The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Antibiotics, C-sections, and Food Dyes: Toxins That Harm Your Immune System

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Our immune systems are under attack. Cases of chronic inflammation like allergies, asthma, and autoimmunity have skyrocketed recently - especially among teenagers and young children. Dr. Josh Axe reveals the surprising threats sabotaging our natural defenses and provides science-backed solutions to immediately start strengthening your immunity. You’ll discover:  The alarming statistics exposing this immune health crisis  How antibiotics overuse are impairing our body's intricate protection forces  The 500% increase in food dyes and colorings and what that means for our bodies Emotional health, microplastics, & C-sections, and how they relate to our immune health Recommended outdoors time and the effects of exposure to pollen How to naturally boost your immune system Arm yourself and your loved ones against this hidden epidemic. Dr. Josh Axe equips you with intelligence on why our immunity is faltering fast, coupled with easy-to-implement daily practices that can profoundly bolster your defenses starting today. Tune in to safeguard your circle! You’ll discover Dr. Axe’s groundbreaking insights on the immune health crisis that’s affecting record numbers of people and action steps you can take to start reversing course now. Want more of The Growth Lab with Dr. Josh Axe? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter ------  Links:  cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(19)30416-9.pdf news.virginia.edu/content/antibiotics-found-weaken-immune-response-disease ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325494/ autoimmuneinstitute.org/articles/about-autoimmune/autoimmunity-on-the-rise/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32266792/ sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997215000245?via%3Dihub pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25599186/ thedrakecenter.com/services/dogs/blog/5-advantages-kids-who-grow-dogs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every medication you can take depletes your body of vitamins and minerals. If you take an antibiotic drug, here's the problem. You might have gotten rid of that one bacteria, but now your body is weakened and not as effective and strong at fighting any other virus or bacteria you have to fight in the future. And those doctors lack wisdom and they're breaking the Hippocratic Oath. Children often getting more than two dozen treatments by age two. Whoa. Emotions are strongly tied.

to the health of your immune system. What? It's absolutely just crazy. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. So going back to this, here's the issue. Hey, everyone, welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Josh Axe. I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins University.

I'm the founder of Dr.ax.com, ancient nutrition, and leaders.com. And I'm so excited today to dive into the immune system. So this is going to be, we'll call it kind of a master class on the immune system today. And this is so important because we are seeing more and more immune-related issues. today. And so whether you're trying to protect yourself from a virus like COVID or you're looking

to fight cancer or strengthen your own immune system or prevent or start to reverse autoimmune disease, there are certain things you need to do in terms of the food you eat, the supplements you take, the lifestyle that you have if you want to care for your immune system. So this might be one of the most important episodes ever because the principles I'm going to talk about today, a few you've heard of, but there's many that you may not have heard of. And I think I'm going to really help you understand how to care for your immune system in the most powerful way possible. Now, our immune systems are under attack. And if you look at the statistics, immune-related conditions are growing. They've been growing astronomically for the past 50 or so years. You know, cases of

allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, even cancer since the 1950s have gone up every year in adults and especially in children, in teenagers, and our immune system protects us from disease and dysfunction. And a weakened immune system affects your quality of life. In fact, if you ever get exposed to a virus, here's something just to remember, there are, we are constantly surrounded by viruses and bacteria and parasites and things that can affect our immune system. But if your immune system is strong, you'll handle it just fine. Have you ever been in the office or just somewhere where where some people got sick and other people didn't? Well, why did one people, people with both the same exposure and the same virus got exposed to things and one got it? Another person didn't seem to come down

with it. Or it affected one person much more severely or for a longer period of time, another period not so long. Why is that? It all has to do with how your immune system is functioning. And most doctors and medical organizations don't view the immune system in the correct, like what they believe is is, well, your immune system is just the way it is. And so we need to go intact the germ, the invader, the bug, the virus, the bacteria. When the reality is, no, you need to strengthen your own immune system. And then your immune system will easily take care of any virus or bacteria or thing that you've been exposed to. And it could also be something like gluten or casein or a heavy metal. If your immune system is really strong, your body can deal with most everything. However, we have major deficiencies

today that are causing immune system issues and major toxicity issues that are causing a weakened immune system that I'm going to dive into the science and some studies and some practical things according to some of the most ancient principles that you're going to learn today. Now, I want to start off talking about what your immune system is. So here's what your immune system is. It's a complex network of organs, cells, proteins, and microbes, so bacteria that defend the body against infections also while protecting its own cells. So remember this. What's your immune system. Your immune system is compromised of organs such as your gut and your spleen and your pituitary gland or thymus. So your immune system is made up of certain organs, your lungs and your colon. So those are,

those, it's made up of organs. It's made up of cells. So your cells and your mitochondria affect your immune system. Again, proteins that are in your body and then bacteria. microbes, fungi even, make up your immune system. So there are many things that make up your immune system as a whole. And you want all of these organ systems working synergistically. You want your lungs flowing and helping create a balance of nitrogen and oxygen and clearing out and filtering out bad bacteria and mold and those sort of things. So your lungs are critical, your colon, where all your microbes are,

those will go and help detoxify and cleanse out things that are broken down to eliminate those bad viruses and bacteria as an example. So it's really important that then what you do is you strengthen those organ systems because if your lungs are weak, well, now a major part of your immune system's weak. Or if your gut microbiome is weak and there's not enough good bacteria and there's too much bad bacteria, well, now that system is weak. Okay. And so it's really important that we strengthen up your organ systems. And listen, that's really the key. That's something no one's talking about. Why is vitamin D good? Well, because it helps strengthens up your entire immune system. That's why probiotics are good. It's why vitamin C is good. It's why

zinc is critical because zinc helps repair and strengthen your gut microbiome, which is a key part of your immune system. Now, I want to go through some statistics here that I think you're going to blow your mind. It has to do with the frequency of autoimmune disease. It has to do with the frequency of autoimmune disease and how it's increased significantly over the past 30 to 70 years. Now, listen, there was a study done in 1990, and they found that 11% of the U.S. population, so 22 million people, had autoimmune disease. That's pretty high already. Think about that. 11% of the population had autoimmune disease in 1990. Now, if we go then 10 years later to 2000, it was 11.5. So a little jump, but still 27 million people now, go to 2012, 12 years later, 16%.

So we've seen over the past, you know, let's call it 30, 35 years, nearly a double increase in autoimmune disease. Okay? And this increase in autoimmune markers, it was the steepest at children aged 12 to 19 years old. So teenagers actually tripled in the study. So what we're going to see is these numbers are going to continue to snowball because the older population has a very small amount of autoimmune disease. But the younger generation, we're talking about Gen Z and millennials, the numbers are astronomical.

And that 20% will likely eventually turn into based on the tripling of this younger generation, possibly 30% of the population, one third in the future projected having some form of autoimmune disease if we extrapolate the data. and where it's headed. And so what do we do about this? And I want to go in this episode. I'm going to go through how do you strengthen your immune system? How do you prevent autoimmune disease? How do you fight it?

And also how do you strengthen your immune system and balance it in how it fights viruses? So if you come down with something like a certain type of virus or cold or flu, how to build your body to where either you don't catch it at all to where your immune system is so strong, you don't have symptoms, or if you do, your body can kick it quickly with lesser symptoms. Okay. And I'm going to talk about cancer a little bit too. We'll get into all this because all of this is relevant to your immune system. Now, here's one of the big issues we have today when it comes to our immune systems.

We are continually bombarded with toxins. And remember this. There are two main causes of weakened immune systems and autoimmune disease. toxicity and deficiency. So remember, it's really simple. I think sometimes we overcomplicate this. So your immune system, you have immune system issues because of toxicities and deficiencies. And by the way, this is according to scientists, say environmental factors may be responsible for up to 70% of autoimmune disease. So what are some of these toxins we're exposed to? What could be persistent organic pollutants, such as round up chemicals in our food supply? toxic heavy metals like lead and arsenic.

Arsenic is found in our food supply and our water supply. Mercury from silver fillings that people have had put in. Solvents, so chemicals that are just regularly used as our household cleaners. Endocrine disruptors such as BPA plastics and our foods and drinks, aluminum and our deodorant and body care products, a lot of these chemicals start to add up in the body. And it's something scientists call the bucket effect to where if your body is like a bucket, your body and your immune system can handle a certain amount of chemicals naturally.

Okay? So, hey, you have a little heavy metals here and there. You have a little bit of, you know, plastic exposure, you know, environment and smog that you breathe in. So your body can handle so much. But over time, if you just keep dumping it in and your organs, your liver and your lungs and your detoxification organs are not able to eliminate those chemicals quickly enough or not functioning properly, then your bucket, that load gets higher and higher.

higher until finally your body can't handle anymore, starts spilling over. And then your immune system starts overreacting with something like an autoimmune disease. You may end up with something like brain fog, chronic chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, like Hashimoto's thyroiditis, or some other issue. So that's what starts to happen. Now listen, there are four main causes of toxicity I want to talk about right now and talk about how to eliminate those. And then I'm going to get into the supplements, the foods, the vitamins, the vitamins, the

vitamins, everything you need to start to build up and strengthen these various organs that strengthen your immune response. First thing is, let me just go through the list of four here. The first thing, number one is medications and antibiotic drugs. Number two is abnormal chemical exposures. Number three is microplastics. Number four is food dyes and colorings. And if I throw in a fifth one, it's going to be emotional trauma. All of these things are toxic. to our bodies which impact our immune system. Let's touch on the first one here, toxicity from medications and antibiotics.

Now, I wanna start off here at birth, and this is when most autoimmune disease starts. It's at birth, okay? Or let's say the first couple years of life, per example, and I'm gonna get into actually birth here in my next one is what I talk about deficiencies. But when it comes to toxicity, antibiotic drugs, when they're given to children,

destroy the gut microbiome. They kill off many, many good microbes that if they are given antibiotics, it's very hard to repopulate. Some may never be repopulated, okay? And children who have taken, listen, this is a medical study, babies or children that have received antibiotic drugs have a higher risk of developing asthma, eczema, and allergies. Kids, however, who have a lot more good exposure early on, such as having a pet or growing up on a farm or spending more time outdoors, they have a lower incidence of autoimmune disease.

And there was a 2017 study conducted at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. And here's what they found. Antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome. So the actual lining, so your tissue, so the organ and the bacteria. So it's really disrupting two areas that are important for your immune system, the actual gut and the probiotics. And what happened was is it decreased the activity of neutrophils, which neutrophils are things like, have you heard of like natural killer cells or your white blood cells? These are immune cells that are a major part of your immune system, that white blood cells, they go and they will gobble up, let's say, a virus, like a COVID virus or a flu virus that will go and attack those, break them down and then help your body get rid of those. So you have to have those. Well, if you take it. antibiotics, it decreases your neutrophil activity blocking these important white blood cells from responding when needed. So listen, if you take an antibiotic drug, here's the problem. You might

have gotten rid of that one bacteria, but now your body is weakened and not as effective and strong at fighting any other virus or bacteria you have to fight in the future. This leaves your immune system weaker when you take an antibiotic drug. And basically, your gut, uh, is, you know, is responsible for doing so many things. So, and this goes far beyond just fighting viruses. If your gut microbiome isn't healthy, you're not absorbing your vitamins and nutrients. You might be taking multivitamins. You might be taking a vitamin in B12.

You might be taking, you know, eating healthy food. But you may not be absorbing the nutrients because you don't have the good bacteria and the gut lining isn't healthy. So it's not absorbing and bringing that into the bloodstream, then into your body's cells. if you've taken antibiotic drugs or if you're just deficient in good bacteria. The other thing antibiotics do, I should mention is they also, and by the way, the studies show over and over again that if you, every single medication, there isn't one single medication,

everything from a baby aspirin to synthroid to birth control pills, every medication you can take, deplete your body of vitamins and minerals. There isn't a single one. Birth control. Deplete your body of B vitamins. Metformin. a diabetic drug, depletes your body of co-enzyme Q10.

You know, there's a lot of drugs. Most of them deplete your body of B vitamins, okay? And so for instance, okay, so let's say you take in metformin, and now your body's depleted in co-enzyme Q10. Well, if you don't have co-enzyme Q10, your heart can't function properly. So now what happens is now you've increased your risk of a heart attack. So you can see here how there's this cascading effect, this domino effect of you take one drug an antibiotic, well, now your immune system's weaker. Now you're not absorbing nutrients. Now

all of these things start to happen over time. So really medications, especially antibiotics, can be incredibly damaging. I'm going to go through how to repopulate over time. By the way, the same study found that here's the quote of Bill Petrie, who he's an infectious disease specialist. And here's what he said about this specific study. He says, unwise use of antibiotics not only increase the risk of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. So what he's saying is you now have an increased risk of getting something like MRSA, so a bacterial-resistant strain of a virus or a bacteria-resistant strain of bacteria. And he says the risk of C-difacell infection, but also impairs white blood cell function.

So he's saying here, it's unwise. Listen, if you don't think there's major side effects of using antibiotic drugs, you're not wise. Okay, so obviously wisdom, any doctor who knows what they're doing is if they're going to prescribe their patient something, they're going to say, okay, listen, I don't want to give you this antibiotic drug. I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you away from this. So I'm going to give you vitamins. I'm going to give you supplements. I'm going to recommend a certain way of eating. I'm going to recommend you spend time outdoors and sunshine. I'm going to give all these natural ways because I'm a physician and I took an

oath to say, first do no heart, right? Any doctor that just goes in and they just say, well, there's an antibiotic. And that's all they do. They are breaking. their oath. They don't have integrity. They don't have character. That's the reality. If doctors are just prescribing drugs in that manner versus they get to the point where they've tried everything possible, it's a really, really aggressive bacteria. And they say, okay, you know what? I don't want to give this to, but we have to because this is just so severe. It's life-threatening. I'm going to give it to you for a certain amount of time. We're going to be doing all of these other healthy things in conjunction with these antibiotics and I'm putting you on super high-dose probiotics and other things afterwards

to help repair your cells, to help repair your gut microbiome, and to repopulate the good flora in your gut. That is what a wise physician, whether it be an MD or a chiropractor or an osteopath or a naturopath, that's what they would do if you come in and you have a bacterial or viral issue. I also want to mention in this study, they also found in the study that antibiotic use is widespread in low and middle income countries with children often getting more than two dozen treatments by age two. Whoa. So we are saying what's happening. Kids between the ages of zero and 12, they go into their doctor. It's like antibiotic, antibiotic, antibiotic, and those doctors lack wisdom and they're breaking the Hippocratic oath. So again,

if you want to protect your immune system, no, so much of it is tied into your gut health. And And that's why antibiotics, I spent so much time there because it's just that important. Now, some other areas I want to mention of toxicity. Remember, there's two things that weaken your immune system. Okay. Toxicity and deficiency. So here's another one regarding toxicity. Exposure to heavy metals and chemicals. It could be mercury, okay, from silver fillings. It could be arsenic in the food supply. It could be aluminum in your odor. And it could be, listen, it could be drugs, right? Those are chemicals. Chemical exposures. Vaccines have chemicals, right? Chemical exposures. Food can have chemical exposures. You know, you go to a city that has a lot of smog like Mexico City or L.A. You're having more chemical exposures, right? So, no, you know, round up. If you're living a place where they spray a lot of chemicals or mosquito spray,

all of these things, they add up over time creating toxicity in our body. It can cause overreaction. Another big form of toxicity that we are exposed to is microplastics. If you ingest plastics on a regular basis, which a lot of us do, basically it's been shown in studies, your mucus membranes in your mouth, your throat, your gut, really your entire digestive tract responds with an inflammatory response. Okay, so it's going to cause inflammation. If you have a lot of this in your gut,

it'll actually cause a condition known as Leaky Gut syndrome. If you're exposed to a lot of these toxins and microplastics, antibiotics. But the microplastics in particular, research is shown that adults take in approximately 883 plastic particles every day. Whether it be you're drinking out of a plastic container or you're using a plastic fork or whatever it might be, we're constantly exposed. Also, here's another big one. There are a lot of microplastics embedded in our fruits, our vegetables, and even some packaged meat such as, you know, like turkey sandwich meat. All of these are, you know, embedded. So have you

ever bought, you know, you, if you buy vegetables today, let's say you go and buy a zucchini, okay, or squash, you'll notice there's almost like this kind of like, like, there's like this coating on it, like almost like, it's like a, like a plasticy layer. Those are microplastics. Okay. That's, that's not good. That's adding to that toxic burn. That's why buying organic can be so important for certain foods. The other big one is, and we see this with kids, is toxicity from food dyes and colorings over the past 50 years. The amount of synthetic dye used in foods is increased by 500%. And this consumption can activate this inflammatory cascade. The studies have linked this to ADHD, autism, allergies, and asthma, every one of those conditions in children. But here's the

other big one, autoimmune disease. Okay. The consumption of, of food dyes and food colorings and food additives has also been linked to autoimmune disease and children. And so it's really important that we reduce our toxic exposure. Now I wanna dive into deficiency. By the way, if you're watching this on YouTube, I'd love to know what are your thoughts on this? Have you noticed that same dramatic increase

in autoimmune disease doubling likely or close to over the past probably 50 or 60 years? And we're gonna likely see because we see the stats. The younger generation has more, So as they age and younger generation continues to come in, we're going to continue to see autoimmune disease on the right. By the way, my expectation, my prediction is in about probably 20 to 30 years, we'll have one third of the entire population will have autoimmune disease in the United States

and in Europe and Western countries. So if you want to strengthen your autoimmune disease, if you want to strengthen your immune system, stay away from the big ones, antibiotic drugs. And it's not just the drugs. Those hand sanitizer? the gel you put on your hands constantly, most of them contain antibiotics.

The hand soap, the things you clean your house with, all of those add up. In fact, meat and dairy products, if they're not organic, they also carry antibiotic residue that we get in our food supply. Did you know that 80% of antibiotics are given to animals,

livestock? So beef, chickens, lamb, that's where most of the antibiotic goes. And so if you're eating meat that's not organic or wild, and by the way, if you're shopping on a budget, the most important foods to buy organic would be meat and dairy products. They're much more important than actually vegetables or fruits

or grains and any food like that because they will accumulate a lot more toxins in their tissues. So that's why it's important to buy meat and dairy, specifically organic if you're eating those foods consistently. Okay, so again, And let's now touch on deficiency. Now I want to give you some practical things. So again, avoid the antibiotics as much as you can. Avoid the, you know, the excessive hand sanitizers, all of those things that damage our immune systems. But by the way, one other form of toxicity

I didn't get into yet, I do want to mention is emotional trauma. Okay. If you have been through, well, it's not just emotional trauma, physical abuse, emotional abuse. If you have a lot of negative thoughts, mental health issues, any of those things that are, you're living in a state of fear, constantly or worry or anxiety, those also weaken your immune system in a really profound way. In fact, they will weaken your immune system as much or more than all the toxins, other toxins I talked about that are actually physical. These emotional, spiritual, those sort of toxins are just as weakening your immune system. In fact, if you look at Chinese medicine, they will say that that is the primary cause of toxicity,

is toxic emotions. So if you live in a state of, for instance, if you live, live in the past to a degree and you have something that bothered you for many years ago, like you're living with unforgiveness. There's somebody that wronged you and you haven't forgiven them. That has been shown to weaken your lungs, colon, and liver, those are all part of and contribute some way to your immune system. And so it's really, really important that if you have a constant narrative or cycle of being anxious or depressed or something, that you do everything in your power to remedy and improve those negative emotions.

And basically what you want to do is you want to now start to strengthen the opposite. So if you have now obviously if you have something like unforgiveness or something in the past, you want to go then and forgive the person and do your best to start to move forward from that. You want to, if you have something issue like you worry a lot, well, now you need to say, well, why am I worrying? Well, I don't feel safe and secure. Why don't I feel safe and secure? Okay.

For these reasons, well, what can I do to help that, right? So you need to start moving in the opposite direction. But again, remember this, emotions are strongly tied to the health of your immune system. So if you have unhealthy emotions, it's causing an unhealthy immune system. If you have healthy emotions like hope and joy and love and gratitude, that will actually strengthen your immune system. Let's now talk about deficiencies in some things you can start doing in order to improve. So I want to talk about the biggest deficiencies we tend to have.

There's three I'm going to dive into, really four. Number one, lack of exposure to pollen in limited time outdoors. So the things that are just naturally floating in the air, you need greater exposure there during most of the time of the year. Number two, a lack of security and safety. I'm going to throw in the emotional, you know, the deficiency of healthy emotions there. Okay, so there's three things. Number three is probiotic deficiency. We talked about this, okay?

But I'm going to dive into the exact things to do for it here. So deficiency outdoors, listen to this. But first of all, this is. unbelievable, and I'm interested to see if you think this is as crazy as I do. The average child only gets four to seven minutes of outdoor free time every day. This means the average child is probably outside for 30 minutes or so just a few times a week. So the average kid is probably outdoors less than three hours a week. Here's what's crazy is, according to an expert on this. Her name's Angela Hanscom. She's a pediatric therapist. She says, kids of all ages should

get at least three hours of free play outdoors a day. So one of the leading experts into studying the research of this. She says, most kids today are getting three hours outside a week because so much time on video games and in school and watching TV and on their phones when it should be three hours a day is the ideal number. And so this deficiency in spending time outdoors and in nature is probably the single biggest weakener of the immune system in a lot of kids today. Okay. Now, sometimes kids already start off at a deficiency. And I've seen kids, now this is 1% of the population, but allergic to trees and grass and leaves. But this is why it's so important. Kids early on in life get them outdoors. You know, when my daughter Arwen was born, it was, I remember being being cold outside.

Okay. And, and we, what I would do is even if it was cold out, I would go out there and still for five minutes or so or stand in the window and I would hold her on my chest and we would go outside and I would make sure she got sun for, you know, for so many minutes a day. And, you know, we typically would bring her out for about 20 minutes a day, okay? And we would get a little sun on both sides of her and walk her outdoors. And if I couldn't, if it was just too cold or windy or raining, well, then I would just hold her even by the window. So she even got some of that sunlight. But, But kids really, even, listen, no matter where you live, whether you're in Canada or Denmark or or somewhere in Russia, somewhere up north, you still want to do your best to get outside as much as possible. Now, listen, if it's negative 50 out, you know, stay indoors, okay?

But even if it's, you know, even if it's in the teens or zero, you want to get a little bit of time outdoors. And of course, in this fall and spring and summer, make up for it even more time outside if possible. three hours a day is the ideal amount of time outdoors for children. By the way, it's also the ideal time outdoors for adults. Think about a lot of adults today and think about yourself, especially if it's winter or it's just not summer. I think a lot of adults during the weekdays, you might wake up, be indoors, be in your car, be in your workplace, get home, be indoors, and never spend more than just a couple minutes outdoor the entire day. This is why going on walks, Let's say you, you know, you're at work and you have a lunch break.

Well, eat your meal and then go for a 20 minute walk every single time you can because even that 20 minutes outside a day does incredible things for your immune system, both because of the sunlight but also because you want to be breathing in and getting exposure to the pollen in the air and the actual regional microbes because that strengthens your own immune system. And this is also why you might have heard that raw honey is good. Have you heard that raw honey and bee pollen? Those in particular are really good for your immune system.

Here's why. If you eat honey that's local, it contains over 200 microbes and types of pollen. So when you're eating that, your body is now building up a natural immunity to high doses of pollen you could get in the spring and the fall during allergy season. I found for myself, one time I moved to a new area, and I don't think I was caring for myself like I should. I was a student just coming out of school. and I had allergy symptoms. I'd never had them before my whole life. And then the next year, I'd read some research on honey and bee pollen.

I started eating it. I had a teaspoon of bee pollen, a teaspoon of raw local honey from that area every day, the rest of the year. And then when that next spring and fall rolled around, had no allergies, no issues. I also started eating some local produce, no problems at all. So again, it's one of the best ways to strengthen your immune system is do both pollen and local honey. A teaspoon a day really makes a difference.

And so think about this, it's micro dosing, okay? So you have no tolerance to pollen. So you're exposed to pollen, you're exposed to something, your body, your body isn't used to it, so it overreacts. If you get these micro doses over time, your body builds up a resilience to it, so then it can handle it in the future.

Okay, your body becomes more tolerant. That's the idea there as well. So next thing here, here's another big deficiency we have. Lack of security and safety. According to ancient Chinese medicine, if your body, if you don't feel safe and secure in your identity, within your family and your relationships, in your financials, all those, your job,

if you don't feel emotionally safe and secure and confident, and a number of things, it could be worthy, all of those things, then it weakens your immune system. One organ in particular, two in particular, your spleen in your pancreas, According to Chinese medicine, if you don't feel safe and secure and you have a level of worry and anxiousness because of it, that weakens your spleen. So your red blood cells is a big part of that there and part of your immune system, your pancreas, which is your enzymes, which breaks down food, which then affects your immune system. So all that being said, if you don't feel safe and secure, your immune system's weakened.

Think about the lack of masculine fathers in healthy family relationships and how that leads to children, constantly in a fight or flight state. So think about a child. If they don't have, and the statistics of fatherless homes are continuing to increase. And so if a child doesn't have a father around oftentimes, now listen, I'm not saying 100% of the time,

but statistically what I'm saying is 100% true. If a child does not have a father figure around, they feel less safe and less secure. Okay. Well, if you don't feel less safe and less secure, then your body gets in what's called a fighter flight state. You know, there is a significant association between early caregiving environments such as child that have both parents, a mother loving and a father protecting, and a high functioning what's called your HPA access system, which is a key neurobiological system involved in stress reactivity and regulation. And in the face of physical and psychological stressors, your HPA access system releases cortisol, which activates various systems throughout the body like your inflammatory system to manage those challenges.

So if a child does not feel safe and secure and feels a center of a level of chaos in their life. So for instance, let's think about how some of these things can add up over time. Okay, a child, let's say they don't have a father in the home. Okay. That'd be one. So there's left safety and security. Let's say there's a mother. And I'm not saying anyone here, but let's say there's a mother.

And because she's just so overwhelmed, she's not able to give some of the love and care and nurturing the child needs. Okay. Well, so we have deficiency of protection and safety. There's also deficiency maybe of love, compassion, and caring. And then let's say maybe they get put into a daycare. Okay, it's a crazy daycare. And now the kids are being bullied. And so can you see where you start?

adding up deficiency of love, deficiency of safety, you know, being bowling, all of these things together, what that does to a child's neurological system and their immune system over time. What happens is their fighter flight system, their sympathetic nerve system goes up, but they're parasympathetic and their immune system starts to go down and get weakened. You can see where emotions and the things going on in life are emotional or spiritual or mental life plays such a role in the immune system. Now I want to talk about and switch gears here and talk about another deficiency, the last one here, before I get into exactly what to do to strengthen your immune system. Another major deficiency is probiotics. A major determinant of the composition of neonatal

microbiota is the delivery mode. Okay, so the way that a child is born, whether it be C-section or vaginal, has a major, major impact on the child's gut microbiome, or, or a child's gut microbiome, early on. In fact, listen, here's the thing I want to say. C-section is an important operation in the field of obstetrics, right? It can save the life of the mom and the child in certain situations. Here's what I'm seeing, though, okay? I see, listen, I believe probably, you know, a very, very minute small percentage of women actually need C-Sect. Now, sometimes they do, by the way, sometimes absolutely women need a C-section. I'm so glad that we have the wisdom and the innovation of C-section to save lives of the mom and

the child. But it's overdone. Statistics have shown it. Studies have shown it. Many of doctors have said it that it is overdone. Listen to this. In recent years, C-section has been greatly overused. The proportion of C-sections delivered infants has increased year by year.

In fact, listen to this. China has a rate of close to 50% of C-section. So listen to this, 50% of the kids born in China are via C-section. Whoa, that's crazy. Can I tell you something so crazy that I've heard multiple times? We had a, I have a mom, a few. By the way, this isn't just one, a few. And their doctors told them, hey, you've got a small body type.

So these might be women that are just short and just smaller bodies. and the doctor told him, and by the way, this is their first birth. This isn't their second or third even. This is even for their first birth, they said. We need to do a C-section and go ahead and schedule you a couple weeks early because we don't think your pelvis, your body is big enough. The baby will be too big for it to come out. What?

Do you think that God created a woman's body to where the baby growing inside her the baby is just, it's too big to come out? You might think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding when I say this. This isn't one doctor. There's multiple doctors, multiple women I've heard this from, that the baby might be too big to come out. The reality is oxytocin, all these hormones,

relax the ligaments, and the woman's pelvis will just open up and the baby will come out at the time of birth. And it's absolutely just crazy. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. So going back to this, here's the issue. If a child is born via vaginal birth, there are a lot.

I mean, I'm talking about thousands of types of bacteria in the woman's reproductive system that when a baby is born vaguely, they get covered in these bacteria. And that's their first exposure to microbes, which then they breathe in through their nose, get some in through their mouth, through their skin, and that starts to go and populate their gut. Okay. And so if you can, having a birth naturally is the way to go. Now, sometimes it's not possible, right?

I know some moms and they tried so hard and it just didn't happen. And that's okay. And there's things you can do. And I'm going to get into that. But that being said, if you ever go to a doctor and they tell you, oh, the child's too big or we have to schedule it ahead of time or you're going to do it just for convenience sake, don't because it is healthier for the child to be born vaginally versus C-section because of all the bacteria passed on from the mom

and what that does for strengthening their gut microbiome and their entire immune system. Okay. Now, here's something I do want to mention. So listen to this. There is a scientist who had a great solution for this. He said, if a child is born via C-section, you should go in and take swabs of the mother's vaginal canal

and then coat the baby afterwards if they're born via C-section. Okay, that's a solution. So listen, even if you have a child that's going to be born via C-section, you can still go and take some of those microbes from the mother and then pass those on and cover the child. Specifically, you want to do the face area. And that's, again, there's some good research around that and good recommendations, some very innovative OBGYNs. Okay, so let's get into some solutions now. Okay. Number one, let's talk about lifestyle. First one is, Spend more time outdoors. Ideally, three hours a day.

If you can't do three hours, do two. If you can't do two, do one. If you can't do one, do 30 minutes. But whatever you do, do your best to get children outdoors the maximum amount of time. By the way, there's another study here, part two is have a pet. A dog, ideally, the next best would be a cat. And listen, mostly I'm just saying that because I'm a dog person and not a cat person. But a cat actually is equally, I think the study was it was like a 1% difference.

But it was very, very close. Okay. So, but dogs are cats. Or, hey, if you live on a farm, even better, if you have some sheep or goats, wonderful. I know Jordan Rubin and I, we have a farm now. We don't live on the farm, so we only go out there occasionally. But we have water buffalo and yaks and things like that. So those are wonderful, too.

But children's with pets, especially dogs, according to the study, during their first year of life, actually have better immune systems than those who do not. Research shows that exposure to dogs may have positively boosted the maturation of children's immune system during infancy. When they did fall ill, they needed a shorter course of antibiotics compared to children who did not live with pets according to the medical study. So the more you can spend time outdoors or with pets and animals and things in the environment, the better your immune system will be for both you now and your children.

Here's the next solution is support your immune system with the food you eat. All right. according to Chinese medicine, the foods that most boosts the immune system tend to be light yellow in color. So here's a list of a few you want to consider. Chicken bone broth contains collagen, glucosamine, chondroitin, and alleronic acid. These are all things that help strengthen up the immune system. So chicken bone broth.

Ginger, it's also light yellow, right? So ginger herbal tea, ginger in your food, but ginger are other herbs like Galangelo. similar color, that's going to help strengthen immunity. Miso, this is a Japanese creation that can be added to soup or it could be chicken. We add it to our chicken soup. We add it to certain things. I've added it to hummus. But Miso strengthens you immune system.

It's high in something called natokinase. It's an enzyme as well and has some SBO probiotics like bacillus subtilis. So Miso is an unblanky. It's probably not talked about enough. but miso is an amazing immune boosting food. Honey, as I talked about, honey, honey and pollen, strengthen your immune system. Onions contain quercetin, which boost the immune system,

and garlic contains Allison, which boosts the immune system. So those are some of the top immune boosting foods. If you really want to boost your immune system, do a lot of soups, a lot of stews, chicken bone broth, miso immunity soup, even beef stew, things like that. A lot of soups will strengthen your immune system. So rice, actually, if you cook it for a long time and add some protein to it like chicken, that's very good for the immune system.

But you want to, to boost your immune system, a lot of meat, a lot of vegetables, a lot of herbs and spices. That's sort of the formula for creating a very, very strong immune system. When it comes to supplements, the top ones you need to boost your immune system, number one is zinc. Zinc is critical because it is the mineral that helps repair a damaged gut. So if you've been exposed to toxins or taken an antibiotic and have any sort of leaky gut or damage, zinc is like, imagine there's a hole in your wall. Like somebody punched a hole in your wall, like, and that's the equivalent of your gut lining.

Well, you need the right building blocks to repair. Let's say it's bricks that have been broken. Well, zinc is like the bricks, the minerals that go in, you replace it and help patch up the damage there. Zinc and collagen. That's how I would think about it is, you know, you know, zincs are like the brick. collagen is like that kind of, you know, that paste in between that you have that the grout there in order to build a strong structure. So zinc is critical. Vitamin D is very important. Vitamin D, that'll work primarily with your liver for this, your body well when you get sunshine.

Or if you just take it as a supplement both ways. But vitamin D is a pro hormone that strengthens your immune response and strengthens everything from your bones, which another area of your immune system that's important is your bone. marrow okay so you have your bones which is mostly collagen and calcium but in between but in the center of your bone you have bone marrow which is where a large part that's where your stem cells are and so vitamin d is known for strengthening your bones and likely your body's own stem cell production now zinc does that as well but vitamin d and zinc are the two most important things for we've we've heard vitamin c and vitamin c is my next one it is important but I actually believe for most people

today, zinc and vitamin D are more important for you strengthen your immune system. The next one is vitamin C. You know, with that, typically get that as food. By the way, zinc as a number, 30 to 60 milligrams a day. Vitamin D, 5,000 to 10,000 I use a day. The great thing about these is you can do easy blood test. You can vitamin D test, and you can also do a micronutrient test if you go and see a doctor that practices functional medicine. And they can do either an organic acids test or a micronutrient test and test for every single one of these you might be deficient in. So vitamin C is important about 1,000 milligrams a day. Typically, if you're sick, you can do higher doses than that. Vitamin A, you know, the place I like to get vitamin A is from liver. I like to get it from

organ meat. So if you take a liver supplement or an organ blend supplement, ancient nutrition is the brand that I use and love. They have an organ blend supplement. They also have a male supplement that helps with testosterone. They have a woman's blend that helps with women's hormones. But I really like that because that has vitamin A in it, liver does, which is really great for strengthen your immune system. And then selenium is another one. That's key for thyroid function and cellular immunity. The next year, things are herbs and spices. Listen, there are a lot of amazing herbs and spices that strengthen the immune system. But here are some of my favorites. Number one is elderberry. Elda berry has been shown in studies to shorten your cold and flu time and

strengthen your body's immune response. And I think you can do this even as a, both if you're sick, but also as a preventative measure taking all of these herbs. I'm about to mention elderberry. The next one is echinacea. Echinacea is known for strengthening your lungs. So if you especially have bronchitis or some sort of issue that is lung related, echinacea is good. Also in studies have been shown to be good for endurance athletes, because it's so good at strengthening the lungs in the cardiovascular system, that part of your immune system. The next herb is probably my favorite for long-term immune health, and that is astragalus.

Astragalus, typically 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams a day, if you're in the middle of being very sick, or for something like the studies show in terms of fighting a major cellular condition like cancer, astragalus of 4,000 milligrams a day. But for most people, about 1,000 milligrams regularly as a preventative measure, is one of the best. It's also good for hypothyroidism, loads of benefits of estrugals for the immune system. ginger reduces inflammation both of the gut and strengthens the immune system and helps the colon. So ginger is one of the best.

And then the last one here is not an herb, it's a mushroom. It's turkey tail mushroom. And by the way, Rishi is another good one that I could have thrown in there as well, all mushrooms. What I do is I take, again, ancient nutrition is the brand. I take it. They have a multi-mushroom blend that has Rishi and turkey tail and cordyceps and lions mane and all these mushrooms in there. But mushrooms have tremendous benefits.

if it's for your immune system. So elderberry, echinacea, astragalus, ginger, turkey tail mushroom, some of the best for strengthening up your immune system. And depending on, you might know that, oh, my biggest immune issue is related to my gut health. Maybe you have inflammatory bowel disease or you just know your digestion isn't healthy. Well, in that case, you want to take a probiotic supplement and probably do something like ginger. Okay. So, and I should have mentioned supplements, that would be another one.

It's not a vitamin or mineral, but probiotics are something, you're not. You should take, if you're taking a probiotic, I like SBO that stands for soil-based organisms, probiotics, you could find those online, but soil-based organism probiotics and ginger. If you know it's more lung-related for you, well, you should do echinacea and probably something like astragalus there as well. But these are the top things you should be doing on a regular basis. And you can start doing these now to strengthen your immune system. If you do get sick, you can sort of up that there as well.

And obviously there's a pretty big difference in the immune issues of cancer, of autoimmune disease, of allergies, and of getting a colder flu. So having some sort of viral infection or even Lyme disease, right? So there are a lot of issues related to our immune system. But a lot of these, all of these principles I shared hold true with every one of those types of immune issues. You need to focus on getting rid of the toxicity, addressing the deficiencies, both from a nutritional standpoint and an emotional standpoint, right? So there are also studies showing if you have a lot of negative emotions, you need to start fostering being grateful. That's one of the greatest things you can do to boost your immune system is write down what you're grateful for and every morning just say,

you know, go on a short walk, even if it's just around your house a little bit. Just what are you grateful for? Name three things every single morning. There's tremendous things for your immune system. And so start working on building those healthy emotions would be another thing you want to do. Hey, I want to hear your thoughts on this podcast and show. And so if you have any thoughts, let me know. By the way, I'm going to be doing a Q&A episode here in the near future on immunity. So ask your questions in the comment section for what you want me to cover in future episodes of the podcast and of the Q&A. I want to say, hey, I'm so grateful for you watching this.

Listen, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe. Did you know that the YouTube algorithm only shows a small amount of the videos I put out? They show up in your feet. So if you're not subscribed, you may miss out on one of the videos I have coming up with people like Dave Asprey and Vani Hari and Mark Hyman and Tim Tebow and some other amazing people. So make sure to subscribe here so you don't miss out. And thanks for sharing this as well. Thanks for being on mission with me. You know, my goal of this podcast is to help people get healthier and all areas of their life.

Body, mind, and spirit. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video.