're talking about a physical bear. If IT is breached, a cold or flu virus takes residents and start to replicate.

The nate immune system launches a generalized attack on that colder flu virus, and then the adaptive immune system kicks in, usually a couple days later, first, with the production of antibodies that are pretty specific to the particular virus that happen to make IT into the body and infect cells, but then there is a second wave of production of antibodies, and those antibodies are incredibly specific for that particular colder flu buyer s. And as I mentioned earlier, the adaptive immune system then acquires a memory of the specific fit between a given antibody that is made and the viral invader and the successful battle that those antibodies waged on that viral invader. And that memory is maintained such that if the next week or the next season you encounter the exact same serotype of cold virus or sing type of flu virus will, then you already have anybody's ready to be deployed.

Sometimes the and bodies continue to circulate in your system. Sometimes you need to generate more of them. And the new system is that amazing? You can actually send a message back to that stem cell population in the bone error, or elsewhere, say, hey, listen, this virus that we beat a few weeks or months or years back, it's back.

We need more antibodies. And boom, your adapt of immunity stem turns those body's out and kills the virus. Now is the final point about the immunity stem.

I've been talking a lot today about cells traveling to and killing viruses and sending signals. Eat me. Help me at it's important. Understand that while sales can migrate through the body, a lot of what we're talking about here is the movement of proteins through the vayu lar, through the blood system of the body. But there's another system that's a very important for all of this is collaborating with the vascular system, and that's the limit add system. We don't have time to go into a whole lecture about the lunatic system, but service to say the lymph atic system can pull stuff from the blood, such as viruses, but also cells that have been beaten up, or cells that have been eaten and are contained within other cells, such as macrophages and IT, can do some filtering of those different cell types, and IT can produce its only useful chemicals that then can be reintroduced to the bloodstream in order to help combat the infection.

Now this becomes very important when later we talk about how specific forms, intensities and durations of exercise can increase the ability for your innate immune system to combat infections, so that your adaptive immunity stem perhaps doesn't even have to get involved in the battle, because your innate system handle that there are data to show the exercise of sufficient intensity induration but not excessive intensity induration can recruit the linux system and recruit or increase the activity of the unit immune system even in the absence of an infection. Such that if you go to that party and you encounter that person with a colder flu, you can defeat that colder flu virus at the outset and never have to deal with making antibodies that colder virus at all. okay.

So now you have a fairly sophisticated biological understanding of what codes are, what clues are in the way that your immune system works to fight off viruses like colds in flues. So with that in mind, I think now is the appropriate time to start talking about what the scientific, peer viewed research says about how to allow your immune system to function at its best, such that you can combat cold and floods, meaning, if you are exposed to a colder flu, that is, if IT breaches that physical barrier of your skin and the mucosal lining of your nose, your mouth or IT gets into your eyes, that you stand the greatest chance of defeating that colder flu at the level of your nate immune system, such that your adaptive immune system never even has to respond to IT by creating all those specific antibodies. Now fortunately, there are a lot of different things we can do to improve the function of our immune system.

In fact, I feel like any time the winter months stroll around, we start to see the same list of things surface online and in the press. And I don't want to diminish these things. They are, in fact, the Better rock of maintaining and enhancing the function of your nate immune system. So what are those? Well, some of these will be pretty obvious things like getting enough quality sleeping at tonight.

We know, for instance, that if you're sleep deprived, so especially you stay up all night, but certainly, even if you only get fifty percent or seventy five percent of your sleep requirement that your unit immune system is going to suffer, it's not going to be as effective at combating floods or calls. In addition to that, we know that exercise of specific type and specific duration and specific intensity can serve to bolster the na immune system, and we will talk about the specific exercise protocols that can best achieve that. We also hear, and it's absolutely true that we need adequate nutrition if we are in a chloric deficit.

For instance, if we're trying to die IT through the winter months, which many people try to do, that can place our innate immune system in a bit of a compromise state. That said, things like intermit fasting or even the longer derated fast have been implicated. And here I really want to underscore implicated in brief improvements in the function of DNA immune system.

However, extended fast or not eating enough calories to maintain body weight for many, many days in a row can actually compromise the function of the nate immune system. I'll go into this a bit deeper in a moment. And then of course, we hear about stress, that we're also used to regulate our levels of stress, not get too stressed.

In here. I have to put in astros next to those statements because, yes, indeed, chronic stress, meaning stress that continues day after day after day, or even short periods of stress that impede our ability to sleep at night. Kin indeed reduced the functions of our nate immune system.

However, it's also clear that short belts of stress, provided that they don't inhibit our ability to sleep that night, can actually enhance the function of the immune system. And this is something that I don't think it's talked about enough. Know, we hear so often that couldn't cord is all is bad.

It's a stress woman. Listen, cordia all is fantastic, provided that IT is elevated early in the day and not late in the day or evening. Also, cortile does have threshold beyond which if it's too high can be bad for us.

But it's also the case that if courteil levels are too low, that's bad for us and it's especially bad for the functions of our immune system, because glue records, of which court is all is, have an important role in activating those natural killer cells of the na immune system. They are one of the primary signals by which those interactions, like interlude one and interludes six, are deployed in our body. And so very often will hear stress increases, inflation tion.

And indeed, and you're looking in one and you're looking six are pro inflaming. You might think, oh, good, I don't want that. What is all? I don't want these influence elevated.

But guess what, the inflation tion response is also an important component of that innate immune system that allows us to combat infections. So in trying to keep our rate immune system tuned up, I realized that's not a biological statement tuned up, but keep our immune system functioning at its best. We want inflation tion available as a tool to combat infection.

We want cortisol available as a way to activate that inflation tion and other aspects of our immune stem. We just don't want so much court as all and so much information that we can sleep and that are got microbiome, ffs. And that brings me to the other component that's important for the basic functioning of your nate immune system, so that you can be at your strongest when you encounter those called and food viruses.

Why do I say inevitably? Look, do you exist in the world? That is, if you live on planet earth, you are going to be bomb boarded with different viruses and bacteria and funguses and all the stuff throughout your days.

And yes, in those winter months, because people are spending more time indoors and they're touching each other and surfaces more, breathing on each other more, sneezing on each other more, and so on on and so forth, there is more propagation of colds and flus. So we take a step back and we ask, how can I have my immune system as strong and ready as possible to combat cold and flu viruses? We get to those basics.

It's make sure you're getting enough quality sleeps night. How much is enough however much you need in order to not feel sleepy during the day, except maybe the requirement for a short nap of anywhere from ten to thirty minutes? Not everyone requires that, but that's perfectly Normal. To have an afternoon dip and energy, they can be restored with a short nap or non sleepy breast will provide links to non sleepy breast and other tools and the showa captions that you are zero cost tools to allow you to recover your energy if some people just simply take a nap and that sort of thing.

If you want tools for improving your sleep and making sure that you're getting enough quality sleep in tonight, we will also provide a link ter as your cost sleep tool kit that details that in P D F form and just list out the things that you can do or take, if that's your choice, and so on and so forth. And of course, we've done episodes on quality nutrition and what that means. We ve done episodes on stress and how to combat stress, and we've done episodes on this so called got microbiome.

But right now I just want to mention that they got microbial, which are the trillions of little microbes, turia, that interact heavily with the immune system and helps support the immune system you wanna keep to get microbiome, altho so you'll that we include some tools related to got microbiome here in a moment. And and this is very important. Keep in mind that the microbiome doesn't just exist in the gut.

So often these days we hear about the gut microbial, and i'm all so happy that the gut microbial is getting the attention that IT deserves in the context of mental health, physical health and performance. But we can't forget that the microbial also exists on the surface of the eyes and in the nasal passages. And indeed, the microbial that specific to the nasal passages, as I mentioned before, is very different from the microbial that exists within the mouth.

And the microbes on that exists within the micros of the nasal passages seems to be the most effective at combating any viruses that we encounter, especially cold and flu virus. So well, I daily, you would never encounter a colder flu virus. We know that if the colder flu virus is going through the natural passages, you stand the greatest chance of combating that particular cold or flu. So what does that mean? This is where I get to make a strong push for being a nasal breathing, certainly.

And sleep, you want to be a nasal breathing, but also throughout the day, unless you're speaking or unless you're exercising hard enough that you need to break through your mouth or unless you're eating, being a asal breather is known to provide the right menu, the right environment, to keep that naseer microbiome at its healthiest and to promote the diversity of microbiota in the naseer passages that can best protect you against cold and flues. And there are growing number studies that point to this fact. I'll provide a link to one that I like very much, which is entitled alterations in oral nail ferrando al microbiota and celebration tears in mouth breathing children.

This is but one study pointing to the fact that being a nasal breathing is a good thing. Mouth breathing children in mouth breathing adult, meaning children and adults that default to mouth breathing, tend to get more infections of of the upper respiratory track, including colds and flu. Consciously focusing on nasal breathing is one of the best things that we can do to combat any colds or flus that we might encounter.

So earlier we talk about trying to avoid touching your eyes, at least without washing your hands first. Or, senator, zing your hands first after you meet somebody, keeping in mind that most people do that unconsciously. Here we are also saying, when you into a room, you're hanging out with people, maybe you're waiting for public transportation or your work or walking down the hallway, unless you are exercising hard, unless you are talking, try to focus on being a nasal breathing. There are a bunch of other reasons to be a naseer breather as well, but this is one of the primary ones.

And i'll provide a link to another reference, which is the book jaws, by my colleagues at stanford, which talks about nail breathing in the importance of nasal breathing, but also the degree to which children and adults open themselves up to increase levels of viral infections as well as bacterial infections, but viral infections, in particular, when they rely on mouth breathing, and the incredible benefits of doing this very simple, zero cost thing of, whenever you can consciously remember, to breathing through your nose as opposed to breathing through your mouth. And just as an additional point about nasal breathing, because I can't resist telling you that I just think it's so cool, such an interesting adaptation. When we breathe through our nose, we heat the air in a way that's very different from the way we heat the air when we mouths breathe.

And by heeding the air that coming into the nasal passages, IT shifts the probability that colder flu viruses will successfully embed in the mu costal lining and infect the underlying cells and get into the other cells and tissues of our body. So this whole thing about nasal breezing is important and effective at the level of temperature regulation of the menu within the nose, and therefore the viruses that end up in the nose, as well as the mocoso lining, the chemicals made by the mucosal lining. And again, the nose is a very different place than the mouth and track will provide a link to the another paper, uh, which is entitled human natural microbiome.

It's a really interesting paper, is actually an interview with a scientist s whose expert in the nasal microban, talking about how this structure within our nose really is the primary defense site by which we destroy potentially incoming viruses. So if IT sounds overly simple, just breathe through your nose. IT is very simple, but it's also very effective.

Now it's also clearly the case that keeping your good microbiome is advantages for keeping your innate immune system at its most robust level of functioning. And actually mentioned that you're gut microbial isn't just about your stomach. You know, we hear the word got and we think stomach, but it's actually the entire length of your digestive track from your mouth out the other end.

And different microbiota ist that different locations along that track of mucosa. And there are a couple things that one can do in order to make sure that the gut microbiome is best supported along that entire life. The first one is that and this was covered on the episode that we did with my colleague, Justin sandberg, who is a world expert in the good micro bone.

And that is to consume anywhere from two to four savings of low sugar fermented foods per day. So things like shower crown, things like kim chi, things like key for, things like combo cha IT, can be a little bit of work to figure out which of these you like and which ones you're willing to consume on a regular basis. But it's very clear that the brian, you know, that kind of salty solution around the sower crowd.

And by the way, when I say sower crown, what we're talking about here is the type that has to be refrigerated. IT contains what are called live cultures, as opposed to the starcraft that can exist in the non refrigerated portion of the store, or pickles that also have that, brian, and that have to be kept in the refrigerator even before they're opened. And of course, things like yogurt t which have active live cultures.

Those are the sorts of things that are going to best support the diversity of microbiota. Along the entire length of you got microbiome, such that you got micro biome can do its job in supporting your nervous system. But here, especially in the context of today's discussion, your immune system now the low sugar component of low sugar fermented foods is important.

Because what we know is that if you're consuming yogurts with a lot of sugar, or your consuming kambo cha with high levels of sugar, or your consuming pickles or sour crowd that have a lot of sugar them, you probably going to start to create some other issues related to the sugar, what you're really looking for, these low sugar for mental foods that can be a little bit tRicky to seek out in the store, but they're usually there. And once you identify the ones that you like, you should really aim to get two to four servings of those per day. You can also consume a prebiotic or probiotic and form of capsule form, things like A G one.

Athletic Greens also contain probiotic probiotic. But it's very clear that consuming two to four servings of low sugar from mental foods per day is among the best ways to promote health of the got microbiome. And that they got microbiome is so, so important for keeping the nate immune system in such that they can combat the codes or flues, that are trying to bomb bard's system.

Now there's another tool that you can use to enhancer gut microbiome. I have to warn you, you this one might make a few of you cranes a little bit, but this is one that I actually started doing about four months ago. Um it's an interesting one IT gona dates back to some older content traditional medicine practices, but IT makes really good logical sense.

To be fair, i'm not aware of any render ized control trial expLoring the use of this protocol, but it's so simple and completely cost free and IT stands so strongly on the logic of how the gut and oral microbial on work that, Frankly, I started doing IT and whether not a palacio effect or not, I don't know, but I feel Better and it's so easy to do. And IT stands to potentially improve the function of you've got microbial enough that I figured I would actually share with you, and then you can decide. So what this protocol essentially consists of is, before you go to sleep at night or in the morning, you pour yourself a little bit of water, whatever water you happen to consume, just clean, clear water, and then you take a sip of that water.

When you wake up in the morning and you switch IT around in your mouth, and then you swallow IT. For those of you, there are like, uh, grows. Let's think about this. Is that really gross to switch a little bit of water around in your mouth and then swallow that water when you first wake up prior to brushing your teeth? Of course, well, they might seem grows to you, but throughout the night when you're sleeping, especially if you are a naseer, breathe while you sleep, the environment within your mouth is such that you're breeding a lot of bacteria.

You are creating all those little micro bacteria that potentially can inhabit your digestive track and provide at least some of the substrate for the microbial to in your digestive track to thrive. And if that seems growth to you, keep in mind that's what having a healthy got microbial really is all about. So the protocols very simple as zero costs.

You take a switch around and swallow IT. And oddly, IT doesn't taste bad. In fact, it'll just taste like swallowing. And in fact, that tastes like swallowing a little bit of water. It's not as if IT tastes like bad breath or something like that.

It's a very simple protocol that again, no ronny ze control trials, but really stands on the logic of how the oral microbial and the gut microbiome interact. And because what we're talking about here is supporting the function of you're got microban omes. Such IT supports the function of your native immunity stems such that you can avoid called in flues least to me, this seems like a pretty low bar.

yes. okay. So to bolter your native mune system, you want to get that quality sleep as often as you possibly can.

You want to support? They got microbes in the ways that we just described. What about exercise? We hear IT all the time.

Exercise is so good for us that enhances the immune system and on and on, and less than i'm a huge believer and exercise. I personally like to do three belts of cardiff asked lar exercise per week, one long, one medium, one short. And I do three belts of resistance, straining each week, all of that.

And specifically, what I do is available to you as a zero cross protocol in the form of a PDF. We have a link to that in the shown note captions. I will have a whole episode about function, fitness and so on and so on.

The discussion we're gona have now is about what general forms of exercise actually do support the innate immune system and and this is really important, what forms of exercise actually delete, urinate, immune system? This isn't talked about enough. I think there are certain intensities and durations of exercises that make us more vulnerable to colds and flus.

So we're going to discuss that before we do that. I want to just briefly touch into something that I hear a lot, which is the question, if i'm feeling a little bit run down, should I exercise or not? And to be honest, there isn't a straight forward answer to that question.

It's impossible for me or for you to know whether or not you were indeed exposed to a colder flu and you're starting to combat IT at the level of your nat immune system or whether not you're just feeling a little bit sluggish. However, what we do know is that if you are feeling malaise at the level of the body, like your body is feeling different, it's feeling heavy. You're feeling tired.

Feeling tired at a time of day that doesn't make sense given your usual patterns of being tired. You're feeling tired in a way that doesn't make sense given how much sleep you've got the night before, right? I mean, here, what we're talking about is ruling out any possible, you know, life dresser, you are up too late or you drink caffeine at the wrong time or something like that.

What we know is that if you're feeling that general malays across your whole body IT is fairly likely that you're coming down with something and that your best response to that would be to go home, take a hot shower bath, all explain why you would want to do that in a few minutes and then get into bed early. And even if you can't fall asleep, to just be as still in is relaxed as possible. We know that if you push into intense activity, or even just push yourself to engage in activity, when you're feeling run down at that whole body level may be a little al in your throat, you are going to compromise the function of urinate immune system and it's very likely that you're going to get more sick than you would otherwise.

But so here's my suggestion, if you're trying to feel run down at the level of whole body malaysia or you just don't feel right, you're best off taking a hot shower bath and getting into bed or just getting into bed and trying to rest and get as much sleep, probably even a little bit of extra sleep. And here's why that whole body malaise, that extra fatigue that's not easily explained by other factors in your life, have to do with the fact that when your nate immune system is activated, meaning is already combating a colder flu, interlude one and interlude six have a way of interacting with a particular brain area called the dorso raghe nucleus, which is chock a block full of neurons that released serotonin. And serotonin from the dorsal rafa nucleus acts on specific regions of your hypothalamus.

There is like the preoptic region, for those of you that want to know, and other years of the hypothalamus that generate a state of sleeping ess. In addition, when we are getting sick, our sleep patterns change. We feel like we need to sleep more, but we don't feel as arrested from that sleep.

And that has to do with the ways the serotonin interacts with some of the components of the brain circuitry involved in sleep that controls slow wave or deep sleep. And this is a whole discussion into itself, actually covered a lot of the mechanistic aspects of this business of immune induced sleeping, ess and malaysia city with feeling sick, and an episode about interactions between the neural and immune system that I will also provide a link to in the shown note captions. But of service to say, if you're feeling that whole body malays and especially if you a little bit of a throat ticket, you're just not feeling right for you.

You're not a customer of feeling that way at that time of day or night. Well, then I encourage you to get rest because chances are you're already combating an infection. However, if you are out and about a lot during the winter months or you're interacting with a lot of people by virtue of work or public transportation or whatever the gym is set up with your school teacher, maybe your kids are coming home with colds and flus, and you're not yet feeling that malaise.

You're not feeling any tropical, you're not getting that kind of and a burning your tickle within your nasal passages when you breath. You know we're all familiar with these things that what are in the eyes that kind of proceeds, that getting the full blown called their flu. Well, if you're not experiencing that stuff, you want to keep your in a immune system strong, unable to combat off called influence, then we know that exercise can be an excEllent way to increase the output of that innate immune system.

What I mean by that is the appropriate intensity, duration of exercise can act as a dresser, promotes a bit of information, yes, the release of sidekicks and a bit of activation of the atia mune system, including the production of more White blood cells, natural killer cells, such that you're sort of prompting the nata immune system to almost think that there's something to battle, such that if you ever encounter an infection, you can defeat IT right off the bat. So we're going to get granular here about what we mean by proper intensity and duration of exercise. There's a wonderful review that was published in twenty nineteen in the journal of sport and health science entitled the compelling link between physical activity and the body's defense system.

And there's a lot to this review article, but I just a highlight a few of the critical features that are going to directly relate to protocols that I think all of you are going to be interested in. First of all, we know that exercise that of sixty minutes inderal or less, and that is intense, but not all out effort. Okay, here, we're not talking about percentage of single repetition max weight.

Here we're not talking about seventy to eighty five percent of one V O two max. What we're talking about is you subjectively gagging what is a turn out of ten effort like you could not do anymore. You could not contribute any more effort to that exercise about and that's true whether not we're talking about resistance training exercises or cardio escalate exercise like running or rolling or things of that sort.

What we know is that if you do that sort of exercise for about sixty minutes or less, you promote the exchange of components between the blood in the linh atic system that increase the circulation of those cells and chemicals within the innate immune system, such that not just during exercise, but for many, many hours afterwards, maybe even as much as twenty four hours afterwards, your nate immune system level of baseline activity I S ramped up, allowing you to Better combat infections such as colds and flus. Okay, so this is an incentive for getting a regular exercise of sixty minutes or last per day, making IT of sufficient intensity for your in a immune system to deploy more of those chemicals and for your emphatic and blood circulation to increase their exchange of materials enough that your native mune system is bolstered. However, IT is absolutely not the case that more is Better.

In fact, it's probably the case that less is Better. Here's what we know for sure. And this review cover sort of the extreme of these examples.

But for instance, people that do bouts of walking each day for about sixty minutes brisk walking experience increased t cell functions. So that's an immune cell that goes out in combat called in flu viruses and natural killer cell activity. So those increase, increase microphone function.

You are not familiar with these cells if you don't know exactly what they do. Just keep in mind that you heard about these in the context of what the innate immune system does to go out and fight colds and flus sidelines increase, but not dramatically. Okay, so this is a mild inflation tion response.

Stress hormones such as court as all evenement, nor evenement also called a trentine, and nor generalin. Those are deployed as well. So sixty minutes or less of this moderate to high intensity exercise creates a mild stress response and increase in the function of the nata mune system.

However, people that run a marathon, and as I recall, a marathon is twenty six point two miles, if i'm not mistaken, they experience a very different pattern of a mural response to that long out of exercise. So here we're comparing one hour of exercise to three hours as that what IT takes to run a marathon. I have some friends, their marathon, I think about three, maybe four hours, if you really slow.

But somewhere between, you know, I know, two and a half and three hours of your trained up and you're doing IT and you're doing them regularly. Well, here's the point. People who just ran a marathon and people who have been training for a marathon in the approaching that marathon are severely immune compromised.

The levels of their t cell function are way below baseline, meaning their na immune system is not functioning nearly as well as IT would if they were to not exercise at all. The natural killer sell activity is also greatly diminished. These are huge, huge reductions in these cells that is, in the functions the na immune system and their stress horn mones, and they're inflaming molecules such as cited con circulating in their blood are extremely ly high.

Now again, we're representing opposite ends of the spectrum here with one hour or less of exercise daily versus twenty six point two mile marathon. Exercise or half marathon is the case maybe? And let me be very direct.

I'm not discourage people from running or training for marathon's or half marathon. Es, I think that's great. Just understand what you're doing to your immune system when you do that and take the necessary precautions.

I think most people listening to this are trying to think about ways that they can avoid getting colds and flus. And certainly, running marathon's is not going to be the way to do that. Quite the contrary, the way to do that is in addition to the other things we've been talking about, to get regular exercise, maybe not every single day.

I'm actually a fan of taking one day per week completely off for exercise. You should, on that day i'll do some song and cold if I have IT available to me. But the point is this, you don't have to exercise for an hour a day in order to get this improvement in the nata muna response.

Data show that you can get this improvement in nata mune response with as little as twenty minutes per day and probably even as little as twelve minutes per day. However, if you're going to trying accomplish this increase in the innate immune system function or output with a shorter about of exercise such as twelve minutes, i'd Better be twelve minutes of very high intensity training. In fact, that's what lands on my for me, it's friday, but IT doesn't really matter which day the week.

There is one day of the week where I do a very short about of cardiovascular exercise, but i'm printing hard for anywhere from twenty seconds to a minute and then i'm taking a brief period rest and then repeating that for a total of twelve minutes. Now some people here, oh, only twelve minutes of exercise required, and they default twelve minutes every single time they train. I don't think that's a good idea.

I think that we can take the law averages here and say the following. I do believe everyone should do a combination of cardiovascular training and resistance training. Perhaps I think in general, not on the same days, but if you're going to do that and you want to maintain healthy immune system function, my suggestion, what I do is, unless it's the long bout of party of accused training, I do once a week and long for me and sixty to ninety minutes, and sometimes longer with with the hike, which certainly doesn't require that much intensity.

I suggest warming up for about five to ten minutes and then limiting your total workout duration to about fifty minutes, maybe sixty minutes, if that's what's required to complete what you need to do in order to keep with your exercise goals. But to be very careful about exceeding seventy five minutes of exercise in any one single exercise bout, if you remember back to the beginning of the episode, when I said that I track what I do on a day to day basis, and I don't do IT in a very detailed way, but I do take note of when i've gotten a bad flu or cold. I can tell you that in almost every single case where i've gotten a bad flu are called, there are two things that have proceeded that bad fluor called.

One is sleeve deprivation. Typically, IT would be notes where I got two hours of sleep or less for more than one night. okay. The second thing is, any time that I really pushed IT with exercise and went all out, and I went for seventy five minutes, and then I continued to ninety minutes.

And then maybe later that day, because somebody invited me on a run or something like that, I also did that second run or that second work out of some kind to be running in the morning and wait training in the afternoon. Some people can do that kind of training on a regular basis even and not get sick. I am not such a person i've mention.

Maintained fairly consistent fitness output, meaning the three quarter vascular and the three wait training sessions per week for more than several decades now. And part of the reason I think i've been able to do that is because I don't ever push too hard for too long within a given workout. So this is really a call for moderation in terms of the duration and intensity of the exercise that you're doing.

But we're not talking about really being laid back. We're not talking about easy workout, but we're talking about is an hour less of moderate intensity to high intensity exercise depending on the duration of that exercise. And keeping in mind that when you're doing that, you are activating that innate immune system, you are literally creating an immune response.

Your increasing inflation tion, your increasing those side of kinds are increasing stress ormonds. We have to start to think about exercise for what IT is, which is a form of stress that induces adaptations. Dr, any girl, and talk a lot about this in the series that he did on exercise physiology.

It's an excEllent series that covers everything from strength to hyper chaffey to speed to insurance, nutrition supplementation. You can find all that that you have, man lab up converter easily. Exercise is a very potent tool. We know that. We know that in the context of changing a sex like body mass composition, in increasing muscle, reducing fact, we know that in the context of reducing resting heart rate, reducing rest in blood pressure.

We know that in the context of all these other health metrics here, we're talking about using exercise as a very potent tool to increase the function of the nata immune system to keep you healthy, not just through the winter months, but around the year. And especially if you're getting less sleep, if you're interacting with kids or adults that are Carrying infections home from school or work on a regular basis or maybe you even work in an environment like a hospital or clinic where you're regular interacting with patients that have these issues. One thing that I often get asked as if i'm sleep deprived, should I exercise? And that's a little bit of a tRicky one.

My initial response for many years was, no, no, if you're sleep deprived, you're Better off not exercising. However, I now need to qualify that answer because their data showing that if you're sleep deprived and you exercise, especially if you you exercise early in the day and IT doesn't disrupt your sleep schedule. So it's not making you go to sleep even later the next night, that IT actually can cause some adjustments in the function of your immune system and in the way that you regulate your blood sugar that offset some of the negative effects of sleep deprivation.

That said, you should never, ever compromise the amount of sleep you could get in order to get exercise such that you run yourself down so what i'm really saying here is if you get one bad night sleep, should you skip your work out and you feel like, ah you know i'm not feeling sick and should I work? Or should I go back to sleep? Probably going back to sleep, the Better idea.

But if you don't have the option to go back to sleep for whatever reason, you can't fall back to sleep, then you would be wise to do a lot of exercise. But I was suggest reducing the intensity and duration of that exercised by about twenty five percent, maybe even fifty percent, and that should allow you to offset any of the negative effects of sleep deprivation for that one night. Keep in mind, exercises, not a replacement for sleep, and then to allow you to get to sleep at the appropriate time later that night and back on your regular schedule, keeping your nate immunity stem tuned up and ready to combat any calls or flows.

Now one more point about exercise. And here we're also going to dev tail in an important point about nutrition. In the review that I mentioned a few moments ago, they cover some of the data from studies expLoring the post exercise stress response. So this is the post exercise induced increase in things like cordus, all those natural killer cells, the production of White blood cells and so on.

It's very clear that if you are in a state of chronic stress because you're exercising ing a lot and or because you're not sleeping enough or for whatever reason, maybe have a lot of life stress, it's very clear that ingesting carbo hydrate after exercise can help attenuate some of the inflation tion that exercise induces. When we talk about carbohydrates, we're talking about rice open posted those sorts of things so called complex carbo hydrates in fruit post exercise has been shown to attenuate to reduce some of the markers of inflation tion by about thirty to forty percent when confronted with water only intake, especially if you're training faster. So for those of you like me that like to wake up in the morning and just drink fluid, you know, for me it's water, your biotic coffee.

And by the way, i've said before that people should delay their caffeine intake ninety minutes if and only if they're experiencing an afternoon crash, but that if you are exercising first in the morning, it's perfectly find to adjust your caffeine right away. So that gives you increase in energy for that exercise, that certainly what I do on days that exercise. But if you fast and then you're drinking caffeine and then you're exercising and that exercise goes longer than sixty minutes.

Certainly, if IT goes longer than seven, five minutes, you would do well to injust some complex cover hydrates maybe also some fruit, perhaps not immediately after exercise, but within the forty five minutes or so or hour so after exercise so that you're not ramping up those inflammatory molecules and leaving them ramped up for many hours into the morning and throughout today because, of course, this episode is not about exercising nutrition, but here we're talking about the role that exercise nutrition play in helping us combat, called influence by increasing the function of that nate immune system and the reasons why carbo hide rates can have this effect on quarter aleta. As an interesting and important discussion into itself will leave IT for another episode, but keep that mind also. I don't know about you, but a nice bulk of vote meals, some fruit and protein drinkers, some eggs after an hour, so of exercise in the morning when I haven't eat anything since the night before, taste really, really good.

So continuing with the theme of things that we can do at the level of behaviors to improve the function of our eight immune system and combat calls and floods, perhaps even prevent us from getting colds influence at all, but certainly help combat them if they've initially made their way into our system. But we haven't developed foobar on symptoms, and we want to prevent those. Foobar on symptoms is the use of deliberate heat exposure, in particular sona.

There is a nice study on this that was published very recently, twenty twenty three. The title of the study is the effects of a single and series of finish sona sessions on the immunity stem response and heat shock protein seventy levels. And trained and untrained men.

It's a very interesting study. They compared athletically trained and non athletically trained men, as most of you probably know, when you get into a hat, sona heart rate increases, this facial dilation, there's the increasing the release of heat shock proteins. There's the increasing things like dying northin, which, if it's sufficiently hot, are increased to levels that make us feel kind of agitated and not so good.

We have to actively commercials in the sonus. So we're not talking about an easy crews at one hundred and fifty degrees very high. We're talking about getting up into the one hundred and eighty degree fair in height or two hundred and ten degree far in height range, maybe even higher if you're he adapted and that the dying northin makes you feel lousy in the short term. But that IT up regulates a bunch of different biologging mechanisms that give you kind of low level, you oria and actually the capacity to experience more feelings of well being from the endorphins that you make after you get out of the sona.

This is also so important to understand whether not talking about exercises delivered cold exposure, delivered heat exposure, what happens during the heat exposure, cold exposure exercise is more often than not just the trigger for the long term adaptation that we're seeking, just like exercise increases your heart rate and blood pressure, but then leads to reductions in resting heart rate and blood pressure, and so on and so forth. This study is interesting and there a lot of different takeaway from the study because they compare these two different populations. I'll just give you the top counter or what the protocol entailed.

There were ten sona sessions. Each of those sonus sessions were three rounds of fifteen minutes of sona. So one session meant going into the sona, the sauna was of a given temperature.

But I think for most people, what's going to a work in terms of what parallel study is going to be somewhere between a hunan seventy six and two hundred and ten dies, depending on how he adapted. You are always be saved. Don't do this.

If you're pregnant, don't do this if you're a child and said so they're doing three rounds of fifteen minutes separated by two minutes. During that two minutes, they take a cool shower with a cool off in some way. They're not going into a cold plunge.

They're cooling off with a cool shower and they're doing that three times. That's one session. They do ten sessions. Those on sessions were spaced apart by at least a few days. And the entire experiment, meaning all ten sessions were completed within a three week period.

And then a bunch of things were measured, like the amount of White blood cells and immune cells that were deployed after the first session versus the third, versus the eighth, versus the tenth and so on, as well as the levels of court is all and inflammatory Marks are a lot of things measured in the study. Here's what we know. Sona bad says they're calling them resulted in a statistically significant increase in court is all concentration after the first and the tenth sona session.

okay. So every time you go into the sona, you're getting an increase in court as well. We know that because the heat is a stressor again, don't think about he is all you just get relaxing in the sun at so nice you're getting a court is all response court is all is a luca cordero de stress hormones IT sometimes called, which can be a good thing if IT sets in motion.

A number. Other things, such as the increase in the activity, the na immo system, and indeed, that is what they observed after in here, i'm paraphrasing, after the first inten sonatas, they witnessed an increase in lucas. I count luca de to are a particular type of cell of the unit mune system.

However, only after the last on a session did this change reach statistical significance in the trained group. So what they observe was that athletics who are trained are used to being in high heat conditions because of their athletics training. People who are not trained in athletics are not used to that. There are a lot of different ways to look at these data. But the simplest take away is that if you are already very, he adapted, because you do sona regularly, or you exercise regularly, well, then it's going to take a stronger stimulus or more sona, either longer or hotter or more frequent, to get the sorts of increases in nate immune pose as compared to someone who's never done sona, who's not exercising regularly. And that just makes sense.

If something isn't stressful to you, you're not going to get the stimulation of that in eight immune response in the overall take away from this study was that I do believe that if you're feeling run down a little bit or if you're just trying to keep cold and flu at bay, having some regular ish practice of getting into the sona for three rounds of fifteen minutes separate by two minute, cool, oh, you don't necessarily have to do a cold shower or cold between. Although I don't see why you couldn't or wouldn't you could also just get out the song and be in the cool layer and then get back in, or perhaps you do something more in to what's been shown in other stuff that explore the relationship between heat exposure and immune sense to which is to do two rounds of twenty minutes or one rounds of thirty minutes in the song of whatever you can do safely and comfortable. Ly, keep in mind, safety is key.

Don't harm youri say that not to protect me, to protect you. That sona is an effective way of increasing the activity of the na immune system. IT increases luca de levels, yes, IT increases.

Court is all levels, but in a way that promote the activity of the nate immune system. However, and here we are back to exactly the same thing we said about exercise. If you're already feeling really run down like kind of heavy ess in the body, don't feel well, you're starting to get some snifty, don't get in a very hot sona.

But for sake of keeping cods influence, IT day sure do three rounds of fifteen minutes in the sona between one hundred and seventy six, two hundred and ten degree es, whatever you can safely tolerate, take those two minute breaks in between. Maybe do a cold shower, cool lish shower. Maybe you just stand outside this on in between.

You're feeling really strong. Do a cold plunge for a minute or two minutes in between. You don't have to, but you certainly could. And then get back in and then repeat, or just to one twenty minute session or thirty minute session, all of which have been shown to promote the activity of the namee system.

However, and I realized I said this before, but feel like I need to say again, especially for you hard core exercises or people that really feel like, or I can push through, if you're already sick and you have the symptoms of a colder flu, you want to limit the amount of stress to your body, you want to get in to bed and sleep. If you can't sleep, you want to relax. You do not want to exercise. You should not exercise.

Not only you stand to get other people ill by going places where you exercise, but even if you exercise at home or in total isolation, you're going to prolong the duration of that illness because there are many, many reasons why being still slowing your circulation and allowing your innate, and then in that case, your adaptive immune stem to kick in and comment those infections is going to get you back into a regular exercising work regiment much, much faster than would be the case if you were to push through. okay. So now we get to the portion of the discussion that I think probably many people are anticipating, which is what can you take to reduce the probability of getting a colder flu or short in the duration of a colder flu? And I actually put out a call on social media.

I asked the question on instagram and on x formerly called twitter, you know, what do you do for a colder flu? And what are you curious about in hermes of what one can take for colder flu? And I got thousands upon thousands of answers.

However, many of those answers converge on some common things. Things like taking guy like I heard for instance, that some people are chewing a rock love of garage every day during the winter. Um I heard about people who take fermented garlic.

Some people swear by econ ia. Some people swear by econ asia, vitamin cy and zink. Now there are four too many compounds that exist in the wellness and indeed in the medical literature to cover all of them.

So i'm going to highlight a few that I think are especially interesting and that have been shown in pure reviewed science to be potentially useful. Some of these you've heard of before and some of them, I think you're going to be surprising, at least new to you. First, let's consider what most people believe to be a very effective way to hasan coller flues.

That is, to make them last short duration of time than they would otherwise, maybe even prevent culture flues. The big one there is vitamin y. We hear all the time.

Vitamins y, anti oxidation. I grew up in the area where the nobel prize winning chemist linus polling, who was a fanatic about vitam cy, he took many, many grams of vitamin. See each day, used to top the benefits of vitamin cy. Here's the deal.

There is some evidence, and it's not great, Frankly, that points to the fact that taking six to eight grams, grams, so that six thousand and eight thousand milligrams of vampy per day, that is a lot of vacancy each day, can perhaps delay the onset of a cold or shortened the duration of a cold. So here we're talking about very hydas and not a very robust effect. I should mention that for most people who aren't accustomed to taking much vitamin y, if you were to take sixty eight grams of vitamin cy in capsule or powder or pill form, chances are you going to experience some significant gesture distress.

Some people can build up to that level or ticket with food in a way that doesn't cause that gesture distress, but many people experience gesture distress. It's been a lot set about vitamin cy in its other potential roles in our physiology. And I don't want to touch on those now because IT may have some interesting roles in other aspects of our physiology, but have to say that in scouring the literature on vitamin sea, I encountered a recent paper.

So this was publishing twenty twenty three. And the title of this paper is retraction. Extradite of vitamin cy, based on a daily supplementation, shortens the common called a meet analysis of nine rendering zed controlled trials.

What is this paper that was recently published? Why is retraction the first word in the title? Well, IT turns out that the meta analysis of nine analyzed control trials showing a small but significant improvement in the outcomes for colds influence or reducing probability of getting colds influence, that study was retracted, and IT was a attracted on the basis of multiple instances of an error in which the placebo groups have been double counted in trials more than the two intervention arms. So there were some serious data analysis flaws in that made analysis. Now that is not to say that vitamin cy is a zero benefit for reducing the probability of called influence.

Must say, provided that you're getting sufficient amount of dancy from your food intake, maybe you also get little bit in your by him a mineral supplement or if you take a foundational supplement like A G won or something similar, almost certainly you're getting enough fight to and see IT does not seem that taking hy doses of vitamin cy and I would place six, eight grams of vital cy in the hyda range is going to be effective for treating or preventing colds and flus. So more data may arrive in the in the future. But vita cy is probably not a very good investment if you're taking IT solely for the purpose of enhancing your immun system function and staving off calls influence.

Now what about vitamin d? We hear a lot these days about the importance of having sufficient vitamin d levels. And ideally everyone would get the vitamin d levels measured by a regular blood.

Us, I do get my blood worked on every six months. I find IT be incredibly informative, tells me what's going on below the hood in ways that I never could be aware of where i'm not to get that test. But I realized that there's a cost to those tests and not everyone can afford them.

I think most physicians would agree that supplementing with anywhere from a thousand to two thousand, I use a vitamin d per day, is probably safe for most people. And we will buffer that level of vitamin in their system such that they're unlikely to be deficient in, unlikely to far exceed what's safe in the body. However, there are people who need higher levels of vami supplementation in order to achieve sufficient amounts of vitamin for their mental health and physical health.

I think vita is involved in a lot of different processes in the brain and body. Now IT is clear that people who are vitamin deficient, so these are people whose vitamin levels have been measured often times, have diminished immune system function and are more prone to acute respiratory tract infections. There's a very length and very interesting review entitled vitamin supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections, systematic review and metal analysis of individual participant data.

This is a beast of a thing I did read at all, very, very interesting. Many, many studies. The exact take away from a large review like this of twenty five renommist control trials is a little bit trick.

I mean, they did conclude that vitamin supplementation did reduce the risk of acute respiratory tract infection among all the participants. However, the degree of prevention was small to mother. In some cases.

They did point out, however, that just because people with low levels of vitamin d tend to get cold in flues more often than people that don't, does not necessarily mean that vitamin deficiencies are the reason for that. For instance, we know people they get regular sunlight exposure. And as everyone knows, i'm a big, big proponent of getting sunlight in your eyes as early as possible in the day after waking up.

And if it's cloudy out to get even more time outside, if you can, and if you can't get access to sunlight, for whatever reason, to perhaps invest in a ten thousand locks light tablet. You can find these online at reasonable cost, hundred dollars to two hundred dollars in some cases. Getting sunlight set in motion, a huge number of different things, including increasing the amount of amin d in your system, but a bunch of other things as well.

Increases in cortisol, increases in dopamine, increases in serotonin, the cascade toward and relate to improve immunity stem function. So what does the take away here? I think that for most people, supplementing with thousand to two thousand international nudes, probably safe.

However, if you need more vitamin d, you won't know that unless you take a vitamin d test. That is, you measured the amount of vitamin d in your bloodstream, and some people indeed need five thousand to ten thousand I U of vitamin per day. But you don't want to over those yourself self on vitamin d.

That is, if you already have sufficiently high levels of vitamin in your system, you're getting sufficient sunlight. Well, then taking ten thousand or more international use identity could possibly be detrimental. I think it's fair to say, based on the mid analysis review that I mentioned a moment ago, the other papers that I was able to clean that vitamin dee itself is unlikely to be the soul protecting against calls and flues.

But it's probably a good thing to include in your general kit of nutrition and supplementation tools. If your goal is to keep you in ate immune system fighting off calls and floods sufficiently, other things that could perhaps support the ana immune system are going to be, as I mention earlier, the things that support they got microbiome. So those low sugar for mental food.

Ds, maybe a prebiotic probiotic capture, maybe something like athletics Greens. Ag, one, although certainly you could achieve sufficient microbiome support from fu, if you careful and intentional about the foods that you select. Now the other compound are substance that we often hear about in the context of calls, are flues is iconic.

Asia is a compound that has been proposed to improve immune system function. Now, when you go into the data, you explore what does taking econ, ia, tantus or other forms of economic really do to avoid calls and flues. The answer that comes back is not much.

If anything, now is taking a condition dangerous. Probably not. However, IT has been shown in a few studies, the people that take a canadian regularly at high doses can potentially impede the function of the nate immune system, that is, reductions in White blood sell count, reductions in those natural killer cells.

So my suggestion would be, if you absolutely love canal, for whatever reason, you're convinced that IT helps you, that you reserve to taking IT when you're starting to feel a little bit run down or perhaps just in the winter month, not months plural, but month when you're most prone to those cold influx infections, but then not taking IT continuously throughout the year and certainly not for more than four weeks at a time. But again, if you're doing that, just know that there aren't really any strong scientific day to support the use of. By contrast, they're pretty darn good data that support supplementing with sink as a way to combat code and includes in particular calls.

Now here, the dosage is really matter. It's been shown that if you take less than seven, five milligrams of sink in supplement form to try and impact the probability of getting or shortening a common cold, it's not gonna work. You need to take one hundred milligrams or more.

And now one hundred milgram, or more of zinc, for some people, is going to cause some gesture distress if you take IT on an empty stomach. I've actually made the mistake of taking, I think he was fifty milligrams of sink on an empty stomach, and I felt really nauseous, did not feel well. So don't take sign on an empty stomach.

And if you're trying to shorten a colder flu that you think you've already contracted or you're trying to keep a colder flu at big, you are around people holder flu. You're just worried about IT taking one hundred milligrams of think perhaps divided up into two doses of fifty milligrams each or maybe one hundred milligrams all at once. But making sure that you take that with at least a moderately sized or full meal certainly could be advantages.

Keep in mind that people that are older than sixty five are perhaps the ones that need to supplement the most. Also keep in mind that children, meaning people Younger than fifteen, should probably not supplement with too much things that can be problematic. And certainly pregnant women should have talk to their doctor before supplementing was indeed any time you're onna take anything, whether not you're Young, old, pretty or not, you should consult your physician before you take anything to remove anything from your health protocols.

One of the more interesting aspects of supplementing with sink that I was able to find in the literature is a three times faster recovery rate for people that already contracted a cold. So in this study, people weren't taking one hundred milligrams, but the dosage came pretty close. They were taking ninety milligrams per day of a sink acid ate.

And they experience that three times faster recovery rate from that cold compared to people who are not taking the sink. Now of course, there could be other factors as well, but the study was fairly convincing. So given that sink is fairly low cost, given that is generally safe for most people in the fact that if you take IT with food, IT doesn't cause any discomfort.

Supplementing was in at the level of anywhere from ninety to one hundred milligrams per day, probably no more than one hundred and twenty per day, seems like a logical way to stave off called influence and reduce the duration of a colder flu. Should you contract one? Now I want to be very clear that i've been talking about cold and flux in concert of treating them more less as the same thing.

Some of that is for sake of time. In simplicity, most all of the studies showing a benefit of sink are studies showing the benefit of the sink for the treatment, or the hastening of called not fua fu. Specifically, however, I consulted with a few physicians in one of whom is expert in this area, and he said, I didn't see any reason why you wouldn't take a sink if you had a flu.

There's no reason to think that, that would introduce any kind of increased risk. But again, consult with your physical before taking your removing anything from your supplement regiment. Now a lot of the compound that we're discussing, our sort of conventional in the sense that I think most people have probably heard of them already, perhaps the most associate sounding one less far as actio, which we polling.

Not very helpful for confluence, but we have been talking about vitamin sea. We were talking about the vitamin d. And you sure you're getting your sunlight supporting your microbial and so on and so on.

One compound that i'm guessing most people perhaps have not heard of, but that is very interesting that in fact, i've taken before and that I stock in my supplement cabinet in case I feel like i'm coming down with something, is na to sixteen or neck. What is neck? Neck is a prefer to guide on what is good DIY gutium.

One is the master anti oxide is involved in reducing what are called reactive oxygen species, which build up and sells that are very active reactive action species build up even more in cells that are under stress or a body that's under stress. And IT also has the property of reducing reactive nitrogen species. Reactive oxygen reactive nitrogen species significantly increase under conditions of infection and having sufficient levels of glut.

Fiant is a good thing. Now anotheh system is used in certain clinics overseas and in the U. S. As a way to treat system fibrosis because it's also a mcalister insistid.

Fibrosis is the build up of fluid in the lungs, and a mucolipidosis stance is something that loosens up the mu cus. IT allows you to flow more readily out of different cavities of the body, including the lungs, the nail passages and scientists. And indeed, last winter, I did unfortunately get a cold.

I told you about once every eighteen to twenty four a months, I get a cold. And IT was a pretty nasty one. I was feeling super congested.

At first, I thought I was an year infection. Pretty quickly, I realized that I had a cold, and I was feeling so congested. I wasn't sleeping well.

And I was suggested to me to take ana eto system. I ended up doing that at a dosage of anywhere from six hundred and nine hundred milgram, three times per day. So as a six hundred to nine hundred milligram capsule, depending on which brand I purchased, lot different versions of this out there on the market.

I took a morning, late morning and afternoon. And indeed, IT is a powerful new gilda that you just starts flowing. Ali, you Better have an extra box of tissues handy.

And that greatly relieve the pressure in my science. And the reason I liked using that is because i've actively avoided using the congesting that one can purchase over the counter. Most e congestions are of the alpha one agonist variety.

What's an alpha one agonist that causes visual construction? That vio construction can be beneficial in preventing some of the intense congestion that one gets when you have a science infection or a cold or a flu, but then when those d congestions wear off one time to get a rebound increase in congestion, and it's really painful headache at settle. In addition, some over the counter d congestions can be habit forming, not necessary, addictive, but habit forming.

And they don't seem to have any other positive health benefits. So I prefer not to take the congestion if I can avoid IT. I had a very good experience with neck and the use of neck anesthetic system as a decongestant and also as a way to prevent getting calls influence is not an entirely new idea.

In fact, there's a paper dating back to nineteen ninety seven entitled attenuation of influences like symptom logy and improvement of cl mediated immunity with long term and A C system treatment. Now in this study they looked at people were taking six hundred milligrams of nnc, sixteen twice per day for six months. And what they observed is that the people who took and A C system had a significantly lower probability of contracting influenza.

Now this is but one study. They're been a few other studies. And unfortunately, there isn't a large body of researches looking at neck as IT prevented for colds and flus.

But the data in this paper are interesting enough, and I was compelled by them enough to seek out a physician who I know. I was answering my prompts on social media about what you use for colds and flu. And when I put that out there, as I mentioned, I got thousands of responses on both twitter x and on instagram.

And one particular physician who happens to have a youtube count, his name is doctor swell. t. He's a medical doctor. He works in an intensive care unit, and he deals with a lot of patients who have different strains of flu. In fact, he was the one that killed me.

To the fact that this year, there seems to be a fair number of each one and one flu virus going around. And remember the h one n one flu virus, while it's not you know, deadly, everyone, that can be quite severe in some people. So we do want to be on the look out for in trying to avoid getting each one, anyone, if we can.

I spoke to doctor swot. He was very generous with his knowledge about anecdo system. He did acknowledge, and I will, acknowledging in here that IT would be great to get more renommist control trial data on ana eto system. But we did talk about this paper, this one thousand nine ninety seven paper, and he did mention that he and other clinicians that are forced to be in the hospital dealing with patients all through the winter and all year long, they're getting a bombarded with cold in flue exposure all the time, that they, meaning he, in some of his colleagues, deliberately take anecdo simple as a preventative to try and reduce the probability of getting cold influence.

And while we don't want to make too much of any one study or enemy data, which is what we're describing, when I tell you about a physician who told me this or what I did and experience that, I think IT is worth paraphrasing the study that I mentioned before. N A, C, prevented the symptomatic forms caused by here the time that the A H one n one influence of virus quite efficiently, since the large majority of infected subjects in the plasma group, seventy nine percent developed clinically apparent disease versus only twenty five percent in the net group. In other words, approximately eighty percent of people in the study who did not take ana seal system got influenza.

Whether only twenty five percent of the people who were taking in aeo system contracted influences. So that's a fairly dramatic difference. And certainly the fact that ana eto system has been shown to increase glut, fine, that's primary mechanical action as far as we know. And the fact that increases in glue to Fiona generally healthy and good for us.

And the fact that anaya system is still available legally over the counter in the us, at least currently IT is some years back, as you may have heard, the fda called for a removal of ana system from over the counter cells that I should point out, was based on the fact that certain supplement companies were making claims about anna stein as a treatment for hangover and making a bunch of other claims for which there was no real data, but either because the F, D. A was effective in getting those companies to see those claims and door because of advocacy groups, which works very hard to try and keep in a city of sustain available for over the counter sales, as far as I know, at least read up until priority recording this episode, enothea system is available for sale over the counter. So whether not you decide to use annecy al system as a preventative.

And there are again, the dosages, about twelve hundred milligrams per day, divided into two different dosages, six hundred milligrams each. Or if you decided to take in to see system in the manner that I did, which was not as a preventative, but once I had a cold, confided off, apparently, got the cold, decided to take nine hundred milligrams three times per day, avoiding them, and take close to sleep. Because IT did disrupt my sleepit, I took IT too close to sleep because of the way that the mucus would flow.

So red ude, essentially, I know that sounds grows by felt gos filling up the back of my throat, so called post naseer drip, but I felt like post asil waterfall. And I decided to restrict my intake of anesthetic sixteen to earlier in the day only. And of course, there's the third option, which is that you up to not take in the seal system until more renomme zed control trials are published or not take in a single system at all, because you are of the sort that thinks, okay, with some sleep, hot shower and good meals, some chicken soup, maybe little garlic, who knows? Maybe you have some other tools and techniques that you like.

You like that ginger tea lemont that maybe that's all you need and that's all you need and that's all you want in order to deal with a colder flu. Be my guess. I certainly not here to convince anyone that you have to take a certain supplement, but I did feel like I would be remiss if I didn't cover what are general early, referred to as the so called preventatives and treatments for called influence, things like the vitamin, vitamin cy.

We now know that unfortunately, variances y he gets a private d minister and off, at least as the data stand now. But there are these other things like zh and potentially anotheh system that can be beneficial in shorting the duration of collor flues and perhaps even helping us avoid getting culture flues all together. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe our youtube channel.

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And I want to epos ze that we do not share your email with anybody. I'd like to thank you for today's discussion about the biology of coals and flues, about the biology of the immune system and how to avoid and treat colds and flus. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interesting science.