The Dr. Hyman Show - Foods and Habits That Keep Your Immune System Resilient

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Our immune systems are under more pressure than ever—from processed diets, environmental toxins, stress, and fast-spreading infections—and the result is faster aging and greater vulnerability to disease. As we grow older, “zombie cells” spread inflammation throughout the body, weakening defenses and accelerating decline. But research shows we’re not powerless: the emerging science of immuno-rejuvenation reveals that we can retrain and rebuild our immunity. Through the right foods, lifestyle habits, and even strategic stressors, the body has hidden pathways for repair and renewal—offering clues to how we might slow aging and unlock greater resilience. In this episode, I discuss, along with Dr. Elizabeth Boham and Dr. Roger Seheult, how we can support the immune system by using food, lifestyle, and hormetic stress to reduce illness and restore resilience while slowing aging. Dr. Elizabeth Boham is Board Certified in Family Medicine from Albany Medical School, and she is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner and the Medical Director of The UltraWellness Center. Dr. Boham lectures on a variety of topics, including Women’s Health and Breast Cancer Prevention, insulin resistance, heart health, weight control and allergies. She is on the faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine. Dr. Roger Seheult is currently an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine and Allied Health at Loma Linda University. Dr. Seheult is quadruple board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases, Critical Care Medicine, and Sleep Medicine through the American Board of Internal Medicine. His current practice is in Banning, California where he is a critical care physician, pulmonologist, and sleep physician at Beaver Medical Group.  He was formerly the Director for Intensive Care Services at San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital.  He lectures routinely across the country at conferences and for medical, PA, and RT societies. Dr. Seheult is also the Co-founder of MedCram, an online medical education company that helps healthcare professionals and also lay people understand medical topics clearly. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN to save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here: How To Reset Your Immune System At A Cellular Level Why You Keep Getting Sinus Infections, Colds, Urinary Tract Infections, And Other Recurrent Infections Don’t Let a Cold Get You Down: Try These Immunity Hacks How To Upgrade Your Immune System To Fight Viruses And Prevent Disease

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. And what happens is you develop these cells called zombie cells. They're terrible cells. And what they do is they tend to spread inflammation like a wild thyroid throughout your body. And you end up with a lot of these senescent cells running around your body that are causing you to age fast. You might be eating clean, working out, even meditating, but still feel anxious, wired, or totally exhausted. The truth is, it's easy to become magnesium deficient in today's fast-paced world. stress, screens, sugar, caffeine, and even workouts. They all deplete your magnesium stores.

And magnesium is involved in over 300 processes in your body from sleep to stress regulation, muscle recovery, heart health, and hormone balance. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough every night. It's the only supplement I found with all seven essential forms of magnesium your body needs in one formula. Most magnesium supplements only give you one or two forms. That's not enough to make a difference. If you feel burnout or constantly on edge, your body's likely needing more magnesium. Try magnesium breakthrough and feel the difference in your sleep, your mood, and your energy. Bioptimizers has increased their discount for my audience. Just go to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code Hyman for 15% off your order. Before we jump into today's episode,

I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live Q&A's exclusive content and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products

at Dr.hyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget, you can enjoy every episode of this podcast, add free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple podcasts and tap try free to start your seven-day free trial. Now, why is the concept of immune rejuvenation better than our conventional approach to immune health. Well, immune rejuvenation essentially trains your immune system

to work better at every level. Your immune systems turn over fast. Your white cells turn over fast. You build a new immune system regularly. Everything comes from your blood and bone marrow, right? So your hemopatic stem cells are generating new white cells and all the different types of cells. So you really need to kind of learn how to build the right immune system and not have it

to degrade as we age. Now, what happens as we age typically is not immune-rejuvenating. but a concept called immunosinessence, which is the aging of our immune system. And that's damage that occurs in our body as a result of a dysfunctional immune system, one that generates more inflammation that causes aging and less immune support that actually helps you fight infection and cancer. And what happens is we develop these cells called zombie cells. They're terrible cells.

I wrote about them in my book. It's one of the hallmarks of aging. They're also known as senescent cells. and what they do is they tend to spread inflammation like a wild thyroid throughout your body and they make other cells zombie cells just like zombies make other people's zombies it's the same idea and you end up with a lot of these senescent cells running around your body that are causing you to age faster so how do we deal with them how do we actually get rid of them how do we rejuvenate our body to get rid of the zombie cells to make room for healthy new cells well

So we're kind of in a challenging moment in history for human immune systems. We are dealing with things we never had to deal with before. And the worst is our diet, which is a highly inflammatory diet, our processed food diet, high sugar and starch diet, high refined oils, lack of enough phytochemicals and medicines in food, anti-inflammatory compounds in food, and omega-3 fats in our diet. are really having a horrible dietary experience in America and around the world globally. And we're seeing that effect on driving all the inflammatory diseases, especially obesity. And then there's not just our inflammatory diet, but all the environmental toxins that we have

to deal with. And we're also having no increased spread of globalization of microbes through like we saw with COVID in the pandemic. It happens, you know, one in one country a thousand years ago, wouldn't get anywhere because you couldn't get anywhere, but now it spreads like a wildfire. So we also have other things like stress, psychological stress, physical stresses, all create stress on the immune system. So this really sets the stage for this chronic inflammatory state. It makes us more susceptible to infections, more susceptible to food sensitivities, allergies, and autoimmunity, as well as rapid aging.

So the question is, how do we lose the science of immunology, the emerging science of understanding immunorejuvenation? to help the body to reset, to help the body fight this process of inflammation as we age, to help deal with the zombie cells, and to basically make our immune systems more resilient. Well, the way basically, you know, we do cleaning up of our cells is through killing of the bad cells or they die, and then we have to clean and recycle them up. And this is called autophagy, and this is something I've talked a lot about, but autophagy is simply this process of self-cleaning, like a cell. cleaning oven where your sort of body has this process to kind of gobble up like with Pac-Man

little things called lysosomes gobble up all the old cells or damaged cells or damaged proteins digest them and break them down in the component parts and then reuse them like recycling and it's quite an amazing process and we often have a degraded process of autophagy as we age and there's lots of things we can do to stimulate it and and a lot of the ways we can do it actually is through food and through the right nutrients in food and through the right phytochemicals in food. So we also have to actually understand how to also rejuvenate our mitochondria because our mitochondria are the energy factories of our cells or the place where we make ATP that drives all of our biological processes. So when our mitochondria age, we age and we need to rejuvenate our mitochondria

as well. So again, this is like mitophagy is similar to autophagy. It's a process of recycling, and getting rid of the old mitochondria, building new ones, and you need a good immune system to do that because any kind of inflammation will cause mitochondrial dysfunction. So when you look at the body's ability to rejuvenate, it's quite remarkable.

We have our own built-in process of rejuvenation. We have stem cells. We have immune cells that can help us rejuvenate. We can actually activate all these processes, but we have to learn how. So the question is, what can we do to activate our own body's immune cells? rejuvenation system what are the what is the research showing us about how do we cultivate a

healthier immune system well there's a few things food right so food is so important and so eating an anti-inflammatory diet that's plant rich that's full of phytochemicals that has medicinal properties in them that actually can kill some of the zombie cells can rejuvenate your immune system can reduce the inflammation is so important so lots of colorful fruits and vegetables One of the things that I like are prebiotics and polyphenols, and they are in various kinds of foods. One of the most important foods for immune rejuvenation is something called Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. Now, this is an ancient grain, not even a grain. It's actually a flour, so it's not a grain, even though it's called wheat.

It's not wheat. That's confusing. But anyway, it's grown in the Himalayas, and it's got over 132 phytochemicals, many of which are not found anywhere else in nature, and have a powerful ability to regulate immunity. And some of them like Corsetan, we've seen reverse biological age. And some preliminary data, they've shown that using Himalayan-Therry buckwheat, we can actually reverse our biological age by rejuvenating our immune system. So really important. Next is stay active.

So moving your body, exercise, interval training, really powerful for actually rejuvening your immune system. Over-exercising actually can cause a problem. But the right amount of exercise actually helps build immunity. Also, make sure you get the right omega-3 fats because essential fatty acids. acids are so important. And most fish oils are not that great because they process the fish oil in a way that degrade some of the most anti-inflammatory components. We call pro-resolvin our mediators, which are basically like breaks on the immune system. And they also take out a lot of the important things like astazanthin, which is important for inflammation. It is an antioxidant that

is found in a lot of the omega-3 fat containing fish like salmon. So want to make sure you have the right omega-3s. Also, you want to fertilize your microcontamin. or biomes. So both polyphenols from colorful plant foods, but pre-biotic and probiotic foods are really important. And there's a lot of them out there. We talked a lot about it on the podcast, but we want to make sure you're increasing pre and probiotic foods. Also, get rid of all the junk, right? The processed food, fried foods, sugary foods, junk foods, these are things that are just driving inflammation and actually worsening your immune system. Also, sleep, really important. If you don't sleep, your immune system is not going to work well. So seven, eight hours of good sleep.

really important. Now the other thing is that there are positive things that are going to help you improve your immune system like stress stressors for example. We know that that a stress isn't always bad, that there are good stresses that activate your body's own healing response. So basically this kind of stress is called hormesis and hormesis is the idea that there's a stress that doesn't kill you that makes you stronger. So essentially it takes some kind of insult, which could be exercise or fasting or a sauna or a coal plunge and it tricks your body into thinking something bad's happening and then your body response by creating a defensive response by activating all its healing and rejuvenation and repair systems so it's really important and I think there's a lot of ways to

do this so and these positive stresses are important they help you become more resilient so the goal is to become more resilient more stress resilient more immune resilient be able to adapt to a lot of changes and actually deal with what has to happen. Now, one of the ways we can actually stimulate the process of healing in the body is through sort of plant compounds that they have used and developed to protect themselves. These are the plant's own protective defensive mechanisms. And they're called phytochemicals. And when plants are stressed, they make more of these. They're their own defense system. They're their immune system. So it's great to eat these things because they actually activate your body's own healing systems. So when plants have to deal with bad soil or temperature extremes or,

or, you know, insects that are trying to fight off or floods or droughts, they create all these incredible molecules that are part of their own defense systems. And when we actually eat these, it's like eating a little bit of adversity and then they activate our body's own healing systems. And it's really powerful. Now, Dr. Bland has come up with an approach to immune health that I think it's quite brilliant because it deals with three key categories of foods and components in our food that can really rejuvenate our immune system. The first are polyphenols from plants. Things like coercedin, luteolin, and asperidin, all these bioflavinoids that are found in food that can really rejuvenate our immune system. And they're found in abundance in this

Himalayan tarray buckwheat. The second is eating the right amounts of omega fats, omega-3 fats and the right kind. And again, I know I'm an investor in Big Bolt Health, but they've come up with a model of getting fish oil and extracting the omega-3s from it and keeping the pro-resolvent mediators, preventing the degradation, it's purified, there's no toxins in it, it's a cold process,

so it retains all its benefit, and it's quite a different omega-3 fat. The next is your microbiome. And this is supporting your microbiome through pre and probiotic foods and actually hamillian tary buckwheat has these amazing microbiome supporting fibers that are quite amazing and and basically you want to make sure you get these from all sorts of foods not just now you see hamillian tartary buckwheat but omega three fats from fish polyphenols from plants fibers and pre and probiotics from our food and they basically help us to build our

own immune system so what are the kinds of other positive stressors other than food that we can used to upgrade our immune systems and immuno rejuvenate ourselves? Well, first is hormesis. So hormesis is, like I said, this idea that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And some of them are pretty simple to do. For example, temperature extremes, hot and cold. So you can do a sauna for 30 minutes at 170 degrees, a regular sauna for 30 minutes and you go in and out, cotton, cold, hot, and cold, that doing that four times a week has enormous benefits for your health and longevity. Cold plunge, if you get one, great, you can just fill up your bathtub with cold water or get a big horse trough and fill with ice and water and go in that.

You can even just take cold shower that also helps rejuvenate your immune system. Not overeating and actually having a diet that is time restricted can be very important. So don't eat three hours before bed. Give yourself at least, you know, 16 hours. 12, 14, if you're, you know, thin and you can't tolerate a longer period. But most people can deal with a 16 hour overnight fast. That's eating dinner at six and having breakfast at, you know, 10 in the morning. So it's not, it's not terrible. And it's powerful to actually drive the activation of autophagy, my topogy, and killing some of these zombie cells

for juvenile immune system. I do stuff that also challenges you in other ways, whether it's, you know, learning a new sport, whether it's, you know, bike riding or tennis or horse. spec riding, you know, do something that kind of put you out of your comfort zone and makes you learn new stuff. I picked up tennis when I was 45 and I'm still learning and I'm still improving and growing. So it's amazing. And also try something crazy like public speaking. I do it. It's pretty easy for me. But if you're not used to it, it creates a stress in your system. It may actually be a good stress. Magnesium is like the body's natural chill switch. It helps regulate stress, sleep, mood, and more. But most people are deficient. And most supplements don't give you the full

spectrum. That's why I recommend magnesium breakthrough, the only formula with all seven forms of magnesium. Feel calmer, sleep better, and give your body what it's missing. Bioptimizers has increased their discount for my audience. Go to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code Hyman to get 15% off your order today. Tell us, Liz, about some of your patients that you've discovered how to actually work with Because it's something I also have seen in my practice. People get sick over and over again. And you're just going to see these people like, why are you always getting sick? And then you start digging.

And what are the kinds of things you find? What are out of balance? What's out of balance? So for the first person I wanted to talk about, he was a 10-year-old boy. And he was coming in because he was getting every cold and flu that was going around. Right? So his mom was getting frustrated because he was out of school almost a couple weeks a year, if not more, because he kept getting sick, and she, of course, had to take off work, and it was causing some

disruption in their house. But she was also really just worried about him. Why was he picking up every cold and flu going around? I got a good detailed history from him, and he had multiple ear infections as a younger child. So when he was, you know, his first few years of life, even up to five, he was getting lots of ear infections, and often treated with antibiotics. So he would get an ear infection and he would take antibiotics and then we'd get another ear infection and he would take more antibiotics. He had a lot of congestion in his in his nose and nasal passages way. Even when he wasn't sick. Even when he wasn't sick, he was dealing with, and that's an issue we know because when there's a lot of congestion floating around, sometimes it gets stuck, right?

So kids that have a lot of congestion in their nasal passageways and their eustacean tubes more likely for it to get. They have more inflammation and it's more likely to get stuck and then another infection. grows and you get an ear infection, for example. So he had these, he had these recurrent chronic ear infections. So wait, wait, so this is just to break it down a little bit. So what you're saying essentially is that if you're living a lifestyle or you have food sensitivities or something that's causing congestion and inflammation in your sinuses and your nose and your throat, that sets the stage for recurring infections.

Yeah. Right. So maybe the treatment isn't to fix the infection, it's to figure out why there's this problem. Right, because the congestion gets stuck. and then there's a breeding ground for a virus or bacteria to overgrow and an infection to take hold and for it not to be able to get out of the system, you know? And for him, you know, for him, he had these chronic ear infections, but now is getting everything. So when he had the chronic ear infections, it's important to note that he was given lots of antibiotics.

So for his first five years of life, he was on multiple rounds of antibiotics, two, three times a year getting antibiotics for these ear infections. And that is something we often see. We'll see that somebody gets an infection, right? For this kid, it was his ear infection or for somebody else that might be a urinary tract infection or sinus infection. They are given antibiotics, but those antibiotics get rid of the infection, but they also can get rid of all that good bacteria that's lining the sinus passageways, the digestive system, the bladder area, right? The microbiome. The microbiome, right?

So, and we know that those good bacteria, they're like the first line of defense. They're like that army on the front line, right? They can say, okay, virus, don't get into my body. Okay, another bacteria, don't get, don't come into my nose, right? Those good bacteria are lining all the passageways in our body. So that when we- They're part of our defense system. Huge part of our immune system, huge part of that innate immune system, that immune system that's

going to attack right away when something new or different comes into the body. And so when we've been on a lot of antibiotics in the past, we will often see people's whose immune system is not working as well as we'd like it to. So what you're saying is that antibiotics, even though they treat infections, seem to mess up your immune system. I think they do. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think there's good studies to show that when you get, I mean, sometimes an antibiotic is necessary, but there's definitely been multiple times with a lot of. lots and lots of people and of course all the antibiotics in our food supply they're damaging a lot of that good protective good bacteria that are that are our first you know first line of our immune system so absolutely make even more susceptible on the next round exactly and that's i think one reason why we see these chronic infections with people because they take the antibiotics but then it gets rid of a lot of the good bacteria so it's easier then next time for that virus or bacteria to to take hold and to become an infection again. And so we see this sort of cyclical thing going on with people. And so I think that's

important for us to pay attention to and say, okay, let's step back and say, do we absolutely need to use this antibiotic this time for this situation? And I think we, you know, as physicians, it's important that we're making that, we're being more careful with the use of antibiotics. And we, but I think that's an area that we see issue with. And I think one reason for him, one of the reasons why he was more susceptible to these colds and flus. But I don't think it was the only reason. Yeah, what was the other thing you found? And I think that that's important to note, right?

We always want to find one thing. We always want to say, oh, it's the one reason why somebody's immune system isn't working as well, but many times it's multiple things coming together. And just want to stop you for a minute there, because in traditional medicine, we were trained to think about the one thing. Yeah. We call it Occam's a razor. What's the simplest explanation that can explain all of it?

And we sort of do that a little bit of functional medicine, but the, The problem with traditional medicine is very reductionist. It's like this, you know, this is one thing. And the truth isn't, body is complex. It's a system. Yes. And it's many things. It's more like a web than a razor.

Absolutely. Right. And many times there's, you know, 10 different things going on that are contributing to why this person's immune system wasn't working well. So their microbiome, their diet, nutritional deficiencies, all sorts of things. So for this child, you know, we realized also because of all of this congestion and frequent infections and a lot of ear infections as a kid, I said, well, you know what, maybe we need to think about some food sensitivities that may be causing a lot of congestion for this kid and putting him at increased risk for these ear infections as a kid and infections now. Because we do know, we do know that dairy and

cows milk is associated with increased risk of ear infections for some kids. And also mucus production, congestion. I mean, I know if I ate dairy, I immediately get running nose and congestion. It doesn't affect everybody by that way, but it does affect a lot of people that way. And he was willing. He was willing to say, okay, I'm going to, the kid, he was ready to say, I want to stop getting sick all the time. And so he was willing to go off of, you know, to do an elimination of dairy from his diet. And so that is one of the things we really focused on and we worked on. And it really did help. His congestion decreased. He wasn't getting as sick as much. But he, but we did more than that because we also realized that he, you know, I did some nutritional. biomarkers. I realized he was a little low in zinc, which is, you know, not uncommon to find, you know, so I rethink. Zinc is so important for your immune function. In fact, in COVID-19, they're finding they're actually treating patients with zinc because it helps to interrupt the viral replication and the viral binding to this sort of cells and the insertion into the host DNA.

So I think it's really interesting to see that, you know, just even in this crazy, horrible infection of COVID-19, we're going back to basic principles of what's required to help immune system zinc and vitamin C, which are being used intravenously in studies. Yes. And so for him, you know, we added in like 20 milligrams of zinc and 500 milligrams of vitamin C a day. And that was very helpful too to help him break this cycle. In addition, we found out, we found out that he had some elevated levels of heavy metals. So his lead was, his lead was a little bit high. He was living in a home he'd grown up in a home that was like it was built in the early like 1920s or so so it had more just lead in the water and in the in the walls of the house so it had been it had been refurbished

but it's still you know his lead levels were higher than we'd like them to be and we know right what we know about heavy metals we know that high levels of lead are really a problem for both the neurological system and the immune system but I think we also know that you know low levels can can result in people's immune systems not working optimally. And also mercury and light also affect the gut. So they interrupt the gut function can cause leaky gut, growth of bad bugs in there. So you've got other reasons for this. Yes, right.

That's true. That's very true. So we also, you know, not only did we pull away dairy from his diet, we put him on a really good probiotic because he had been on so many antibiotics in the past. And probiotics, there's really, really interesting studies on how well they help the immune system. I mean, we need to do a lot more research here and figure this out a lot more, but they can really help with breaking some of the cycles for people who are chronically getting sick. I mean, I remember this study I read years ago was a pregnant woman who took antibiotics,

I mean, who took probiotics. And compared to another group that didn't, and the women who took the probiotics during pregnancy, their offspring had dramatically less eczema and asthma. Yes. And allergies. Yes. Because the mothers took it. So same thing when you give it to kids, it also helps dramatically with these problems. Yeah, absolutely. and can help improve the functioning of the immune system for some kids in certain situations. And then, of course, we gave him that zinc and vitamin C, but then I gave him, I put him on a detoxification protocol. I really helped with getting these heavy metal levels down. We did a protocol that had multiple different components in it, but that was because we tested

and we found that his heavy metals were a little bit high. So we worked to really bring them down with, you know, glutathione, liposomal vitamin C, some binding agents, things that help support of the detoxification system in his body. And, you know, that comprehensive approach really helped his immune system improve. And it helped him get out of that cycle of getting sick, you know, two to three times every winter. And I think that's, it's really, it's really fun to watch and see that because we can see that difference all the time. I don't get sick anymore. My sinuses, I don't get, this is the first year I've gone without having antibiotics from my sinuses and so forth.

It's just so simple. I mean, I remember this kid who just reminded me in the store and I was in the emergency room years ago. And I was working in Mercy Hospital in Springfield Mass. And this woman came in with her toddler, who was probably like maybe about two years old. And it had just so many ear infections, one after the other after the other.

And I said, well, when did this all start? And she's like, well, it was about a year old. I said, what happened was a year old? I said, well, I switched him from breast milk to regular milk. And I was like, and this is before I knew about functional medicine or anything. I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. Well, why don't you take them off dairy and see what happens? And the kid was fine.

So I think sometimes it's sort of that simple. But I think often is more comprehensive because one, you change his diet. You optimize his nutrient levels. Yes. And you also, in a little deeper to look at his detoxification and his mental burden, which was also a factor. So you did diagnostic test that can help pinpoint these issues. and you can really create a precision approach to each individual. So this is his problem, but there may be somebody else who might have a different reason

for their immune system not working. I think it's really important to understand that we at the ultra-wellness center and functional medicine take a very different lens at looking at these chronic problems and say, what is the cause, how do we get rid of the cause, and why isn't the body working properly? And when I learned functional medicine, one of my mentors was a guy named Sidney Baker, who's sort of a Yale pediatrician, just brilliant guy. And he was incredibly good at taking incredibly complex ideas and simplifying them into a few principles. And one of the most important

principles that guys meet every day, still today, is a very simple question is, what do you need to get rid of in your body that's making it unhappy? And what does your body need to get in order to get healthy? Yes. So what are the things that are the problems that cause disease? And one of the missing factors that you need to have a resilient system. And so this is for the immunism, I was saying, so this kid, it was, he had too much dairy that was bugging him, he had too many metals that were bugging him, so you got rid of those things, and then you added in the things the body needed to function. You added in the probiotics, and you add in the zinc and the vitamin C, and the body knows

what to do. It's like when you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff, it's just that's simple. And sometimes it's a tough job to figure out what the bad stuff is that you need to get rid of and what the good stuff is they need to get. And that's the, that's where, you know, the real, you know, meat of functional medicine is, is being able to investigate those things properly. And we don't, we don't learn that in medical school. So functional as we learn how to dive deep into being an expert and what are the things that cause disease and how do you create a healthy human. And I think that's the, I think that's really the power of supplements. You know,

sometimes people are like, oh, you know, what does supplements matter? A multi, is this helpful? Is this expensive urine? Yeah, but, but when, when you, when you, when you, When you can identify what deficiencies people have or what, because of their genetics, they need more of, right? When you can really specialize and give a personalized program for somebody, it makes a world a difference. You know, I remember in my undergraduate degree in nutrition, and they were just like, oh, you know, don't bother with supplements. You know, it was really food first kind of a program. So I never took supplements. I remember the first time I took a multivitamin.

I was like, whoa, this is amazing. And it was a good quality one with good methylated V vitamins. I had so much more energy because I needed that extra methylation because of my genetics, right? But like, so when you specialize and give a personalized approach, it really makes a huge difference for people. So, okay. Now, whether it's boosting your immune system or improving your gut health, polyphenols are just an essential part of any health-focused diet. So let's jump in and discover how you can eat your medicine and give your body the support it needs to thrive. So let's start by diving into one of nature's most powerful immune-supporting agents, polyphenols.

Now, what are those? Polyphenols are a type of phytochemical, phyto-means plant, chemical means chemical, or phytonutrient. And these are found in our diet if we're eating an abundance of whole real plant foods. They're definitely not in ultra-processed food at all, which is a real problem. and partly why we're so sick, not just the bad stuff, but not enough of the good stuff. So this is the good stuff, my folks. Not only do these polyphenols provide a trove of benefits for health and for longevity, but they also support our immunity and our gut health,

which is so important for our immune system because they feed our good gut bugs. They're literally fuel for your intestinal microbiome. And if you don't feed your inner garden right and you don't tend it right, it's not going to be nice to you. it's going to cause all kinds of issues from chronic disease and many other things, all connected to inflammation. So polyphenols reduce inflammation, and they also are beneficial for modulating our immune system. All right, so what is the impact of polyphenols on immunity? Well, there's over 8,000 polyphenolic compounds that have identified to date. Now, many more

phytochemicals, but these are just the polyphenola compounds. Now, these are a diverse group of bioactive phytochemicals that have been extensively studied for their antioxidant and their anti-inflammatory properties. They modulate immune cells and they turn on our anti-inflammatory pathways, which then helps reduce inflammation, which is the scourge of everybody as far as chronic disease and acute disease. They combat oxidative stress, which leads to rusting and aging, and they protect against all sorts of chronic diseases. So how do they do this? Is this really kind of cool idea called phytohormesis. Now, hormesis is this stress that doesn't kill you that makes you stronger. It's a process where a low dose of a potentially harmful thing,

like exercise or your strength training and ripping muscle fibers, actually stimulates a positive beneficial adaptive response, like building new muscle. Same thing with cold therapy or cryotherapy or saunas. There's a whole bunch of different hormetic therapies. I talk about these in my book Young Forever, and they're a key part of longevity. But what's interesting is that these phytochemicals are tiny little stress molecules because they're the plant's defense systems. They're not there for us. I mean, obviously, the plant didn't create these for us, but we've adapted with them to use them in our bodies to activate healing responses. It's really amazing. So it's like a little stress that makes it stronger, and it's very powerful. So these polyphenols, which are actually

the plants' defense mechanisms make them a little sort of stressful in our body. They create a little bit of a stress response, but that activates in response our healing system. And it's super important to remember because these polyphenols are rich in plant foods, but they're richer in wild foods. They're richer in foods that are grown regeneratively and then organic and then conventional. So it's sort of hierarchy because we basically have bred these out of our modern diet, literally by breeding for starch and for yield and for drought resistance and for, you know, transportability and shelf stability, but not for nutrition. So we have a real issue of nutrition security here. Food security is not having enough food to eat, but nutrition

security is having enough nutrients to eat, and we are definitely not having those. And I think of these polyphenols as conditionally essential nutrients. We're not seeing deficiencies like, you know, scurvy or rickets if you don't have them. But over the long term, if you don't have them, they actually accelerate all of our aging processes, and by using them, they activate our longevity pathways and switches to help us live a long, healthy life. All right. So what happens? When we consume them, our bodies respond by ramping up our own defense mechanisms.

They increase the production of our own antioxidant enzymes. They enhance our detoxification pathways. They boost our immune system. They help our mitochondria. They help prepare DNA. They're doing all kinds of amazing things that help us live longer and healthier. It basically trigger a mini workout for yourselves, making them more resilient to stress and damage. Now, one of the key benefits of this hormetic response, this hormesis I'm talking about,

is the reduction of free radicals or oxidative stress. You know what that is. It's rusting. It's when your apple turns brown in the air, or your face wrinkles from the sun, right? These are all oxidative stress reactions. And polyphenols can directly reduce oxidative stress by fighting off damage as caused by these free radicals. So when you incorporate a polyphenol-rich set of foods into your diet, you can mitigate this damage to your cells and the harmful, pro-inflammatory disease-causing effects that come with it.

So it's really powerful to include these because they sort of are, you're working with your body to activate healing systems. So when you do this, when you activate and enhance your body's antioxidant-defense systems, these polyphenols actually protect ourselves from the things that cause rapid aging and disease, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Now, what about gut health? Now, until recently, we thought, oh, you need prebiotics, which is fiber and you need probiotics, which is true, but recent discoveries have made it really clear that polyphenols are essential for creating a healthy gut microbiome. And why do you need a healthy gut microbiome? Because it regulates everything in your body.

There's probably a third to a half of all your blood metabolites that come from your gut. they interact with all your biological systems and abnormalities in your gut microbiome, meaning having bad gut bugs by not eating enough of the right foods and too much of the wrong foods and not having enough polyphenols linked to everything from heart disease to cancer to diabetes, to dementia, to autism, autoimmune disease, to asthma, to fibromyalgia, to chronic critique syndrome, and the list goes on and on and on, even aging itself. So polyphenols are kind of newly understood to have a huge role in the microbiome. and they help support our microbiome by basically feeding and growing the good gut bugs,

which produce anti-inflammatory metabolites, and also, it's for other compounds we call postbiotics. Now, what are postbiotics? Well, you've heard of prebiotics, you've heard of probiotics. Postbiotics are basically compounds that are made by the bacteria in your gut that have a role in our physiology and our biology in a good way that makes us healthier, and these are really beneficial. are quite amazing. That's why I said about a third to half of all the things floating around

your blood, all the molecules flowing around your blood, come from the gut bacteria. Now, postbiotics support something called the innate immune system as well as the adaptive immune system. These are our two immune systems that help fight off infection. Now, it's super important to keep these good gut bugs around and keep them happy because they strengthen the gut barrier, which prevents a leaky gut, which causes a lot of inflammation. and that leads to a healthier, stronger, more robust immune system. Why is this important? Why is it protecting your gut barrier important?

About 60 to 70% of your immune system is in your gut. Why? Because that's where your body comes into contact with a lot of foreign stuff, and your immune system is supposed to help you identify and fight off foreign stuff, like bugs or weird proteins or food proteins, things that leak into your system. The more polyphenols you consume,

the stronger and more resilient in your immune system. And many studies have shown that there's an inverse relationship between viral infection and polyphenol-rich diets, meaning if you're eating a lot of cold-for fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to get a virus and get sick from it. Not bad, just from eating a bunch of good food. Now, let's talk about a few foods that you can start including in your diet

that will help protect you against the cold and flu foods and foods that contain these compounds. The first is a category of compounds called catechins. Catechins are powerful polyphenols that are found in green tea, and it have shown to have significantly benefit to reduce the incidence of lymphoenza and the common cold symptoms. Now, catechins are also abundant in dark chocolate, apples, gooseberries, grape seeds, kiwis, strawberries, red wine, although I wouldn't use that. Beer also, I wouldn't use that.

Chocolate, cocoa, all that is a source of some of these catechins, although green tea is one of the highest sources. And they have a lot of benefits, right? These catechins are anti-cancer compounds. They fight obesity. They're anti-diabetic compounds. They're anti-inflammatory. They're detoxifying compounds. They're antiviral. And they have a role in preventing coles and flus, and that's really important. In fact, research shows that regular consumption of green tea catacons, either by drinking green tea or taking it as a supplement or gargling with green tea. I never done that, but it sounds interesting. That's been linked to a decrease in the flu. So just drinking green tea or taking green tea supplements or just gargling with it, lowers your risk at getting the flu. That's great. By the way,

I never get the flu shot for many reasons, but I think if your immune system's healthy and your vitamin E levels are up and you're eating a healthy diet, you're really not going to get the flu or it's going to be very mild. Obviously, if you're chronically ill, you're sick or some of the reason you might need a flu vaccine, that's fine. But for most of us, I think it's overkill. And then, basically when you drink green tea, it's been linked to a reduced incidence of influenza infection and cold symptoms. So when you're looking to beat that seasonal cold, just have a cup of green tea or better yet, have a piece of dark chocolate. That's my favorite. There is a plethora of evidence that exercise does a tremendous amount not only for our mental

health, but also for inflammation and for feeling well. I mean, it affects so many aspects And that's why I group it as to going outside as being a package deal. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's so good. So exercise is great. What's the mechanism that exercise improves your immune system? Yeah. So we know, of course, that that exercise is beneficial in terms of cardiovascular.

How does it work in terms of our immune system? And it has to do with cortisol levels because they've measured this and people have lower cortisol levels. It has to do with something called BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factors. These things go up and it improves brain function as well. There's something in the immune system called inflammasomes. So these inflammasomes are what sort of sets things off. And what they find is that exercise modulates this. There was an amazing study that was done at McMaster University by Jennifer Heist.

she was the director of the fit lab. And what she showed was she looked at the last six weeks of the school term. And these students that were under a lot of stress, she divided them to three groups. One was a control group. They didn't do anything different. The other one was a moderate intensity. And the other one was a high intensity group. And she basically did this for six weeks.

The exercise was 20 minutes a day. It was in one group, they got their heart rate up to about 80% of predicted. The other one, it was only like 50 to 60% of max predicted. And at the end of the six weeks, she measured multiple endpoints. She looked at depression scales. By the way, moderate exercise had the best depression scale versus control group. But she also looked at IL6, which you mentioned before. IL6 is this measurement of a cytokine inflammatory measure, which is used in a very high in COVID-19.

Those levels in the exercise group were lower than they were in the control group. So to say all of that, to say is that people who engaged in moderate, or low impact exercise three times a week, about 20 minutes a day, had less depression than those people, in other words, they had less depression at the end of those six weeks than they had at the beginning of those six weeks, which is just phenomenal. In other words, not only was exercise able to completely eliminate the depression associated with stress, it was actually able to make them happier despite the fact that they were under stress. I think that's incredible. It's pretty amazing. I think, you know, you talked about the

inflammisome, the NLRP3 inflammation, which is part of our innate immune system that is not antibody related. And it gets activated in COVID really bad. It's not just the antibodies. It's this ancient part of our immune system that's been there forever that just creates a massive storm of inflammation. It's not specific. And I think a lot of it, a lot of it gets triggered through, you know, lifestyle factors, through obviously infections and there's there's inhibitors of it like you're mentioning there's ways to sort of inhibit a true exercise which is accessible to all of us on either of their shoes and even if you don't have shoes you can still exercise i mean i mean there's so much you can

do at home with body weight stuff and just dancing in your living room to you know see me wonder like i like to do whatever so um the the other thing that's important to think about and you're an expert in us is sleep and the means sleep. And, you know, I think a lot of us are deprived sleep, but probably 70% Americans don't get up sleep. We used to sleep nine hours, now the average seven. And I think the sleep deprivation plays a big role. We know we're run down and we're stressed and we're tired and we are more likely to get sick. So how, what is the mechanism of that? How does sleep regulate our immune system and how much should we be getting? And what should we doing to upgrade our sleep game? Oh, wow. Okay. So that's huge, huge topic. So you did a whole

fellowship in it. So I'm like, yeah, I get it. So everyone needs to understand this. And it's very important to understand. And that is, is that there is a clock in your brain that tells you when everything needs to happen. So the best analogy I can use is, is Disneyland. Okay, I had a friend that used to work at Disneyland, but he didn't work there in the day. He worked there at night. And that should tell you something. During the day, everything's open. people go on the ride, you buy snacks, you do all that at night, there's a complete, complete different activity that goes on at night that gets it ready for the next day so they can do that again. And so people need to realize that sleep is not just an off switch.

Sleep allows the body to do processes during the night that allows to do what you normally do during the day. And if you don't allow the body to do what it does at night, you're not going to have a good day the next day. All of that is orchestrated, cortisol levels, melatonin levels, stress, exercise, all of those things, even eating and food, all of those are coordinated like a conductor of a very large symphony about what happens at what time in the night. And so what happens is that when you go to bed at night, when you go to sleep, when the sun sets, your body has been trained to go to bed and to go to sleep. And what happens is that we're staying up, we're watching TV, we're looking at videos, we're on social media,

and the problem is that light, which is one of the sources that the body uses to entrain that rhythm, is going into the eyes, it's going back to the master clock, and it's saying it's still day. And so what happens is the body gets confused. It still thinks it's day, so it starts to delay the circadian rhythm. And when it's time for you to go to bed, you're going to bed at 11, 12 o'clock at night. And what happens is that now all of those processes that we're supposed to occur at night are now getting started at 12, 1 o'clock in the morning, instead of getting started at 9, 10 o'clock at night.

And what happens? You still wake up at the same time and you're not allowing those processes to go. So the number one problem, just to start off, is the number of hours of sleep you should be getting. For an adult, it should be at least seven hours of sleep. Okay, most of us gets much fewer than that. So we're chronically sleep deprived, number one. Number two is that when you start to go to bed later and later and later, one o'clock in the morning, 12 o'clock at night, You still have to get up early to go to work in the morning, so you're not getting the full hours of sleep. But it's even worse than that because if you decide that you want to go to bed earlier now that you've heard this talk, you say, hey, I need to get more sleep.

Instead of going to bed at 1 o'clock in the morning, I'm now going to go to bed at 10 o'clock at night. You are now trying to go to bed when your master clock has been set further back. You now need to start to move your clock back. And one of the ways of doing that, two ways of doing it. Number one is stop looking at light at night so that your clock rhythm starts to come back. And number two, another way of doing that is to when you wake up in the morning is to expose your eyes to bright light. That has the opposite effect. So light in the morning tends to advance your circadian rhythm back to where it was.

But exposing your eyes to bright light at night tends to delay it back, back, back further so that you're getting to sleep later. And so that's a major, major issue is light at the wrong time. So basically, if people listen to you, Netflix stock would just take. No, Netflix stock is, this is the beauty of Netflix. You can record it and watch it whenever you want. I know, but people at the end of the day, they're not working. We want to come home, relax, watch TV. It's like, I get it.

It's tough because that's what I like to watch. And, you know, it's interesting because I think that we have such a culture of nonstop 24-7, check emails at 11 o'clock at night, be on your phone, be on Instagram and social. And it's really messing up our biology because we are, we are light-sensitive beings that respond to our environment. and not just psychomotional ways, but in physiological ways that disturb our normal biological rhythms that lead to disease.

It's not just about not sleeping well. It's about the immune system. It's about the risk for heart disease, risk for obesity, diabetes, cancer, all of it is connected to sleep. So now we understand we should be getting sleep and it's important for cleanup and repair at night. It's important for immune system function.

But a lot of people struggle with sleep. So what are you as a sleep doctor? because you're also a sleep doctor and usually being a critical care medicine doctor and a million other things. What should we be doing to upgrade our sleep? What are the top tips should give your patient? Before we go out and just tell everybody, you need to get seven hours of sleep, we've got to give them the tools that they need to be able to get the seven hours of sleep. And as I mentioned, if you go to bed at 12, 1 o'clock in the morning, you know, normally, if you go to bed at 10 or 11 o'clock at night now to get that seven hours of sleep, you're just not going to be sleepy. And so what we need to do is we need to shift that circadian rhythm, advance that circadian rhythm.

So the number one thing that I would say is you need to get the right type of light at the right time of day. So that means turning down the lights after 9 o'clock, making sure you're not on an e-reader reading at night. Use a very dim light and open up a regular book. If you have to put the light on, make sure it's low down, make sure it's more in the red spectrum of light. and then in the morning time when you get up make sure you're exposing your eyes to bright light get outside let the sun light hit your eyes you don't have to look at the sun but get outside and get exposed to bright light in the morning now in the winter time that that might not be the case depending on where you live you might not have sun so it might be worthwhile to invest

in a light box they're known as sAD boxes or sad boxes sAD standing for seasonal affective disorder which is actually not uncommon for people to have in the wintertime because they're not getting exposed to light and that can cause depression. But these boxes are about 10,000 lux. That's how we measure light. And just 20 minutes in the morning in front of one of these light boxes about 11 to 15 inches away from it would be a good substitute to get that light into the eyes. You'll feel better at night. You'll feel like you're ready to go to bed. You'll sleep better. There's been a number of studies that have actually shown this, that this type of light exposure is better for quality of sleep and for length of sleep.

So that's where I would start off. The other thing is if you're having difficulty going to bed at night, falling asleep, making sure that your bedroom doesn't have a television in it. It makes you sure you're not reading in the bedroom, doing other things. Use that for sleeping, and you'll notice that you'll be able to go to bed, and that subconscious tie that you have to the bedroom will help you fall asleep as well. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to

hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at Ultra Wellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public, so I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.

Thanks so much again for listening.