The Liz Moody Podcast - Ask the Doctor: Immune Health Edition—Lower Inflammation, Reduce Allergies & Spend Less Time Being Sick with Heather Moday, MD

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

I was excited to welcome Dr. Heather Moday to the podcast. Dr. Moday is an Allergist and Immunologist, Integrative and Functional Medicine Physician who received her Medical degree from Tulane Medical School in New Orleans before doing her her residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at the Montefiore/Albert Einstein Medical center in In New York City. She completed a fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine, is a certified practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine, and now is the owner and medical director of the Moday Center for Functional Medicine, a virtual functional medicine practice based in Virginia. Her new book, The Immunotype Breakthrough – Your Personalized Plan To Balance Your Immune System, Optimize Health And Build Lifelong Resistance, is available wherever books are sold. The exact tests to find out the health of your immune system How much immune health is genetic and how much is environmental The many, many WAYS your immune system impacts your overall health (beyond what you think!) Why your immune health and inflammation are so connected What causes inflammation and what the effects of high inflammation levels are How to tell if you have chronic inflammation The best ways to KEEP from getting sick How your microbiome impacts your immune system How to keep your microbiome healthy How to rebuild your microbiome after you take an antibiotic How to tell if your microbiome is impacting your immune system Exactly what to do when you’re sick or you feel like you’re getting sick Why causes some people to have worse allergies than others How to lessen your allergy symptoms naturally What causes autoimmune diseases How to stack the deck AWAY from acquiring an autoimmune disease Her best recommendations for treating and preventing leaky gut Her best recommendations if you have an autoimmune disease How to support your immune system if you’re on immunosuppressants The best ways to treat long COVID, based on current research The best and worst types of workouts for supporting your immune system Her thoughts on Vitamin C, dry brushing, lymphatic massage, raw garlic, saunas, elderberry, oregano oil, olive leaf extract, and more for immune system support We would LOVE to hear from you any thoughts, reactions, or takeways you have as you’re listening, so definitely screenshot and tag me @lizmoody and Dr. Moday (@theimmunitymd)! I would SO appreciate it if you shared this episode or any favorite episodes with someone you love in your life! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. This episode is sponsored by Foria, makers of an incredible collection of 100% plant-based products for intimacy, relief, and daily wellbeing. Visit www.foriawellness.com/ and plug in the code HEALTHIER20 at checkout for 20% off your purchase of any products Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the healthier together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're tackling career ambitions, discussing the pros and cons of parenthood, or optimizing our microbiomes. Today, we have a fresh and shiny new edition of our popular Ask the Doctor series. The Ask the Doctor series was born around the idea that there are world-class functional medicine experts out there who are sharing incredible information. but they can be expensive and often impossible to get appointments with.

This series is about making their wealth of knowledge as accessible to as many people as possible, to help as many people as possible. But please know that it's just one doctor's opinion and this podcast should never substitute for in-person care. If you have any questions about how anything you hear about here could impact your own very specific body or interact with any conditions you have or drugs or supplements you might be taking, please reach out to your own doctor. Today's episode is all about the immune system, which if you are anything like me is something you've probably thought about more in the last two

years than maybe you ever thought that you would. I was excited to welcome Dr. Heather Modi to the podcast. Dr. Modi is an allergist and immunologist, integrative and functional medicine physician, who received her medical degree from Tulane Medical School, New Orleans before doing her residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in allergy and immunology at the Montefiore Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York City. She completed a fellowship in integrative medicine at the Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine, is a certified practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine, and now is the owner and medical director of the Moday Center for Functional Medicine, a virtual functional medicine practice based in Virginia. Her new book, The Immunotype

Breakthrough, Your Personalized Plan to Balance Your Immune System, optimize health, and build lifelong resistance is available wherever books are sold. On this episode, we dive into all things immune health, including things that you might not necessarily think of as tied to the immune system like allergies and inflammation. We talk about the exact test to find out the health of your immune system. How much of our immune health is genetic and how much is environmental? Why your immune health and inflammation are so connected. The best ways to keep from getting sick and an exact protocol for what to do if you do get sick, how your microbiome impacts your immune system and how to keep it healthy, how to rebuild your microbiome after taking antibiotics,

what causes allergies and how to lessen your allergy symptoms naturally, what causes autoimmune diseases, and how to stack the deck away from acquiring one, what we currently know about treating and preventing long COVID, her thoughts on a trendy immune support things like vitamin C, dry brushing, lymphatic massage, raw garlic, saunas, elderberry, oregano oil, olive leaf extract, and so much more. I wanted this to be as comprehensive and actionable as possible, and I hope you find wonderful nuggets in it that help you feel your very best. If you know anyone who might benefit from the information that Dr. Modi shares in this episode, please, please send them a link. I personally have already sent a copy of the rough file to a number of my friends who are struggling with long COVID,

and I'm also following her allergy protocol. There is just so much useful stuff in here. And I don't want anyone out there to miss out on something that might fundamentally change their day-to-day quality of life. If you love the Ask the Doctor format, definitely check out the earlier ones. We've covered hormones, our gut, happiness, anxiety, longevity, dental health, and more. I made a single page on Liz Moody.com that has links to all of them. So just Google Liz Moody, Ask the Doctor, and it should come right up. Okay, let's get into all things immune with Dr. Heather Modi. All right, Dr. Modi, thank you so much for just.

joining me today. I am so excited to talk about all things immune systems. I am as well. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I want to start off. I love the part in the book where you were like, you talked about how we get screened for all sorts of things like cardiovascular health or we get colonoscopies. Is there any way that we can check and see what the health of our immune system is? Are there tests that we can ask for or like things we can look out for at home? Absolutely. So there's no one test. So it's not like you go to the gynecologist and you get a pap smear, right? So it's not like that. But there are certain blood tests that are pretty easy to get from your primary care doctor that I check with all of my patients. And I think they're really great sort of hints. Now, they're not always

going to show up as abnormal, but there are a few things that if they are abnormal, they're a really good thing to look for. So my favorite is something called C-reactive protein. And C-reactive protein is basically it's sort of a general marker of inflammation. It's very good for people who have diabetes and heart disease that may not know that they have. So that's a good thing to look for. But I've seen it elevated in people with autoimmune disease, gut problems, chronic hives. So it's a good marker. It correlates with the elevation of certain inflammatory cytokines, which we might talk about later, but those are sort of inflammatory chemicals that are immune cells used to talk to each other. High C-reactive protein is bad. Is there like, well, our, well,

a normal typical doctor have a sense of when C-reactive protein is too high, or is their number we should look for? Yeah. So you really want it to be close to one. So not much more than that. I think the range at LabCore and Quest and some of those laboratories is, I think they say that below three is okay. I really like it close to one. But I've seen people with CRPs, we call them CRPs, of 20, 25, 30, and that's really out of range. So that's a good one. Okay, what else are we looking for. So another one is actually ferretin, which technically also measures how much iron you have stored in your body. But ferretin goes up with inflammation. So they call it an acute phase reactant, which basically means, again, it goes up during inflammation. So sometimes if you measure

a ferretin level and it's excessively high, that can mean that there's some inflammation going on the body. So that's another one I look for. Other ones, I would say there is a marker called homocysteine, which is also a marker. It's not specifically of inflammation, but it does indicate an inflammatory process going on in the body. And that can be genetic, actually, and it's a really good thing to screen for because it's associated with heart disease. So those are three big ones. Of course, you can just get a complete blood count, which is what a lot of doctors order anyway. And if your white blood cell count is elevated over normal, that might mean you have an infection or chronic inflammation. It was interesting. So you mentioned the one that was genetic. And I did want to talk about what

factors cause somebody to have a great or less great immune health. How much of it is genetic, environmental, some combination of the two or something else entirely? So I would say very little is genetic. With the exception of congenital disorders that you're born with, there's very few diseases that are 100% or really highly genetic. You can, of course, inherit risk factors or predilections for a disease in your family, but it's really how you live your life because genes can turn on and off and they get turned on and off by what we eat, you know, different vitamins and minerals, toxins, stress. We have a lot of control over how our genetics plays out. A lot of people do sort of lean on that or they'll blame their family members for the fact that they have diabetes

or heart disease and there may be some specific risks. But overall, I would say it's mostly environmental. Okay, so let's talk about the fact that you've now cited heart disease and diabetes and things like that. And for me, I wouldn't have considered those part of our immune health. Like for me, immune health is autoimmune conditions, allergies, and if I'm getting sick when I'm around sick people. So what do you consider part of the immune system? And it's funny because those are sort of the things that I talk about in my book. But the biggest thing that our immune system does, or that's, you know, sort of the crux of it all is inflammation. So it's responsible for inflammation, which of course, when it's well directed, is going to help snuff out bacteria, kill viral-infected cells,

kill cancer cells. So obviously we want inflammation to occur. But most of the diseases that we see in this country that, you know, it's killing the bulk of us, you know, so diabetes, heart disease, things like that. That's all due to chronic inflammation too. For example, diabetes is due to excess blood sugar. Blood sugar actually damages our red blood cells and also our arteries and veins and all of our, you know, vasculature. And that's why diabetics end up losing legs and, you know, losing their light, their eyesight and having kidney problems. It's all due to the fact that the little tiny blood cells get basically damaged and turn

into like shards of class. And same with heart disease. It definitely drives a lot of the inflammation that occurs in our heart vessels, too. So, yeah, it's funny because a lot of people don't really think of that, is that, that's our immune system doing that, but it is doing it. it's sort of misdirected, but it's because of how we're living our lives, right? That's so interesting. Okay, so let's talk about inflammation because you obviously talk about in the book.

It has a really large impact on your immune system. So I think inflammation is very widely misunderstood. What causes it? How does it impact the immune system? Just like tell me about inflammation generally. So inflammation occurs several different ways, but it is part of what our immune system does. Like, as I said, let's just take an example of, let's just say an injury, right? Obviously, if we didn't have an active immune system, if we got a cut or broke our foot or

whatever, we would die. So what happens is when we injure ourselves for whatever reason, we have a response of our immune cells. There's certain immune cells that come to the area. They sort of shoot off flares, just like if you got into a car accident, right? You know, shoot off flares in the form of these chemicals, usually cytokines. They cause blood vessels to open up and dilate, which brings more fluid to the area. That's what brings heat and swelling. So if you sprain your ankle, everyone knows what that feels like, pain. And it also brings in a whole other sort of calvary of other white blood cells to come to the area and to either kill things. So, for example, if there's a bacterial infection, viral infection, they start to do a lot of the killing.

This creates sometimes some collateral damage, the tissue around it. And so that then has to be cleaned up. So there's this sort of whole inflammatory response that happens, but then there's a resolution. And I explain this in the book is almost like when you have a forest fire, right? You end up obviously putting out the inflammation, the fire, but a lot of times you're damaging the area. as you're doing it. So you can have other areas that get damaged that then have to be repaired over time. So that's sort of the way to think about it is that there's this collateral damage with inflammation. And unless you then repair or if you never get rid of the initial cause of the

inflammation, it's like you're smoldering, right? You're going along and you're having chronic tissue damage, which is going to keep recruiting your immune cells. It's going to keep turning on that inflammatory response. And so that's how we get into this problem of chronic inflammation. Okay. So the examples, it's not like if you cut yourself too many times, you're going to end up with chronic inflammation though, right? Like what are the things that are causing the fires that would actually lead to chronic inflammation that you find? I would say some of the biggest things are what we eat because we're constantly eating, right? Every day, most people are taking in food and drink. And a lot of the things that we eat are damaging, for example, sugar. All right? So obviously

we can all handle a little bit of sugar, but eventually over time, if we are not able to absorb all that sugar and our insulin goes up and would become close to diabetes, then we start having damage. And so that's going to cause some problems. The other issue would be something like kinds of inflammatory fats. So say something like trans fats or partially hydrogenated fats, things like that, or industrial seed oils, those are all very pro-inflammatory. And then there's also just not getting enough of the good stuff in, right? So maybe not getting

enough antioxidants from our food because we constantly need antioxidants to sort of put out fires and to repair cells and things like that. It's not like we have too many of the acute issues that our inflammatory system was designed to deal with. It's more like we're making the inflammatory system malfunction essentially by treating it in the wrong way, kind of. Is that right? Exactly. And that's why it's so important to think about just the choices that you make on a daily basis. Over time, they add up because if we're constantly distracting our immune system with this sort of really useless inflammation, then it really can't do its job well. You know, you can't be expected to have a really good robust response to something like cancer, getting rid of cancer

cells or to viral infection, if you're chronically dealing with just like stupid inflammation, basically, you know. Are there any non-dietary causes of stupid chronic inflammation? So one of my favorites, which I talk about a lot, is sleep. Yeah, from the book you seem to be a big fan of sleep. A big fan of sleep. I learned probably the most writing that chapter. And I thought I knew a decent amount about sleep, but I really learned a lot.

So a couple of things that happened during sleep is, A, it's actually a time of a lot of inflammation occurring in a good way, meaning that our immune system is really active at that time killing viruses, creating antibodies. It's actually, I cited that if you don't get a really good night's sleep after you get a vaccine, you can actually reduce your production of antibodies to the vaccine, which if you're going to get a vaccine, you want it to work as well as possible. so don't stay up late. So that's really important. So we have like this sort of big pro-inflammatory boost in the middle of the night. And that correlates with melatonin. Melatonin helps us do that. And that's particularly in the early stages of sleep, right?

Like your first few hours when you're in deep sleep? Yes, exactly. So a lot of people who chronically go to bed say after like 1 o'clock in the morning, they can miss out on that. So it is true that you get more deep sleep earlier in the evening. and so you really want to try to get to bed, you know, by like 10 or something if you can, at least most of the time. I actually, like, love that fact because I have an aura ring and sometimes I'm like,

oh, I like slept so bad. But then my deep sleep is still really high because I did get to bed early. So like the deep sleep happened early on. And I'm like, oh, okay, like I'm doing my body's good work, even if I didn't get quite as good of a night's sleep as I wanted to, you know? So that's really important. And the other thing, too, is that we do. Again, we do some repair while we're sleeping.

So we have this whole system in our brain called the glymphatic system. It's been compared to like a washing machine for the brain. So what happens is the brain slightly shrinks while you sleep. And it allows this cerebral spinal fluid to like run through these channels. And literally it's like taking away like the debris and the cobwebs and the waste and flushing it out of your brain. And so everyone knows what it feels. like to pull an all-nighter or like just not get good sleep, you literally can't think straight. You feel foggy.

So if you think about that over time, that's really inflammation and toxins that have built up and haven't really been removed. And so if you do that to yourself over and over and over again, you're going to have more chronic inflammation in your brain. And the great thing about sleep is it's free. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years. And I am so obsessed with it.

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targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do, do I? Do I? And this, I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer, it looks glowier, the texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does

not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.cco slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at one skin.com with code Liz. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off-gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life.

And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning, you're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress.

And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five

minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleepy next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. and the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers. And Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go.

Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch kids' natural mattress. Burch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120 night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. And you're going to get 20% off birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. Although I do find, like, just as a small caveat, I'm a person who sometimes struggles with sleep. And I,

I think a lot of health work is talking to the people who are maybe deprioritizing sleep. And if they just made it more of a priority in their life, they would reap all these benefits. And I think a lot of doctors like yourself are like, please, just if you can prioritize it, do. But I think sometimes that can serve the effect of scaring people who are prioritizing it, but maybe aren't getting the quality of sleep they would like to be. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is no absolute guarantee for quality sleep.

and I absolutely know that people have problems with insomnia, and especially in my age group, you know, women who are paramedipausal, I mean, gosh, it's like waking up the middle of the night because the hormones and whatever, and it's not great. What we tell people is there's a lot of tips and tricks out there. And if you're not trying to use them, if you're not doing them and you're not prioritizing, that's like, that's an easy sort of thing to start with and, you know, at least sort of maximize it to the point that you can do as much as you can. do as much as you can. And then obviously there's going to be so much other information we're going to cover that you can load up on that too if the sleep isn't working out, you know.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so many different things that you can take. I mean, and nobody's perfect, obviously. We all have our issues and our problems specifically. But, you know, that's a really good one to start with. Are there, like, ways that we can tell if we have chronic inflammation? Is there a test we can ask for? Is like, can I look down at my body somehow and see? Not really. The test that I told you about, you know, you can always ask for those. So the same ones to test for like immune health are also sort of testing for inflammation as well. Yeah. So both the ferritin, the C-reactive protein, not so much the homocysteine, but I would say those two are good. I would say things like signs or symptoms, when we think of inflammation, we think of pain, obviously. So how about like GI pain, right? So people who have chronic issues with. cramping or bloating or things like that, there's usually some inflammation going on. Other things would be arthritis, any sort of joint pain is a big one.

And then skin rashes, maybe not like a, you know, one little skin rash. But if you have like a full body rash, like it said, chronic hives sometimes or things like that can be indicative of something going on in the body that's showing up on the skin. So things like that. you can brain fog obviously can be a sign of inflammation. So those would be signs and symptoms to look for. So we're taking out our trans fats.

We're trying to get a really good amount of sleep. Is there one more little sort of action step that you could offer us to add in if we feel like we're dealing with chronic inflammation to kind of get that under control? It really depends on your habits. So you'd have to ask yourself this question. Are you a person who has a lot of stress? and anxiety in your life and is like a go, go, go person. Sure am.

And do you prioritize some sort of downtime for yourself? Do you do any sort of self-regulating activities, anything for stress management? Because some people have a lot of inflammation. I have a lot of issues, but they'll tell me, I'm really not that stressed. I don't have a stressful job. I have a great relationship. I don't stress out about money. I don't really feel stressed, et cetera.

They might want to focus somewhere else. So I would say that stress, I would say is the overarching problem that I see and probably more common. I'm like, who are those people? Who are the people who are not stressed about anything? And how can I become them? I know, exactly. That is true. I think that is somewhat, there is a gene that, you know, does make us more likely.

Okay. So I don't have that one. Yeah. But, you know, that's something that, as you obviously know, it's a practice, right? but there's lots of things that we can do to try to re-regulate our autonomic nervous system and our adrenals because we do know that that also significantly impacts how our immune system works. Do you have any favorites in your life? What do you do for stress management? So I would say I do journaling, so like gratitude journaling, because I like to write.

And it just helps me feel better and helps me think about things. The other thing I do is guided meditation. I really, really like to do a guided meditation and some deep breathing. I would say those are the biggest ones because they're things that I can do every day. And I feel like, you know, yes, I love being out in nature. Yes, I love taking a nice warm bath. But I can't always do that. I can't always, and I can't do it in the minute that I need it.

And the thing about these stress management techniques is I find it has to be something that you can like, you can do pretty simply. It doesn't take too much time and that you can pull out when you need it. But the key is associating in our brain that stress impacts our inflammation and thus our immune health. So taking care of our stress isn't indulgent in any way. It actually has a real impact on our physiological state. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. It's amazing. And this was not something that was really taught until I don't know, probably 20 years ago. I mean, I never learned much about that in medical school. We sort of heard about like the mind-body connection, but it was like, you know, whatever. Whereas, you know, now it's like a given. Everyone knows. I mean, people don't always follow the best,

their best advice. But we know that there's associations with childhood trauma, any sort of adverse events, growing up, divorce, loss of life, financial. loss, anything like that, can correlate significantly with the onset of a disease because chronic cortisol over time, which is one of our stress hormones, can sort of flip from being anti-inflammatory because it's technically anti-inflammatory to becoming pro-inflammatory or allowing and allowing some weaknesses in our immune system. So over time, it's super important to keep it in mind because it's something that you may not have control over all the stressors in your life. I mean, we don't. But you do have control over how you respond to them.

Yeah, it's one of the things I like about meditation and mindfulness practices that it's less like you need to go be as a monk somewhere and not experienced stress. It's more about how do you respond when faced with stress and how can you give yourself the tools to respond really positively in those situations. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about what people, at least I think about when I think about the immune system, which is getting sick. Is there anything special that you do to keep from getting sick either in times where there's like a lot of disease going around or maybe you're around sick kids a lot or you travel like preventatively? I think, you know, besides the obvious things like washing your hands and that kind of thing is there is a decent

amount of data for certain things that we take in nutrient-wise. And so you can obviously increase this in your diet, but you can also take in certain supplements. So we know that specifically vitamin C and zinc are two of the ones I've probably studied most rigorously for antiviral protection or at least increasing our body's resistance to viruses. And then probably vitamin D would be the third. That's just sort of an amazing immune. modulator. So those are sort of the three things, I would say, to focus on food-wise or supplement-wise. You know, there's also just things that are naturally antiviral. So, for example, if you travel a lot or you're around lots of different germs, there's natural substances like propolis, which is found

in honeybee hives. You've probably seen that. There's pretty good evidence using that in like a spray form in the throat because, you know, we're constantly breathing in viruses all day long. It's not like we come across a virus like once a week or something. It's we're always breathing them in. It's whether or not our immune system is able to get rid of it before we feel that we have a problem going on, right? So we're constantly putting out fires. So propolis is a really great thing. I love to use that. You've obviously probably heard of elderberry syrup. Elderberry has a pretty, I mean, a really good safe track record to use in like the initial stages of a cold or or flu. So those are good things to just like have with you all the time and then, you know, use them either preventatively or when you start feeling

something's coming on. So let's talk about our microbiome for a second. If we wanted to keep our microbiome as healthy as possible to support our immune system, what should we be doing for that? So the first thing is to avoid certain things, right? So the obvious thing is antibiotics. Broad spectrum antibiotics. So broad spectrum basically means that they kill a lot of things. So when I was growing up, in the dark ages now, we did not have these really super powerful broad spectrum antibiotics. You know, you got penicillin and, you know, maybe amoxicillin. And they had a narrow range. So they killed certain kinds of bacteria. But, you know, we started getting bigger and better antibiotics that killed like everything, like really powerfully. So if you think that.

think about it when you're, say, treating a sinus infection and you're taking an antibiotic for 10, 14 days, you're absorbing that throughout your whole body, not just in your sinuses, and it affects your gut microbiome. And it's going to kill a lot of good along with the bad. So if you do this frequently throughout life, over time, you're going to get a reduction in diversity of these organisms. So the ones that are resistant, you know, talk about drug-resistant bacteria, are going to survive. And that's not a good thing for us, right? They're not, that's definitely not good. And then you're going to lose a lot of these beneficial bacteria that really do good things for our body. So that's number one, is avoid antibiotics unless you really, really have to take it.

There's other drugs, too, that can be problematic. There's mixed messages on birth control pills, sort of causing problems within the microbiome. Things like acid blocking medications can be problematic. What are called non-steroidal anti-inflammatories can be problematic and a lot of people pop those constantly. So that's the things to sort of like avoid. And then there's the things that we should take in. Number one, of course, is fiber because it's the food source for our microbes. And so they're not up like eating like lots of fats and proteins. They like fiber and starch. So lots of fibers foods. That's the prebiotic stuff. fermented foods, again, it's a great natural source to introduce these beneficial species like

lactobacillus. So those, that's like three things right there that you can, you know, avoidant and then things to eat. What about times that we have to take an antibiotic? Like I just got surgery in November, October. Oh my gosh. I'm like three months out. And I just got surgery and I had to take an antibiotic so that I wouldn't, I think, get a staff infection or something from the operating room. Is there anything that we can do to rebuild our microbiome after those times where antibiotics are necessary? Yes, absolutely. So first of all, you can do more of all the things that I just talked about with the fiber and the fermented foods. You can also use probiotic supplementation. And there's actually been some good data on this for people who get travelers' diarrhea

because that also can cause major imbalances in your microbiome that can come out. out, you know, sort of later down the line is you can use probiotics for, you know, a few weeks. And I mean, I'm obviously, I'm a big fan of people taking probiotics in general just based on the people that I see who a lot of them do have gut issues or autoimmune issues. And, you know, it's also just hard sometimes to, to get, you know, enough probiotics in our foods naturally because not everybody loves to like drink kefir and eat sourcrow and things like that. So it's a great thing to have in your arsenal. I took a lot of antibiotics as a kid. I had strep infections all the time. It was like I was a kid at the time where they were just doling out antibiotics like candy. Am I

screwed now? Like did I have a negative long-term effect because of that? You know, we don't know 100% for sure. We do know that you can really increase diversity and population. And I've seen that definitely in some of my patients who've come in and we've done a microbiome test. And it'll read less than detectable limit for these really beneficial bacteria. Now remember, less than detectable limit, even though they're using like these are DNA tests, you would think, oh, wow, that really means that they're not there. It doesn't. It's amazing because, you know, a few months later, we'll repeat it.

And voila, they're back. They were just hiding. Sometimes they're hiding out. They're in just such small amounts that it's probably under the detectable limit, but they're still there. And then the other thing is that, like you just said, we pick up bacteria from everything. I mean, it's in soil. It's on our food.

And, you know, sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. But we don't live in a sterile world. And just like when they always say for kids, like playing the soil, playing the dirt, that is one way that we do populate our microbiome. I always think about it when I'm hiking. Like I love to, I love big rocks. This is like a weird thing about me.

I like love big boulders and I like to like touch them and like feel their big boulder energy. And I'm always like, oh, I bet this is helping my microbiome from the dirt on these big rocks. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. You've mentioned a microbiome test. Is there anything that we should look out for that would signify that our gut health is impacting our immune health? In terms of symptoms? If we're like, man, I don't poop that regularly.

or I have stomach aches all the time. Does that mean my immune health is bad? So it can definitely impair your immune health. We don't know for sure, you know, on a per person basis. But I will tell you that almost every single person I see who, say, has an autoimmune disease, has some history of GI issues of some sort. So they'll either say, you know, I was diagnosed with IBS or I have. chronic loose tools or I'm constipated or after I eat I bloat. There's some sort of GI complaint.

I guess you could say that if you have any sort of chronic GI issue, most likely your microbiome is impaired and that is going to impair the ability for your immune system to be working at its optimized level. Okay. So that's a good sign that we might want to look into things further and maybe start trying some of these protocols that we've talked about, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so that's sort of like preventing getting sick. Let's talk about we're actually sick. What's your protocol personally or your protocol for your patients when you're in the thick

of it? It's too late. You're sick. It's not too late. And you're talking maybe like an upper respiratory infection. Yeah. Like not like cancer. And we'll get into autoimmune conditions later, but literally just like an upper

respiratory infection. So the things that I talked about, great things to do. Obviously, really upping your sleep, because again, sleep is a great time for our immune system to work. If you're dealing with a, say, sinus infection, you can just use physical means of reducing viral adhesions. You can do like a netty pot. I use sometimes netty pots with a little bit of colloidal silver. So silver on this is actually very antiviral, anti-bacterial. And it's safe. You're not really ingesting it. You're just sort of rinsing your nasal passages with it or your sinuses with it. And that I really like to use that as well. So those are some big ones. And then of course, just, you know, not overstressing your body out. So a lot of people will continue like they'll, you know, they'll go on vacation or they'll drink alcohol or they'll do something like they'll start still training. They'll train for their half marathon, even though they have a sinus infection. And that's actually not good. It doesn't mean that you have to like lie around. Of course, you can go walk, you can do some general exercise, but anything that's like super stressful to the body is not going to help you. What about something like a sauna that's stressful to the body but thought to be stressful in a positive way? Yeah. So saunas can be used in infection, but it works a little bit differently for strengthening our immune system or making it more resistant or resilient versus when

we're actually sick. So one of the things it does, of course, is it raises your temperature, right? So raising your temperature when you're sick is a good thing. It's sort of like a fever. So if you're not having a fever, but you're sick, you can use saunas to increase your body temperature. And viruses and certain bacteria don't really like super high temperatures. So that's a good thing to do. Are you pro saunas for immune support generally, like preventatively as well? Absolutely. If you can buy your own infrared sauna or find a membership somewhere to use an infrared sauna, that's a great thing to do. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners.

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free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. Okay, I want to talk about allergies. This is a very personal issue for me. I have a cat whom I love very much and I am alert to her, which makes me very sad. So allergies. Why do some of us have them so badly and other people are totally fine? So we know that there is some genetics to that. However, what happens is at some point during our life because some people have allergies when they're very young and some people can develop them as they get older. We know that underlying, there's this whole concept of called T-cell polarization, which I talk about in my book, which sometimes.

really complex. But basically, we have this whole set of cells called T cells, and part of them are what are called helper T cells. And they do exactly that. They help out other immune cells. They help our B cells make antibodies. They help our killer T cells. But they all communicate with different cytokines, these chemical messengers, and they will recruit other immune cells. So for someone who has allergies. Everyone knows who if they have allergies, you sneeze, you itch, you know, you have runny, nose, all that kind of stuff, right? So a lot of this, a lot of the allergic response is through different cells that create histamine release. So mass cells release histamine, that's what makes you itchy and runny, which is all called the eosinophil,

which also contains histamine. And then there's an antibody called IGE, which is what sort of activates the whole response. So in people who have allergies, they have a dominance of what they call T-helper cell 2 or TH2 response. They get sort of stuck this way. We know that this can happen when there are certain underlying infections maybe early on in life that caused them to sort of get polarized in this condition. Sometimes it's because they still have something going on. Toxins can actually activate this type of T-cell. Underlying parasites are, sort of what it's there for in the first place. So sometimes that will activate it. People who have leaky gut or any sort of intestinal permeability and then develop some food sensitivities,

that can also create this. So there's ways to sort of quell this response a little bit. You may not be able to get rid of it completely, but you can sort of reduce symptoms. Okay, I want to talk about how to quell it in a second, but just to clarify, is this for people who have like an internal, like a peanut allergy as well as somebody who might have a systemic response to tree pollen or cats or something like that, same thing all around? Absolutely. It's the same reaction. It's just on a different scale, right?

So there are obviously, and it's really because not 100% sure it probably why foods tend to cause severe, severe sort of life-threatening reactions, it's probably because we absorb it and eat it and break it down versus, say, a tree pollen, right? I mean, yes, people can get asthma and you can get, you know, pretty horrible symptoms, but usually they're not life-threatening. Okay, so how do we quell it? So different things. So you can take certain things that lower histamine reactions. And so there's this great, it's actually in the mint family, it's called Perala that can reduce histamine. And it can also switch from this TH2 response to something called a TH1 response. And is that okay to take every day as like a preventative thing?

Mm-hmm. Yep. There's another phytochemical called Quresitin, which has been getting a lot of attention because it does, it's sort of like a master of many things. But quercetin is a natural antihistamine. There's also something called Stinging Nettle, which is another herb that's a natural antihistamine. You can have that in teas and things.

things like that, but you can just take it supplementally. Certain, I would say certain of the mushroom species can be really good too because they can rebalance this TH2, what's called a TH2 dominance and sort of push it back towards another side, which is called TH1. So a lot of the medicinal mushrooms are really great to take as well. Do you have specific ones, do you like like, like Rashi or KordaSaps or Chaga? You know, I love them all, but I would say Chaga is a really good one because it's also really good for your respiratory system. So I like that. And corticeps, those two, probably for people with allergies really, really good. And are all of those safe to take regularly? Like I know a lot of people who suffer particularly from hay fever and things like that or me and my

dumb cat. That's a daily thing. It's not going to go away. So could I take those every day and be fine? You can. You can. Absolutely. Quercetin, usually I have. have people, if they do have seasonal allergies, I'll have them just start. It takes a little while to really, it's not something like, oh, I'm going to take my question today. It's going to help. And I say that's the same with the nettle, is you want to build that up over time. And so it's actually better to use it on a more regular basis. And how about the people who take like Claritin every day? Are you okay with something like that? I'm okay with it because its safety profile is really good. If you, all things considered antihistamines, at least this class in the past, the ones they

put out in the past 15, 20 years or so are pretty benign. And, you know, besides them maybe like drying you out a little bit, there's not a ton. I mean, there's rare cases of kids getting like depressed or having some sleep disturbances. But for the most part, you know, they're generally safe during pregnancy. you know, they have a really relatively low side effect profile. And because they're so entangled with our immune health and the T cells and all of that, that would mean that all of the other stuff that we've talked about would probably have a positive effect on mitigating allergies in the first place, right?

Like working on our microbiome, our sleep, our stress, all of those sort of anti-inflammatory immune-supporting things would be beneficial for allergies as well. Absolutely. Okay. So we've done allergies. we've done sort of like acute sickness. Let's talk about autoimmune diseases. What causes autoimmune diseases and what effect does an autoimmune disease have on our immune system? So we know for sure that underlying inflammation causes sort of is the trigger, right, for autoimmune

disease. And there's several different theories as to why it happens. And there definitely is a genetic component, we know for sure that autoimmune disease tends to be more common in women, probably just how our immune system is. It is different than a man's. And part of that is because women carry a foreign object in them if they get pregnant, right? So yeah, I read somewhere that pregnancy is the number one cause of autoimmune disease in women. Is that true? It often will occur post pregnancy. We'll see this sometimes with allergies too, which is funny. So if you think about it, right, like your baby, if you have a baby, it's half your DNA and half your partner's DNA or whoever donated the sperm or whatever, right? So you can't attack that. So there are mechanisms in place

that prevent damage to the fetus, even though it's not all your cells. So there's something in that sort of makes women at higher risk down the road for autoimmune disease. So we do see that. But what happens is that there's usually some source of inflammation. So viruses and bacteria chronically are very common sources of the initial problem. And recently there was a recent article out on Epstein-Barr virus and how Epstein-Barr virus, which most of us actually contract during childhood. So it's not a rare thing. But for some reason, there is a higher incidence of people in who have autoimmune disease that have a reactivated Epstein-Barr virus. So Epstein-Barr virus never leaves our body. It hides out just like the chickenpox virus does. It's in the herpes

virus family and it hides away. And it specifically affects our immune cells. And that's why when you first get Epstein-Barr as a kid, you get something called mononucleosis or mono. And And it's named that because it affects our monocytes, which are a type of white blood cell. So long story short, viruses can do it. And some of the theories are that when we have whatever infection it is, whether it's a pathogen in our gut, whether it's a reactivated virus, whether it's things like lime, whether it's a toxin exposure, something that alerts our immune response to go to the area of inflammation or the problem area. During that time, immune cells can actually pick up little bits and

pieces of our own tissue, take it back to the rest of the immune system, to the T cells, the B cells, part of what's called our adaptive immune system. And then they have to make a decision like, okay, are we going to, this is a bad thing, we have to attack it. But sometimes it gets mistaken and starts creating T cells and antibodies that are directed against our own tissue. tissue. And so that is one of the theories that sort of induces this autoimmunity. But there's so many autoimmune diseases that we know of. I mean, it just seems like the list keeps growing. I mean, we literally have autoimmune diseases almost every tissue in our body. So it's pretty crazy. And it's been increasing. We definitely see a significant increase in autoimmune disease over the past 50

years. And this is not because we're diagnosing them more. They're literally happening more. And so we know it's something that is in our environment. A lot of people are pointing at toxins, you know, as being something that's because it's foreign, because it causes tissue damage, that it increases the incidence of autoimmune disease. I definitely believe that for sure. How are you defining toxins? I would say it's anything, I guess technically toxins could be made by natural things. So technically, like, bacteria can make toxins.

but I'm thinking more chemical man-made things. So it can be really anything that's chemical plastics, you know, things like that, things that mimic estrogen or hormones. And a lot of those are the plastics and the thallates. But even heavy metals. So even things like mercury, arsenic, lead, the body sees those as not part of us, right? So those are not essential elements. It's not like magnesium, which is a metal that.

we need or zinc, lead does not play a role in our body. It's actually bad, right? It causes damage. Same with arsenic. We don't have any sort of healthy need for those types of toxic metals. Okay. I just think the word toxins is very Latin with emotion these days because just because something is natural, as you mentioned, with like lead and arsenic doesn't mean it's good for you. And just because something is man-made doesn't mean it's bad for you. And I do think that I like to define it because I think sometimes people can use the word toxin very blanketly and it's not actually useful then. No, I agree. I mean, for example, mold. Mold is a normal part of our environment and it's not all bad. I mean, people freak out about mold and mold can be problematic. And not all molds cause toxins,

but some of the natural toxins that they create can be really bad for us. And like you said, there are plenty of man-made things that don't really impact us that much and are pretty inert. So if we don't have an autoimmune disease yet, but we would like to take some actions to kind of stack the deck against acquiring one, what should we do? So I would say first is really tend to your gut, because we know that that's where a lot of immune activation occurs, meaning that if we have integrity problems with the gut immune line, you know, if you took a microscope and you went down to, you know, your intestinal tract and you were inside the tube, right? So you're in there with all the microbes. You can literally

punch a hole through one cell layer and you're going to get into an area of all these basically large lymph nodes. It's this large collection of immune cells that are just hanging out doing all sorts of great stuff, right? And immune cells, there are certain immune cells that can literally put their little fingers inside and sort of sample what's going by. So, but this is a tightly knit interface, even though we're absorbing things. It's very controlled. But if we do damage to that lining, so we're doing things that might destroy these what are called tight junctions, that's going to allow things to pass very easily and quickly and maybe be let in when we weren't supposed to really let that thing in, whether it's a

micro virus or even a particle of food. So when we get that barrage of things, the immune cells can, you know, they can sort of be like, okay, this is not good? Is this bad? Is this good? Is this friendly? Is this not friendly? And there can be a lot of confusion. And so, yes, tending to the gut. So avoiding the things that I talked about and really working on the microbiome is one of the first things that you can do. So you're talking about, it sounds like leaky gut, right? And one of the things that I always hear for leaky gut is bone broth is really helpful. So I'm curious if that is true. Is bone broth indeed helpful? Or if there's anything else you specifically recommend for either treating or preventing leaky gut? Yeah. I wouldn't say that's my number one go-to, bone broth.

You know, bone broth has a lot of collagen in it, which can be very nutritious and nourishing and reparative. So that would probably be the main thing. I mean, obviously it's got some vitamins and minerals and things like that. So there's nothing wrong with having bone broth. I think one of the things that we use a lot is a amino acid called l-glutamine. And l-glutamine is just, I mean, you can get it from your diet. It's like a very ubiquitous amino acid. But if you take larger doses of it, it can be very, very healing because it's what helps repair muscle tissue. And if you think about it, your intestine is really a muscle. It's a, it's smooth muscle, but it's a muscle tube. So that's really important. There's certain kinds of zinc. There's a specific zinc called zinc

carnacine, which is really good at sort of knitting up those leaky exits and entrances. So that's another good thing to do. Other things would be there's some data on. on the different polyphenols that are in foods. Like I mentioned quercetin, rosveratrol is really great, turmeric, and also omega-3 fats, which you can get from oily fish, you know, fatty fish, or you can take fish oil, obviously.

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For autoimmune diseases, if somebody is listening and they have one, are there any universally helpful things or are they all kind of so different that you need to treat them really differently? You know, I think of everyone as being very different. So I'm a little bit of a detractor from what a lot of sort of autoimmune specialists talk about. I don't believe there's one autoimmune diet. So I have a big, I'm a big stickler about that. Yes, there's tons of data that's anti-glutin. and a lot of it's really good data. Should most people with autoimmune disease go off gluten for a period of time? Absolutely. Absolutely. We know that it causes leaky gut in many cases. I'm a big fan of using elimination diets, but I'm not a person who says, hey, you know, you're never going to be

able to eat soy again. You know, that's bad for you or you're never going to be able to have dairy again. but I do love elimination diets. I think they can be super helpful. And then I really think that people, if they're able to do it, if they've gone through an elimination diet and they're not noticing any change in any of their symptoms, is to maybe get food sensitivity testing, which can be expensive and really has to be used with someone who knows what they're doing. Should somebody with an autoimmune disease take different actions when they're sick than somebody

without it because their immune system sort of behaving in different ways? you know, people with autoimmune disease don't actually have a weakened immune response. Their immune response can be perfectly fine against, you know, bacteria and viruses and things like that. The issue is, is that many people who have autoimmune disease are on medications that may lower their resistance. So, for example, prednisone, right, that's a steroid, is often used for flare-up. Some people might take low doses of it. but over time that's not good for many reasons, but it does weaken your immune response. Other things would be these what they call biologic drugs.

And these are life. They can be very life-saving, so I don't want to tell people they shouldn't take them because that would be incorrect. But they work specifically by shutting down mostly certain cytokines or certain these inflammatory messengers. So people may get relief, but it may be. put them at higher risk for certain infections. And, you know, if you listen to the commercials on TV, if you watch any sort of network TV, you know, it's the one that's like you can die,

you can have this, you know, you can get TB, all this kind of stuff, right? It's like the laundry list of things that can happen to you if you take this drug, because those are immune modulators. They're coming in and they're actually suppressing parts of your immune system so that you don't attack your own tissue. But at the same time, you're having problem, you know, it can put you at risk for other things. So is there anything that you can do to support your immune system when you are on immunosuppressants? Some of the things that I write about that we do know can be really helpful are, for example, vitamin A is really great, not, you have to be a little careful taking it because

high doses can be problematic. But that increases this whole set of cells that are what we call regulatory cells. They're sort of like calming. So they can actually help your autoimmune disease. the other thing is that you can use things that are naturally sort of antiviral, and that's not going to make you have a more aggressive immune response to your own tissue. So, for example, there's something called lysine, which we use a lot for herpes infections. That can be helpful.

You can use like the elderberry, which is fine to use with someone with autoimmune disease, and even some of those mushrooms that we talked about. So like I said, you can support yourself just like you. you can any, you know, you would with any other person. But, you know, and then also taking probiotics, I think is also excellent for people with autoimmune disease because you're always going to be wanting to work on the gut. I don't know if this falls at all into the same category as autoimmune diseases or even what's known about it. But I would love to talk about long COVID for a second. Is there any, like, do we know what's happening there yet? And is there anything that you would

recommend people do if they're sick with COVID and they want to prevent long COVID or anything that they could do if they are already experiencing long COVID symptoms? Yes. So we don't know exactly, again, what causes it. There is thought that there is an autoimmune reaction because, as I said before, is that we know that underlying a lot of autoimmune diseases, viruses are a big thing. The SARS virus, this coronavirus, same thing. So we see it a lot with the cardiovascular issue.

So the heart muscle, we know that coronavirus can attack heart muscle. and then we probably then develop a reaction to that and brain issues. So there's a lot of brain fog, anxiety, and then just fatigue, muscle fatigue. So there is, there are protocols floating around. I would say vitamin D really probably has some very good data. Is there a dose you're looking for for D? We've talked about it a few times, but I've heard people say that you actually want a pretty high dose much higher than the bottle might say. Yeah. So, the best thing to do is to get a baseline, right? You know, if you live in like the northeast or really any place in the United States and your work indoors all day long, you're not going to get a lot of

vitamin D starting in like October through, let's just say April, because you're just too far away from the suns. You can't absorb the ultraviolet rays, which is where we get our vitamin D. So we always want vitamin D depending on the labs, like above 50, you know, say 50 to 60s, like a nice sweet spot, especially if you have autoimmune disease. And so that depends on your how you absorb it, which can vary. I am not a great absorber of vitamin D. And I know that through testing, both genetic testing and also like I would take 2,000 of vitamin D and it wouldn't do anything for me. So if someone is really deficient, we usually recommend that they start on about 10,000 international units a day. Take that for eight weeks with food.

and then get rechecked if you can and then go back to adjust it and maybe go down to about 5,000. So it really depends, but I mean a sweet spot is about 5,000 international units and that's not going to put you way over a safety limit or anything. And quite honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone have a toxic level of vitamin D. It's hard to get there. So we have vitamin D. We have quercetin. What else are we doing if we have COVID and we're perhaps trying to prevent the long COVID. Because we don't know how to prevent it otherwise. We just know that some of these extra additional vitamins, minerals and things like that can be helpful. The other big one is glutathione. Glutothion is expensive. It's hard to absorb. It also smells like rottenics. However,

is a tremendous antioxidant, anti-free radical, really, really good to use. And you can use it sublingually. So they make sprays so that's better absorbed. But you can also take the precarctic to it, which is something called anacetyl cystine. It's a little bit hard to find these days because everyone knows about it, so it's always on back corner. The other thing that's sort of crazy is that we've been using an acetyl cysteine as an over-the-counter supplement for years and years and years and years. And just within the past, I guess a past few months, the FDA has decided that they want to reclassify it as a drug. Why, I don't know. So now certain places are are not, it's hard to find. So it's really hard to find in places like Amazon, but you can still

get it. So I'm a big fan of using that too. Zinc is another one. Yeah, all of those things I think would be really, if you can have that little anti-long COVID pharmacy, those are good things to focus on. And is that the same if you already have the symptoms of long COVID, like if you're a month or two out and you're experiencing brain fog, et cetera? Yes. Those are all good things to continue you doing. There's also apparently a probiotic, which is one of those soil-based probiotics, that has been studied for long COVID. They're looking at it. I cannot remember the exact name of it, but that seems to help as well. But I think if you do those things, it's probably at this point. The best we know. It's the best we know, really, yeah. What are your thoughts about my sister got COVID

and my friend suggested that she get one of those like vitamin IV drips to kind of help get her over any lingering symptoms. And it felt so bougie and it was incredibly expensive. But is there a merit to something like that, like the vitamin IV drips? So, you know, the thing about vitamin IV drips is you can instill really high doses in a very short period of time. And, you know, they've been using vitamin C drips forever. They call them a, well, they call them a Myers cocktail has a really high dose of,

vitamin C. And that does seem to help. Also, glutathione is given intravenously. And yeah, I think if you do a vitamin C, glutathione drip, it's close to $200, I think, something like that. It was really expensive, but she said she went from feeling like she's like at 60% to feeling like 100%. And she's felt like that for like over a week now. And I'm like, I don't even know if I feel like I'm 100%. That sounds nice, you know. Yeah. And like B vitamins are also, they usually include those because they're really, they're really just great for energy and supporting our detoxification. So there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. I do think that sometimes people feel better. They're a way to really, like I said, infuse a high dose of vitamins and minerals very quickly

versus you having to absorb it. And also if you're a poor absorber for some reason, if you've got gut issues and you're not able to absorb things very well, IB's a great thing to do. Okay, so nice to have, and for specific situations, but, You don't need to run out and spend $200 on an eye. No, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. Yeah. Let's do a little bit of a speed round.

I want to kind of like get into different things that are good or bad or neutral for the immune system. So I would love to start out with, is there a best or worst type of workout for supporting your immune system? Good question. So all exercise is good. I would say if there's one thing that I would not recommend for, people who have any sort of immune problem is excessive endurance sports. And the reason is, is that we know that that is going, it increases your cortisol for long periods of time. And if you're doing that day in a day out, it's going to over time sort of weaken your immunity.

The other thing is that if you're doing that and you're not allowing yourself to repair, then you're sort of causing more inflammation. Because remember, every time we exercise, right, we tear muscles. Like, that's how we get stronger. We do that. We also increase our cardiac ability. But you're always going to want to take time off in between. So every exercise has some benefit for you, but when you feel worse the day after you exercise and not better, that's a sign that, oh, maybe I should take a break. I feel more fatigue. Or, if you get sick a lot while you're training for something. The other thing is you can cause because I used to do a lot of running and I still run,

but I did triathlons and I definitely trained long distance. And, you know, I did some adrenal testing and my cortisol, what happened is over time, it just sort of tanked. And so I was sort of like a flat line. But also, we know that you can have a lot of temporary gut issues when you're running. You know, they call it the runners trots for a reason, right? Like if you go out and you're running and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I have to go to the bathroom. And the reason is is that you pull blood supply away from your gastrointestinal system to your large muscles because you're running or you're doing stuff like that right and your heart.

And so you're not supposed to be digesting food at that point. And so we know that pulling blood supply away from the GI tract can over time cause some problems with more leaky gut. So, yeah, no marathon training if you're, like, dealing with, like, a new onset autoimmune problem. Like, everything else is fine. Go lift some weights. Go to yoga. Swim in a pool, ride a bike. I mean, dance, whatever.

You know, go for a four or five mile jog. But you don't want to do anything too crazy. But some exercise, like, we should be getting regular exercise to support our immune health. Oh, yes. Absolutely. For lots of different reasons. You know, as you sort of had talked about, with the sauna, exercise is a little bit of a stressor, which is a good thing because it makes us

stronger. So you do want to stress the body a little bit because it actually, like a muscle, it gets stronger. And it does that for our immune system. But also think about it. Most of the time we get sick, we're getting something through our respiratory tract. And it has been shown, and they actually looked at older adults when COVID sort of first broke out. I think it was a British study. They looked at older adults in the UK and people who ran were like runners or did some cardiovascular activities on a regular basis because they just had healthier lungs and healthier heart. They actually did a lot better. They got less frequent infections and if they did get infections, they cleared them quicker. Amazing. Okay, what about high dose vitamin C, like the emergency

packets and things like that? You know, vitamin C is really important for people to get. And and I think a lot of people don't get enough of it. So we can't produce vitamin C. This is just sort of a fun little hint, but cats can. They can actually make their own vitamin C. Humans can't. So we have to take it in from a food source. And the other thing is that vitamin C is water soluble,

and we use it up tremendously as a free radical scavenger. So any type of damage that's going on, any immune issues, anything, any reparative stuff. We use it to repair our skin. That's why people will put vitamin C on their skin, right? Because it helps cross-link collagen. So it's, and it also helps us make cortisol, which is our stress hormones. And when we're under a lot of stress, we actually blow through vitamin C more quickly, too.

And that's why you'll see those stress C packets or stress C vitamins. So to come back to the point is, you know, taking in 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C really isn't that big of a deal. We probably get through that and use it. And whatever we don't use, we excrete. So one thing that is true is that you can't absorb too much vitamin C all at once in your gut. In fact, it will give you diarrhea. Okay. So it's a good thing to support ourselves, but don't overdo it because then you're not only not having positive effects, but you are inducing diarrhea. Correct. And it's just sort of wasteful, right? If you're not going to absorb it, what's the point of taking it? What about dry brushing?

Good question. So, you know, dry brushing is very big in Ayurveda and it does seem to improve lymphatic drainage and if you do it correctly. And lymphatic drainage is really, really important to our immune system because our lymph, like our immune cells track through our circulatory system, the veins and arteries and such, but it also goes through our lymphatics. And a lot of, of the debris and the trash and the toxins and the dead sort of stuff go into the lymphatics and then get pushed out of the body into waste. So dry brushing seems to promote lymphatic movement because lymphatic channels don't have like a muscular wall like an artery or something. And so it's moved a lot by our skeletal muscles. So when you're exercising or you're getting a massage

or if you're doing something like brushing, that can improve the flow of lymph. So, yeah, it's a good thing. Do you support specifically seeking out like a lymphatic massage? I know that's very trendy these days. I don't generally. I would say that unless someone is having a specific issue with lymphedema, you know, so that means like they can't move, they get swelling, they get edema or areas that just, collect fluid, they're swollen. I do then. Often when people are maybe going through,

you know, like a sort of a detox protocol, they're, you know, increasing their, they're changing their nutrition, they're upregulating how their liver works. You know, sometimes it's good to do that. But I wouldn't say it's something I recommend on a regular basis. Okay, this one I'm a little bit nervous about because it's one of my favorite kind of anti-sickness protocols. But what about chopped raw garlic for the Allison. Yeah. No, that's actually really good. Okay, good. Like, I always get nervous when I, because I'll always leave it in. I want people to know what the facts are, but I get nervous when I have something that I've been sharing for years and then I ask a doctor about it on the podcast.

Okay, but can you speak to the Allison concept a little bit? Yeah. So Allison, and it's not spelled like the name, it has to see in it. Allison is like the most antibacterial, antithes, viral component found in garlic. And yes, when it's raw, it's best. Although some people say that black fermented garlic is also good. I don't quite honestly know enough about it. But we use Allison in its, I would say processed form a lot of times for people with CBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth as protocols. It's been shown to be very helpful for certain kinds of CBO. And just generally, it's great. Great for a cold. Great for cardiovascular disease. I mean, it's really good for a lot of different things. But yeah,

I'm a big fan of using garlic for sure. Okay. Yay. What about oregano oil or olive leaf extract? I've seen those use for immune support a lot. Again, mostly, it's because of antiviral properties, not because it's supporting our immune cells per se. So oregano oil is very strong antibacterial. In fact, you can overdo oregano oil. So a lot of people use oregano oil on an irregular. basis and I'm like, ooh, don't do that. Because it's so strong, it actually kills a lot of our good beneficial bacteria. So if you're, if you're taking it because of, you know, you've got IBS or you think that you might have some sort of yeast overgrowth or whatever, that's fine to do it, but don't take it months on end, maybe take it for two weeks, take a couple of weeks off,

and sort of pulse it, you know, maybe take two to three rounds of it. So that's what I recommend for that. And not so much with the olive leaf extract. You can take that for longer periods of time. That can be very, very good for yeast and also for viruses. And there's some data showing that it might be helpful for people who have chronic estrogen virus. We're talking about a lot of sort of antiviral, antibacterial stuff. Do you have a favorite one for if we're feeling ill to reach for? Antiviral. I wouldn't say I really have a favorite. I do like ginseng. and I do like ginger because I love the taste of ginger and ginger tea. So I would say probably that.

And then ginseng, especially this one specific kind called red Korean ginseng, is extremely sort of immune-promoting, immune-boosting ginger, I'd say, to really know. And I know that we talked about overdoing oregano oil, but are there any other ones that we can sort of overdue? I'm thinking particularly in the context of a cytokine storm, which we touched on earlier. I'm always worried about kicking my immune system into overdrive and causing more problems than I'm solving. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, you know, they talked about that a lot with Elderberry, but I think it's sort of like spitting in the wind. I don't really think like the amount, elderberry has nothing against some of the cytokines. Like, I mean, it can definitely increase it slightly. but when we have a cytokine storm, it's like a Hail Mary pass, right? What is it? Can you just walk back a little bit and tell us what's happening in our body when we have a cytokine storm? So most of us do not have a cytokine storm, right? So ever, because usually that means you're in the throes of dying. So basically when we are very sick and overwhelmed by a bacterial or viral infection. So you're going to see cytokine storms happening mostly in people that are already in the ICU, intensive care unit. and they are in a state of what's called sepsis, which is caused by cytokines and cytokine storm.

These are people who are overwhelmed by infection and have such a weakened response that our immune system makes this hellmary pass that they start secreting just really, really high levels of these very pro-inflammatory cytokines. One of the big ones is IL-6. There's others. And what that does is it really, activates a lot of tissue damage, which if you think about it, that then recruits more cells and more cytokines and more cells and more cytokines. And then we get into the state of what we call septic shock where our blood pressure drops, our heart rate drops. Sometimes we even start having, we saw it with COVID this happened. You get blood clots and things like that. But this can happen

with other types of infections. So we've seen this in like toxic shock syndrome and things like that. it's rare. It is not something that happens to like the average person. So you shouldn't be worried about that. Okay. So like the, there was some media hype for a while around like taking too much elderberry and that causing. And that was just exactly hype. It's totally hype. Like you can't create that from taking elderberry. Okay. Great. So take your elderberry. That's totally fine. Okay. Amazing. And then can you just leave us with a little daily prescription? Like one thing that we can all start doing today to support our immune system on a regular basis? You should floss.

And the reason why is that we are seeing that the microbiome in our mouth and inflammation that occurs from like peridontal disease and things as we get older or even younger, you know, root canals, blah, blah, blah, drives a lot of other inflammatory diseases. So there's a link between heart disease. there's a link between Alzheimer's and brain diseases because of microbes in your mouth. So we don't often think about that. We think of like, okay, it's good to floss because you don't get infections in your mouth or you don't get cavities or whatever.

But we don't think of the mouth microbiome and the state of the health of our gums and our teeth as affecting other organs, specifically things like the heart and your brain. So I would say floss. I love that. know, all the good stuff, you know. We have a whole Ask the Doctor Dental Health Edition with Dr. Mark Berhena, and it really is about how much the state of our mouth impacts the state of our whole body and how that's really under-discussed.

So I'm, I'm a huge fan. Yeah, I think that's going to be a big thing in the future. You know, when they talk about health trends, I think, I think oral health and the rest of your body is going to be like a big health trend. I think so, too. And it has, you have your own oral microbiome like you mentioned. we've talked so much about the gut microbiome, but it's interesting to talk about the rest of our microbiomes. And also everything entering your gut is entering it via your mouth. Like that's where it's

going first. It's one tube if you think about it, right? I mean, digestion starts in the mouth and obviously ends in the colon, but it's just all one little passageway, right? Amazing. Is there anything you'd like to kind of say in your own words about your book, your work, where people can find you? What I'd like to say about the book is that it is meant for everybody. It's not meant just for people who have sort of immune issues. It's meant to give people hope. And also to sort of demystify the immune system and make it like sort of, you know, more approachable because I think people should know more about their immune system. And you don't have to be a scientist to do that. And then probably the best place to find me is on Instagram. I am not a

huge social media person, but that's where I am the most of the time. And, and then also at my website, which is www.modecenter.com. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your wisdom with us. We all really appreciate it. Thank you, Liz. This was so much fun. I hope you love this episode with Dr. Modi.

I hope you came away with a lot of like tips and tricks and things that you can try out in your life, but also maybe just like a better understanding of what's actually happening with your immune system. I know I have a way better sense of like what's going on in my body. If you did love the episode, I would so appreciate a quick rating or review on whatever podcast platform that you listen on. It's so helpful. It's super quick, I promise. If you can't figure out how to do it, you can do like a quick Google of like how to leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Or you can just shoot me a DM and I'll walk you through it. I promise it is not as complicated as it seems like it is. You just kind of need to know the right place to go. And it really does make a big difference in helping other people find the podcast. Of course, the number one way to support the podcast is by spreading the word. So if there's anybody in your life that you think would benefit from all of the incredible information that Dr. Mode shares in this episode, please send them a link. You can be like, hey, like, I know you work with a lot of kids. This might help you support your immune system.

Or I know you've been struggling with allergies. I know, like, there's some really good information in this podcast episode that might help you. It'll help them feel better. I will appreciate it massively because it'll be spreading the word. and helping us all get healthier together. And you'll feel like a good person because you are a good person. You're spreading wonderful information with people in your life. So good wins all around.

And if you are new here, if somebody sent you the episode, welcome. I am so glad to have you here as part of the fam. Do not forget to subscribe before you leave so that you get notified of all future episodes. We have some really, really, really good ones coming up that I'm very excited to share. So with that, I will see you next Wednesday on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast.