The Liz Moody Podcast - Ask the Doctors: An Exact Plan For When You Get Sick (+ How To Prevent It In The First Place)

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Learn how to fend off and shorten the duration of oncoming colds, flus, and viruses & boost your immune system to keep from getting sick in the first place! Feeling an early winter cold coming on? There’s no worse feeling than knowing you’re about to be sick but not being able to stop the symptoms. Learn the methods to prevent and stop illness from Liz Moody’s conversations with three doctors: Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Aviva Romm, and Dr. Will Bulsiewicz.  Dr. Bulsiewicz emphasizes the importance of taking care of your gut microbiome to maintaining your health, and he gives tips on how to make sure your gut is getting the nutrition it needs to keep you healthy. Dr. Romm discusses the importance of hormones and stress to your physical wellbeing, and how changes in these areas can cause changes to your health. Dr. Hyman gives his favorite early cold remedies and explains why they work. 02:12 Dr. B on Gut Health and Immunity 04:38 The Role of Butyrate and Fiber 07:40 Daily Habits for a Healthy Gut 11:50 Raw Garlic: A Natural Remedy 18:01 Immune Support for Families With Children 23:35 Dr. Mark Hyman's Daily Health Tips 25:54 Boosting Immunity: Vitamin E and Cold Prevention 27:07 Immediate Remedies for Oncoming Sickness 29:01 Lifestyle Tips for When You're Sick 32:13 Hormones and Immunity: A Surprising Connection with Dr. Romm 34:41 Building Stress Resilience for Better Immunity 38:20 Practical Tips for Preventing Illness 43:04 Herbal Remedies and Natural Treatments For more from our guests, you can find: Dr. Will Bulsiewicz at @theguthealthmd and www.theplantfedgut.com. Check out 38TERA at www.38tera.com.  Dr. Mark Hyman at @drmarkhyman and www.drhyman.com. Check out Function Health at www.FunctionHealth.com.  Dr. Aviva Romm at @dr.avivaromm and www.avivaromm.com. Listen to her podcast, On Health. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody, or subscribe to her newsletter by visiting www.lizmoody.com. If you like this episode, check out The Health Effects Of Alcohol Part 1: Gut Health & Cancer with Dr. Robynne Chutkan & Dr. William Li and The Health Effects of Alcohol: Hormones & Brain Health with Dr. Aviva Romm & Louisa Nicola. This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. LMNT: go to DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. Wildgrain: go to Wildgrain.com/LIZMOODY for $30 off the first box - PLUS a free item in every box. Molly’s Suds: go to mollyssuds.com/LIZMOODY and use code LIZMOODY for 20% off. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 282. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are some connections between our gut health and our immune health that people might not be aware of? When you have a healthy gut before you get sick, it makes it a lot easier to protect yourself while you're sick and to recover after. Those three things have actually been shown to reduce the frequency of colds and also the severity and how long they last. You have to create a host environment that is resistant to infection. We take care of ourselves and we prioritize that, that we don't really have to worry so much. about these chronic infections. Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast, where every week we are sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your

life. I am your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and longtime journalist. I am so excited to share today's episode with you. It is very highly requested. I tapped three of the world's best doctors from different fields to hear exactly what they do themselves when they get sick, what they recommend we do, and their best things. advice for not getting sick in the first place. First step, we have Dr. Will Bolshewitz, or as most of us know him, Dr. B.

Dr. B is an incredible gastroenterologist. He's the New York Times best-selling author of Fiber Fueled, and he's the founder of 38 Terra. Then we sit down with Dr. Mark Hyman, a functional medicine doctor, 15 times New York Times best-selling author, host of the podcast, the doctor's pharmacy, and co-founder of function health, which is revolutionizing medical lab testing. And then finally, if that wasn't enough, you will get to hear from Dr. Aviva Rom, who is a Yale-educated MD, who is also a master herbalist and the best-selling author of seven books, including hormone intelligence. We are covering getting sick from all angles, and we are sharing so much little-known information,

information that you will not hear anywhere else. Dr. Rom actually shared insider info that she has about avoiding getting sick while traveling that I have never heard anywhere before, and that is towards the end of the episode. So definitely make sure that you stay tuned for that. We've got remedies. We've got recipes. We've got myth busting. We've got a ton of science and a ton of action tips. So let's dive right in with Dr. B talking about all things immunity and gut health. Dr. B, what are some connections between our gut health and our immune health that people might not be aware of. This may surprise people, but I actually think that your gut microbiome is the first layer of your immune system. So hear me out on this. Yes, we have an immune system. It's not

actually inside your gut. It's right at the wall of the gut, which we call the gut barrier. But within the tube of your gut are these microbes. And they actually are defending and protecting you right now. And we know this because in moments where we destroy them, such as unintentionally when we need antibiotics, we put ourselves at risk for consequences such as an infection. And that infection could be a bacterial infection, like a C-DIF infection, or it could even be a yeast infection. We know that many different forms of yeast infections, whether it be thrush in our throat or a woman's vagina, vaginal yeast infection, these things tend to occur when we take antibiotics.

So I would actually argue that our microbes are the first layer. and then I actually think that the second layer is our gut barrier. Our gut barrier is a single layer of cells that is designed to basically separate the intestines from where you enter into the body and the bloodstream. You can think of it a little bit like if we were in Game of Thrones and we had a castle. The wall of the castle would be our gut barrier. And we want that wall to be intact because then it, It keeps the invading barbarian horde outside of our castle.

And we'll have soldiers. And our soldiers will be prepared to defend our castle, our space. And they'll be right there at the wall. Right. And that's your immune system. I would actually make the argument that the gut barrier is the second layer. And of course, we want the castle wall to be intact. Like every invasion movie, not to be super nerdy, but in Helms Deep in the second Lord of the Rings movie.

Yeah. Well, okay. I'm just going to, I got to finish it. I got to finish it. So, but it's like, look, if they can't break the castle wall down, if they can't get through, they would have never done anything. All the bad stuff happened because they broke the castle wall down. We got to protect the castle wall.

So that's the second thing. Can you give us one tip for protecting, for bolstering our castle walls if we are coming into cold and flu season? First of all, the most powerful tool for repairing and restoring the gut barrier is actually butyrate. Buterate is a short-chain fatty acid. They are the most anti-inflammatory chemicals that I've ever come across and they are produced by our gut bacteria when they come into contact with prebiotic fiber or resistant starch. Those things come into the colon, the microbes actually transform them. They stop being fiber and resistant starch. And now they're short-chain fatty acids like butyrate.

And buterate, you can think of these cells that are lining your colon, and they're held together by these proteins called tight junctions. That's like the cement between bricks. And buterate is basically spackling that cement. Buterate is basically making the connections between those cells and making it, fortifying it and making it strong. So to me, like, you have to start there with 95% of America being deficient in fiber, you should start with the place that it's like, hey, here's your greatest opportunity

to transform your immune system for colon flu season. Start with that. So fiber, of course, comes from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. And it's not that you have to make that the entirety of your diet, but including those foods in your diet is how you get an adequate amount of fiber that feeds and fuels a healthier gut microbiome and repairs and restores your gut barrier. And would you specifically be looking for resistant starches like cooked and cooled starches or, what is it, asparagus, those woodier vegetables. All right.

So the woodier vegetables tend to have things like innuene. From my perspective, when I think about plant-based foods, when I say that, many people will hear, oh, well, the vegetable section and fresh produce. And to me, I want to open your mind to the fact that legumes and whole grains and seeds and nuts, and of course fruit and vegetables, these are all excellent sources of dietary fiber. They don't all have resistant starch. You will find resistant starch when you cook and cool starchy foods, classically the mashed potatoes that you created and then you put into the fridge. Those have resistant starch.

But also whole grains, legumes, when you cook them and then cool them, they will form resistant starch. Now, that's not the only form of resistant starch. You'll also find it in green bananas. I mean, you'll find it technically in potatoes, but you're going to cook the potato. So ultimately, you have to let it cool. I love it because it's such an argument for leftovers. Yeah, well, and have you ever noticed that some foods get better?

Oh, yes. Yes, the flavors marry more. I feel like it hits more. I don't know. Yeah, 100%. I'm such a leftover girly. This is an example of the food is not exactly the same. There are changes that take place because you let it cool.

And this is an example of one of the changes that you let it cool. And this is an example of one of the changes that takes place that's kind of interesting and like great for your microbiome. 100%. I love that. Okay. What are some things that you do in your normal daily life to keep from getting sick? So in addition to fueling my microbiome in the way that we described, it's about adding diversity to our diet.

I would say to the listeners, I'm not trying to say that you need to count the grams of fiber in your diet. I'm trying to say that you need to count the number of different plants in your diet. So variety is key. That's one of the ways. what else can we do? If the gut barrier is so important because ultimately when you have an intact gut barrier, then the immune system is actually protected and it's able to actually do its job more readily. So what are things that we know can improve the gut barrier? Well,

one of them is fermented food. So fermented food because it has live microbes and also transformation of the protein and the fiber and vitamins because you get all these additional nutrients. There's research that was published out of Stanford a few years ago where they found that just a few weeks of increasing fermented food in a diet actually added diversity to the microbiome and this is not a surprise based upon what we're discussing. Lowered inflammation. When you create a healthier microbiome, you lower inflammation. Okay, boom, fermented food.

Additionally, we can also exercise. So exercise has actually been shown to improve the gut barrier and simultaneously make the gut microbes healthier. So we're sort of going after the sections that we want. Vitamin D. I used to check vitamin D levels all the time. And of course, this is in a population of people that have digestive health problems as a gastroenterologist.

And they were almost always low. And I want people to hear something. It's not just whether or not you take a vitamin D supplement. It's also about the health of your gut microbiome. When a person has an unhealthy gut microbiome, actually their vitamin D levels drop. But one of the ways that we can support our microbiome is with vitamin D, which can come from light exposure or supplementation. During the winter, cold and food season, in the majority of places, you're not going to be walking outside and getting adequate sun exposure in order to build vitamin D. So that's the time to be supplementing.

How much to take depends on the individual. I tend to take 5,000 units. There's no evidence that taking anything at 10,000 units a day or less is problematic. I've never seen any evidence for this, with the exception of some people may have a medical condition, such as having kidney stones, that you would have to be careful with that. So to me, 5,000, the guidelines may say 2,000. Sleep is another one that we can do. So actually, let's just tap into our circadian really. in general.

When we get a good night's rest, this helps to restore the microbiome. The other thing is you and I have talked about this, that actually it enhances melatonin. And melatonin, which we get when we sleep, actually is good for the gut microbiome and also good for the gut barrier. But the fascinating part is that if you get morning light exposure, that morning light exposure creates serotonin and that serotonin gets converted 14 hours later into melatonin, which again is good for the gut. As I paint this picture, I want to look at a person's diet and look for opportunities to make some changes and elevate the quality of the diet. But I simultaneously

want to look at your lifestyle and how you spend your day and try to create a daily habit where you wake up, you get morning light exposure, and that morning light exposure results not only in you having better days, but also deeper or restful sleep at night. What do you do when you wake up and you have a little bit of a sore throat? You feel a little bit low energy. You feel that sickness coming on and you want to prevent it as much as possible. A couple things that I do. First of all, if I haven't been taking my vitamin D, I make sure that I start taking my vitamin D. I might in that setting even bolus it. So I might start off with 50,000 units to jumpstart. I actually have had great success with raw garlic.

Yay, I'm glad you said this. This is my go-to remedy. And I know there's great research behind it, but I don't know if I've ever actually asked a doctor on my podcast about it. So go off on raw garlic. Okay. First of all, the allium vegetables, like we're talking about onions and garlic, are so good for our gut microbiome. And there's a number of different aspects to this. part of it is the prebiotics that they have, but they also have special phytochemicals, which means plant-based chemicals, that shape the microbiome and are bad for the pathogens. When I read this, I was mind-blown that they essentially act like antibiotics, except for they leave all the good bacteria and even nurture it, but they get rid of the bad bacteria.

And I was like, this is incredible. Why aren't more people talking about this? Yes. So when your gut is in a bad place, let's talk about dysbiosis, which is a damaged gut, then what you have is you have too many bad guys and not enough good guys. And what we're saying here is that with raw garlic, you actually are feeding the good guys to make them stronger and simultaneously you are suppressing the bad guys with those natural phytochemicals that are not the same as taking Cypro, right? It's not the same. You're not destroying the entirety of your microbiome.

You're targeting the bad guys, though. They don't like it. They're uncomfortable. It's so cool. There's a hack. You probably know this, Liz. but I want to make sure that your listeners know this. When we take our garlic, we actually want to release the full nutritional value of the garlic.

And it has this chemical that it will create called Allison. In order to release this, you have to actually disrupt the food matrix. That means like chopping it or whatever it may be. What I do is a practice called chop, then stop. I will chop my garlic and then I'll walk away for 10 minutes. All right. So I cut it up into little pill-sized pieces, whatever size you're comfortable with in terms of like you don't have to chew it.

You just swallow it. Oh, you just take it like a pill. I take it like a pill. Oh, that's so interesting. I make like a garlic toast on sourdough. So I'll toast sourdough bread. I'll chop my garlic. I'll let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

And then I'll put some olive oil on the bread. I'll put the garlic on that. I'll put a little bit of sea salt and then whatever dry herbs that I have around and then I'll eat that. But a pill sounds much easier. Yeah. Well, yours sounds quite delicious. Now, yours is still raw, though, right? Like you're not cooking. Yeah, the bread is toasted. I find that the fat from the olive oil and the salt, it cuts the raw. I mean, it's still an experience to eat it, but I find that it cuts it a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty hairy chest, and so I don't know if I need to grow even more, but nonetheless, whatever way works for you, honestly. No, I crave it. Now when I'm sick, I literally the only thing I crave is this raw garlic toast because I've essentially Pavloved myself and, you know, to be like this will make me feel better. But I love the idea of just taking it as a pill. How many cloves do you usually do? So these cloves can be different sizes, right? So to me, if it were like a larger size clove, I'd probably do three. Okay. Three, maybe four. I do want to caution people, and I'm curious if you would agree with this, I would not do it on an empty stomach and I would not overdo it because I have done that before and I've gotten a very intense stomach ache. It can definitely do that. These types of vegetables like garlic and onions,

they actually are quite densely concentrated with a type of Fodmap. Fodmaps are the fermentable parts of our food that, by the way, are good for the microbiome, but for people that have your old bowel syndrome or gut issues, actually you can make them feel unwell. And these are called fructans. So fructans are a broad category. You also find fructans and wheat and barley and rye. Yeah, so it could definitely do that if you overdo it if you're a person who has underlying

gut issues. So just be aware of that. And what I'll do is I'll do this probably twice. today. Okay. And I've actually had quite remarkable results by doing this. All I know, because I'm experimenting on myself, right? All I know is that when I have a bad cold, it lingers. And sometimes when I do this, it just kind of feels like I had the sniffles for 12 or 24 hours. I love that. That's amazing. Is there anything else that you add in when you are actively sick? So not in that preventing. I have a little bit of a sore throat. I'm trying to keep it from developing,

but I have a fever. I'm actively unwell. We're doing the garlic twice a day. What else are we doing? We clearly want to be actively hydrating. This is where like any sort of liquid-based thing, but like I'm a big fan of broth in that setting. I like it to be a little bit warm. I find that it's very nourishing and inviting to my body. I also am a big fan of ginger and turmeric teas in that setting. And they both have an anti-inflammatory nature to them, both ginger and turmeric. Ginger is profoundly soothing to your gut, but it also, I think, helps to orient the immune system in that setting. So I'll definitely be doing those things. I'm actually of the belief that melatonin supplements can be a part of what we do within this context. And then the other thing I'll add is sync is interesting. I got a lot of

questions about zinc. Yeah. So zinc is interesting. So back in 2006, I was an intern at Northwestern in Chicago. I started taking care of people with complex liver disease who are like on a liver transplant list. And many of them get this condition called hepatic encephalopathy where they get confused. Well, here's what's interesting, Liz, we've discovered that hepatic encephalopathy where these people with serious liver issues are confused. It actually is a gut microbiome issue. And the way that we know this is like if you were to go to a doctor right now, they would probably start by treating you first with antibiotics called refaxamine. All right. So antibiotics are the first treatment. The other treatment is one called lactulose. Lactulose is a pre-botic, meaning

that it fixes the good gut bacteria. And then the third thing, this is what we used to do back in the day. This is not as common now, is we would use zinc. And I think that the reason why is because zinc helps to improve and restore the gut barrier. And I find it quite fascinating the data that exists around zinc, both zinc supplementation, or if you have something going on, for example, rhinitis where your nose is running, using zinc swabs can actually help to shorten the period of time that you're sick. What is your best advice for not getting sick when you have kids?

All of my parent friends are sick constantly and it scares me as somebody who maybe wants to have kids in the future. So this is complex because if your kids go to daycare, they're going to bring stuff home. And it's almost impossible to avoid that. And it's like not thought of in a good way to just leave them out in the yard when they get home, you know, make a little tent. The kids? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I don't know that that would be thought of in a good way, particularly in the wintertime. It's hard because, like, inevitably this does happen. And then it gets passed around the family and it can be quite miserable. Let me speak to our family. Number one, in a way, like, I'm not going to say that being sick, we should want to be sick. I'm not going to say that. But in a way, some exposure to these things is good for us because in a way, it's our immune system having the opportunity to practice.

Okay. I have a question about that because I thought that was why kids, do get sick so much because their immune system simply hasn't been exposed to all these things. But then I'm like, why are all of my adult friends who are parents getting sick too? Because hasn't their immune system already had that exposure? Our immune systems evolve in the same way that our microbiome is evolving during our lifetime. This is, I think, part of the reason why certain health conditions can be more common, such as certain autoimmune conditions can be more common at certain age points in our lifespan. So it does vary. But the other thing to keep in mind is that many sicknesses are

viruses and they're being transmitted through touch. So, and that gets easily disseminated when you have kids that they're never washing their hands. They may be coughing on one another. They don't cover their mouth. It's getting on their hand and they're touching their friends, right? So it's much more easy because kids are constantly doing this kind of stuff. Whereas as adults, we wash our hands, we cover our mouth. There's certain things that are sort of like basic productions that we have. Okay. So with your four kids at home, what are you doing to keep those things from going? around your house all the time. If I'm going to sit here and advocate for people to enhance the quality of their diet and

eat a higher quality diet, we have to pass this to our children. And in order to do that properly, you have to normalize eating healthy food. When you normalize it, meaning this is the way that we do it in our house. And it's just like you're not asking them to do something different. You're just eating the way you always eat. When you do that, they don't ask any questions. This is what they're used to. They were raised that way.

They ask questions when you normalize something. else and then you ask them to eat broccoli. That's complicated. That's really hard. So trying to maintain and ultimately as parents, it's not easy, but one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that we're the ones with the credit card. We're the ones to determine what sits in the pantry. One of the things that I find actually quite deeply disturbing was, it bothers me that in the United States, 60% of our calories come from ultra-processed foods. Now, I am not sitting here pretending that I don't consume ultra-processed foods. I do. It's just the overwhelming nature of it, where it's dominating our diet. 60%. That's my issue. 60%. And the sad part is, and our kids,

it's even worse. It's 70%. Right. So going back to the beginning of this conversation, I said that the best thing that you can do to protect your immune system and make it strong is to heal your gut barrier. And the strongest thing that exists to heal your gut barrier is butyrate that we get from fiber. And 95% of adults are deficient in fiber and our kids are just as deficient if not worse. We have to ultimately start with this because if we're on a high quality diet from the very beginning, this is how we protect ourselves. And when you have a healthy gut before you get sick, it makes it a lot easier to protect yourself while you're sick and to recover after. To me, it starts with these types of things. Beyond this, when someone's sick, there's a lot more washing

the hands than usual. We have four kids. So we've had times where we have an infant. home and we will at times isolate for the infant. So when COVID was going around, for example, if I tested positive, I would separate from my wife because I knew that sleeping in the same bed two feet away from her, I'm going to ultimately give it to her and then she's going to give it to the baby. So it's protect my wife and the baby and I'll go to my separate part of the house and stay over there. I've gotten COVID twice and my husband and I have isolated from each other and I've not given it to him either time, which I think is fascinating. Yeah. Those are some of the general concepts that we use in our house. Love it. Are there any other immune support secrets that you want to

share or myths that you want to bust? You know, I think that the thing from my perspective is we all want like that cool protocol of like take these five things and like in super high doses and that's going to fix all of our issues. And I think that the problem from my perspective is that we're kind of losing sight of just the foundational basics. So let's get back to those foundational basics of like a healthy diet and getting a good night's rest and staying well hydrated and a little bit of movement of the body and getting outside and getting exposed to nature. And let's get back to that. Love it. Well, Dr. B, it was a pleasure as always. I love our chats. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, everyone for listening. If you want more from Dr. B, you can listen to his

other episodes of the Liz Moody podcast where we bust gut health myths. We dive deep into how to optimize our microbe biom, I will link them in the show notes. You can also find more from him at the Plantfedgut.com, where he has an amazing newsletter. And if you're looking for ways to help support your gut, definitely check out 38 Terra to get your daily microbe nutrition. And now we're going to jump in with the world famous Dr. Mark Hyman. I asked recently on Instagram how people found the podcast, and a huge, huge majority said that a friend or family member or loved one had shared it with them. Could you do me a quick favor and share this episode or any episode that you love with just one person in your life? It would mean the world to me. If every single one of you did that,

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Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. Dr. Hyman, what are the things that you do in your normal daily life to keep from getting sick? Everybody has kind of had the freak out of, oh my God, I don't want to get sick and understands the seriousness of getting sick. And of course, you don't want to get a cold or flu. How do you prevent that? Well, you have to create a host environment that is resistant to infection. So what can we do? The first thing is to eat a whole food, real food diet with lots of phytochemicals because nutrition really is important for your immune system. The second is to make sure you have adequate levels of nutrients that fight infection.

Vitamin D levels should be over 50 nanograms per decilator. Most people are under that. Over 80% of people are under that. And that is really easy to do by taking a vitamin D supplement to get your level up. And you need to test. And that's why I created a function with my co-founders, functionhealth.com, where you can actually check all your levels. The third thing I do is make sure that I get enough sleep.

When you don't have a sleep, your immune system is suppressed. And so getting eight hours of sleep, good sleep is really important. Exercise also, not over-exercise, but exercise does boost your immune system incredibly well. And that's important for keeping healthy. And there's other things you can do, like meditation and relaxation. Because we know, for example, if you inject a cold virus into somebody's nose, if they're stressed, they'll get a cold. If they're not stressed, they won't get a cold. You literally, we've done these experiments where you just inject the virus directly

into the nose. And it's not everybody who gets exposed to illness will get sick. And the last thing is there's kind of fun techniques you can do if you can get access to like a sauna, for example, will upregulate something called your innate immune system that boost your immunity. And so that's really an important thing to make sure you have access to that if you can. I think it's almost a fundamental life thing to have a sauna, but it's hard.

You can get a sauna blanket, but you can go to your gym. But saunas are great because they boost the innate immune system. plunge is too. And then also there are nutrients besides vitamin D that are really important, having adequate zinc and vitamin D and selenium. And then lastly, if you really want to become more resilient, there's a whole cocktail of Chinese herbs that are very helpful with boosting immune function. I'm not affiliated with this company, but host defense has a great one. And there's a number of ones out there that you can use that I use in my practice that are very helpful for helping people become more stress resilient. And they don't get sick. So people say, I'm getting sick all the time.

I always get a cold. I put them on this regimen and they almost never get sick. And I don't remember the last time I had a cold. Is there anything that you do if you're coming up on cold and flu season or your patients are coming up on cold and flu season? Is there anything that you have them add in or they're going to have a lot of exposure? Is there anything that you have them add in so that they can have more protection during that time? Yeah, I mean, if there's one thing, I think it's getting your vitamin E level up over 50. They've shown that if your vitamin E levels over 50, you'll reduce your risk of getting the flu by 75%, which is more than the vaccine. So this is a treatment that literally is very safe.

It costs literally pennies a day that has no side effects that has many other benefits that you can do. And the way you need to know how to do that is you need to test your levels because some people might need a thousand units. Some people might need 5,000, some might need 10,000 to get their level over 50. And so the best way to do that is to test. And again, that's why I co-founded Function Health to allow people to get access their own lab data as a really simple membership model for basically $1.37 a day, you get twice your testing, including vitamin D and a whole host of other things that are important for your immune health. If somebody feels like a tickle in their throat or they feel that really run down feeling where they're like, oh, no, I'm going to wake up sick tomorrow.

Is there anything they can do in that moment? What is my trick? Yeah. I'm for sure. There's a few hacks that I have. One is five days of, and the hack can't be more than five days, but five days of 50,000 international units of vitamin A and a vitamin D3. So two separate things. As soon as you feel that little twinge of, I think I'm getting sick, just immediately have it in the house and go take 50,000 different five days. Can I ask you about that? Because I have this idea that vitamin A is quite toxic to us in heavy doses.

Is that wrong? Yes, correct. No, it's not wrong. In fact, the way the Inuit up in Alaska used to kill the early settlers, would they feed in polar bear liver, which was super high in vitamin A, and they would die from vitamin A poisoning. So you can get sick from it, but five days is fine. Okay.

Five days is fine. And that's why I said five days. I also take, obviously, about one to three thousandths of vitamin D, make sure I have really 30 to 60 milligrams of zinc. Also, I'll take adaptogenic herbs and I take a cocktail of things like Rishi and cortiseps and a number of other herbs that are in a cocktail. And also, if I feel like I'm sort of really getting sick, I'll get a product I like, which is Subreacconation by Herb Farm.

Again, no affiliation. and it's liquid. It's kind of strong tasting. It kind of burns back of your tongue a little bit. And I basically almost drink a whole bottle in a day. Like I'll just have a two spoon every maybe four or five times a day. That really helps to reduce your risk. Now, there's peptides out there that are quite amazing, like if I miss enough of one and L37, which are harder to get. There are things that are really prescribed by a doctor. But they're really great to have around. And they're a little tiny injection. You can give yourself. My assistant was getting sick the other day. I gave her a couple of shots in one day and she didn't get sick at all. So that's kind of a little more advanced trick, but that's a great thing to do. When you are sick, is there anything that you recommend doing or not doing? Like, should we be moving our body?

Should we be laying all day? Should we be getting outside exposure? Should we be staying inside? What's the vibe? Yes. Yeah, I mean, you want to nurture yourself, getting more sleep than you would normally get, making sure you're eating healthy and make sure you do a little bit of exercise walking. Also, saunas and cold plunges can help with the immune system.

And then in terms of diet, I have my kind of, a cold soup, I call it. You can make like chicken soup. You can put a straggler of sticks in there from Chinatown. You can put ginger, you put garlic, chitaki mushrooms. You can sort of make this chicken soup. But you can also do a tea, which I make, which is a little intense, but it really works. What you do is you take ginger, you slice it up, like probably a good finger-long stick of ginger, and you slice it up thin, and then you boil in water for like 10, 15 minutes, just really get it boiled up. And then you take a big jar mug. So you want like 16, you know, 24 ounces and you crush a clover to a fresh garlic in it you put in a little bit of honey a whole juice

of a lemon and a little bit of red pepper flakes and then you pour the ginger tea on top of it let it steep for a few minutes and then drink that you won't have any friends because the garlic will make your breast smell but it will help you get better so much faster because garlic ginger and the chili peppers all really help boost your immune system so that's that's kind of another trick and I'll sip on that all day. I love it. And just to clarify, it's okay to sauna and cold plunge while sick because I always thought of them as preventative, but when you're sick, you shouldn't be stressing your system out? No, actually, sauna and cold plunges are great when you're sick. They both help stimulate

immune function. And if you feel like cold plunge is too much of a stress, you can just do the sauna. That can really help a lot because that boost your innate immune system, which is not antibody regulated, but just your general overall defense system. And that can really help that. Okay, amazing. Are there any other immune support secrets that you want to share or myths that you want to bust? I think I gave you most of my secrets. I mean, there's certainly, you know, I give you all my special cocktail of stuff I take. I gave you my special tea, my special soup. I think I gave you a lot of the hacks. I think people are often not aware of how important it is to keep this amazing gift of a body we have resilient.

And that's why I sort of talked about this idea of how do you keep your host healthy? Because by the way, not everybody who got COVID got sick, not everybody who got COVID got very sick. And so why is this their larger ability in the population? It's because of the health of the person who got the disease. We really can understand that if we take care of ourselves and we prioritize that, that we don't really have to worry so much about these chronic infections. Amazing.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Hyman. I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom. My pleasure. If you want to hear more from Dr. Hyman, you can find him over at his podcast, the doctor's pharmacy, or at function health where he is working hard to make in-depth lab testing available to anybody who wants or needs it. And now, last but certainly not least, let's hear from the absolutely wonderful Dr. Aviva Rom. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single. one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from

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Or I do feel a little like more vulnerable and susceptible. And it's a real thing. So as those hormones go down, as estrogen and progesterone go down, it is actually having an impact. on various aspects of our immune system, our white blood cells, our natural killer cells, our immune TH1, TH2 balance, all of our inflammatory markers. Actually, the immune ones go down, the inflammatory markers go up. So we feel more inflamed. We're more susceptible to getting sick. Also, we know that women who have autoimmune conditions are more susceptible to flares pre-menstrually, postpartum, and in menopause. Because there are immune protective effects. Like our immune system talks to our hormonal system, talks to our nervous system. They're not these separate compartmentalized things. So absolutely, major connection between immunity and hormones

at different various life cycle phases. Okay, I have always wondered this because I definitely do feel like I am more likely to get sick before my period. So what can we do about that other than just like be a hermit right before we start to menstruate? So the main things we can do are one, just try to do everything we can to stay well rested, eat the foods that help protect our immune system, keep our inflammation healthy with our diet and with movement and sleep, all the things that can help keep that immune system regulated. Reducing stress, there is a huge connection between stress and immunity as well. So it's really fascinating when we think about the world.

word resilience. What does the word resilience have to do with? Two things. Immunity and mood energy, right? Like, we're more and more emotionally resilient and we're more immune resilient. And there is a deep, deep connection between the two of those. So the more we move toward a high stress or subtle chronic burnout phase of like our cortisol rhythms and our health, the less resilient we actually are. So we're just burning ourselves out on a lot of levels, and our immune system can't respond as well. So think about how can you build stress resilience. And I think that is easier in some ways than thinking about reducing stress because some of the stressors in life are kind of fixed. It's shocking how much it costs to rent an apartment or buy a house right now, especially

if you're like a millennial. Forget it. It's so overwhelming. Groceries are insane. Floods and fires and global catastrophes. And you can't just like mitigate. all of that. But what we can do is try to build resilience to how we respond to stress internally and the things that we're doing in our lives to buffer ourselves from stress. All of those things are going to help our immune system across our cycles. The other thing to think about is the more dramatic your hormone drops are, the more susceptible you are to these immune dips, menstrually in menopause. So let's say you have really high estrogen, you're producing or getting more estrogen from the environment then is optimal for you. Or let's say you're not ovulating and

producing more progesterone in the second half of your menstrual cycle in your ludial phase. That big drop in estrogen may predispose you more as a person, not you Liz, but listeners or either of us too, to susceptibility to getting sick or having more inflammation. And then also if you're not producing progesterone during that ludial phase, which acts as kind of more of a buffer to stress, and then that also drops, that can trigger. So you want to have relative hormone health to help prevent those risks. So no, you don't have to be a hermit. Okay, I do need at least one good tip for building our stress resilience, though.

Okay. It's easy to say get better sleep. More sleep and better sleep absolutely builds our resilience. Healthy diet, good blood sugar balance builds our stress tolerance and it's not dinging our stress response and making it worse. But I do really think that nature, fresh air and exercise as a combination, so the nature exercise combination is probably the best thing we could do for our hormones, our mood, our immune system, our resilience. I mean, it's just like, it's really hard to be stressed out when you're taking a walk in nature and you start to pay attention to the beauty around you. It kind of starts to de-escalate our stress. I know for me that when I get some more beautiful, like I see a beautiful vista or, you know, if you can get to the ocean or you can get to a mountain even better.

But even if you're just walking in the city, I think we start to feel like we're part of something bigger. and it takes the attention off of our own problems quite as much. And it helps us to regulate a lot. So that's a really huge thing that you can do to build resilience. The other thing is I just think spending time with people who make us laugh, who make us smile and who we feel really safe and comfortable around. That's huge. And it's not just that, but we know that that helps us produce more oxytocin. And that also builds stress resilience and immune resilience. Get in with a girlfriend or a girlfriend or a guy friend, a they friend, whoever it is that you love being around. Good laughter, I think is so important. I mean, there's nothing more than I love when I'm feeling stressed than watching some just

stand-up comedy, even if it's like 10 minutes of watching Maya Rudolph doing something or watching an hour of a good stand-up. What if we're in one of those seasons where it feels like everybody around us is sick or you have like big travel coming up? You have a big event coming up. Is there anything that you're doing to ensure that you're protecting yourself? a little bit more during those times. Yes. Okay, so one thing is going to sound so basic, but, okay, it's two things, really, but they're interrelated.

You'll feel me on this. Don't shake hands. Give hugs. Give a side hug. Side hug. It can be a little, you know, off the cheek, not on the cheek. Because the minute you shake hands with someone, human beings, we touch our faces like 300 times a day.

Actually, it's bizarre, but we do. And every time you shake hands, and then you rub your eyes or you rub your nose or you rub your nose or you put your food in your mouth, you're basically self-infecting yourself with everything you've touched. So hugs instead of handshakes is a big motto for me. And then the part that makes sense that goes with it is wash your hands. Wash your hands or use some alcohol hand sanitizer because there's something called fomites. It's when viruses and stuff are living on doorknobs and elevator buttons every couple hours or if you've had a lot of contact, you're not sitting at your desk or at home.

Wash your hands with some hand sanitizer. Go to the bathroom, soap and water, sing the happy birthday song once or twice. That in and of itself can be huge. Sleep. Staying hydrated is really important because when your mucous membranes get dried out and irritated, you're more likely to actually pick up viral infections. Similarly, have a humidifier in your home. There are studies that show that you can reduce transatlose,

of viruses as much as 70% by just being in an environment that's more humidified. And that's for the same reason. Those respiratory passages stay more nourished, more moist. They're healthier. They're not irritable, cracked, et cetera, et cetera. So you're actually more immune protected. Those are just like high level tips. We also know that taking vitamin C, it doesn't have to be a lot, like a thousand milligrams a day. Zinc, it doesn't have to be a lot. It can be like 30 milligrams a A quick tip on that, make sure to take it with food so it doesn't make you sick to your stomach. And a probiotic, those three things have actually been shown to reduce the frequency of colds and also the severity and how long they last, the duration.

These studies have been done in different populations that don't necessarily relate to everyone. So like high-intensity athletes, elder people, and children, actually. So there's no reason it wouldn't relate to all the rest of us, too. And then if you want to go another level because you're somebody who does get sick more often, I would say it's a good thing to explore why what's going on that every September you get this respiratory infection. I can't say I only women. I'm coming like, every September I get a respiratory infection. Then it turns into a bad cold. Then I get pneumonia. Then I'm on an antibiotic. Like the whole thing. If that happens to you, that's a good time to see someone in May so they can start. I do

this all the time. You start helping someone get ready, but you can use things like echinacea to support your immune system, and it has been shown to help prevent colds. So I'm a big fan of that. Changing your diet seasonally so that you're not eating as many sugary things. Or in the summer, you know, there's the more ice cream and the things like that. I kind of switch to more seasonal foods that are more warming during that transitional time when the weather gets cooler and everyone's getting sick. Those are kind of like basically the high-level things. Weirdly drinking hot tea, the studies have been done on green tea, particularly so drinking hot green tea, because we're breathing in that moisture, but also maybe some elements of the green tea has also been shown to help

reduce colds in cold and flu season. So that's another thing you can do. Yeah, I read that tea study a while ago, and I don't think this is the mechanism of action, but I do picture it kind of like going down my throat and kind of like scrubbing off any viruses that I've been exposed to on its way down. Love it. I think about the tea. I think about the steam, like moisturizing. It's like doing your own head steam. You're doing a steam facial. And then you are getting all of those little volatile essential oils from the tea that can be protective too. So I think that's a nice little one that you can do. Okay. I follow up questions on that. I'm afraid of humidifiers because I feel like I've heard so much about the negative impacts of mold exposure. How do you think about those two things? Yeah.

if you keep your humidifier clean and use cold water in it instead of hot water. But it's not going to make my walls more likely to get moldy? No, I mean, unless your house is already damp or something like that, it should not make your base moldy. No. Okay. And then you are an herbalist. You mentioned echinacea. Are there any other herbs that you like either to prevent getting sick or in that day where you like wake up, you feel scratchy throat, you feel like you're getting sick, or when you are like full-blown sick. Yeah. Interestingly, adaptogens have some nice studies on them that can help prevent frequency

and severity of colds, but especially really like our susceptibility. It really is much more about preventing susceptibility. And what a lot of folks don't know is that medicinal mushrooms as a whole are adaptogens. So you can use the adaptogens like ashwaganda, holy basil, those are great, you can also use medicinal mushrooms like Shataki, Rashi, cordyceps, those are wonderful, immune boosting tonics. And so you can use those preventatively. So I would add that to my list. There's another herb called Andrographis, which can be used preventatively. There are some Chinese herbs like astragalists that are used preventatively. I love those. You can get blends that are made for that. And I love medicinal mushrooms for immune support. And you can get them in capsules, tinctures, coffee,

and adaptogen blends and put powders in your smoothies. There's lots of different ways to do it. When you do start to feel that little, I know that feeling like that, ugh, is this just my throat's dry or am I getting a scratchy? I hate that. And often you've noticed you're feeling a little tired for a couple of days. The typical time that I'll find that happening is like if I've taken a plane trip and there's a lot of air conditioning and it's cold and flu season, doing all the preventative things while you're traveling is especially important. If I do feel that feeling, The first thing I do is I really simplify my diet. So I go to like miso soup, broth, chicken soup, steam vegetables and brown rice, like some steamed kale, some steamed squash or sweet potatoes or carrots,

like something green and orange for all that vitamin A. That's when I would say 100% if you drink alcohol, if you're putting milk in your coffee, dairy, sugar, juice, take all those things out just for a few days. okay, if you can't live without your coffee, I get it. But, you know, don't go cold turkey. But all the other things, yes, take them out because those things depress, sugar depresses our immune system, alcohol depresses our immune system. Dairy for a lot of us is congestive. So take all those things out. Super, super simple, warm, basic nourishing diet. And that is when you can take echinacea. You can use aconatia and propolis. Propolis comes from bee pollen, very immune-supporting. The things I mentioned, like the vitamin C and the zinc and the probiotic can also be helpful when you do get

sick. If you have a runny nose or a little bit of a sore throat, but you don't have a sinus infection, there's actually some interesting data supporting using a netty pot. So you can use a nasal saline rinse. You just need to make sure that you're using distilled water because you can really get infections from not using appropriate water. I know it's not likely, but I do. Every time my netty pot, I'm like checking by water 15 times and I'm like, is this distilled? Blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. Okay, so we're netty potting. Is there anything else that's on on the list of when we actually are sick?

Keeping it super simple. I love the echinacea of the herbs I've mentioned. For me, ginger tea is like a sworn, tried and true go-to. So what I will actually do if I'm ever feeling something coming on or I do get sick, and I actually lived on this for like my five days of COVID basically, or my five days. I grate fresh ginger. I literally always have fresh ginger and fresh garlic. I grow my own garlic, so I've got like a thousand bulbs of fresh garlic in my kids. Not a thousand, but like 200. But it's amazing growing my own garlic. I haven't bought garlic in like five years.

Okay, you're bragging now. But okay, just a little. But I love it. It's so special to grow it. But always have garlic in your kitchen, always have fresh ginger. What I do is I grate some ginger on a mesh grater. And then what do this call like a plate? A microplane. A microplane. Yes, thank you. A microplane.

And then you get that pile of ginger that's grated. You're squeezing the ginger juice into a cup. And then if you can tolerate it, squeeze a clove of, press a clove of garlic in. You don't have to do the garlic. And then pour boiling water in and add a couple of teaspoons to a tablespoon of miso paste. If you're going to use white miso, do a little more. If you're going to use red miso, do a little less. stir it all in, let it sit just for a few minutes to get cool. The garlic, I would let sit a little bit

longer. And you're not going to get like a big hot bite of garlic because it's washed down. And I'm talking like for 40 years. Now that has been my go-to thing for that first onset and it's really nourishing. And then as you feel better, you can pair it with some toasted better or tahini or whatever that you like chicken soup. It's not a myth. Make yourself some chicken soup if you like it or a vegetarian version of it with, again, miso is great. And what else? So there are other herbs. Like there are herbs you can use for fever like Yarrow tea or elder tea with mint.

If you have the flu, you could add elderberry syrup into that. The dose for the flu is one tablespoon three times a day for adults. And you want to do it within the first 48 to 72 hours of the onset of symptoms. It can help with colds too. but it's more effective for the flu. You can use elderberry extract too. It doesn't have to be syrup. Syrup tastes so good.

Ginger is great for fever, for aches, for tummy discomfort, elderberry for flu, echinacea for general immunity. I usually recommend echinacea tincture. It's actually the most effective. For sore throat, I like either zinc lozenges. Again, I mentioned the propolis. Salt water, warm saltwater gargles are great for sore throat. Ginger can help with headaches.

fever. Those are some my big go-to things. I've got some remedies for cough. Honey, believe it or not, is a phenomenal, and it's especially buckwheat honey, but any honey will do. But buckwheat is where the research studies have come from, showing that it can help with cough and irritable, like tickly throat. So those are some wonderful things. Yeah. Do you mask it all preventatively anymore? I do on takeoff and landing on an airplane. And the reason for that is I actually have a friend who I will leave nameless for his own reasons. You know how people were looking and are still looking at sewage from poop on airplanes in the airplane potty to check the viral load during COVID?

Like they were studying how much viral load is in the air, how much viral load is in the stool and wastewater in planes. And through all of these studies, I don't know how they did it with the wastewater, but through all of these studies, what they have determined is that the highest, rate of circulating virus with COVID, so we can assume other things as well, is during that critical period before the plane takes off and when the plane is landing and is your debboarding, because you know how it gets really hot and stuffy during those times, it's because they don't

have as much air circulation. So he actually and his family, and they told me, and so we're still doing this. When you're taking off and landing until the plane is like, you know, you get the like cruising altitude. You can unfasten your seatbelt. Yeah, basically, you can take out your computer now. That's when I'm asking unmask. If I were in any super small space, let's say I was, maybe it's like midwinter. If I had to go to like the DMV or be in the post office and it was crowded, I do keep a mask in my bag. I might mask up. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all of your wisdom. Dr. Aviva Ram has been on the Liz Moody podcast twice before in her own episodes, and then we also featured her in the Health Effects of Alcohol series. I will link all of those

episodes in the show notes. You can go and listen. They are absolutely incredible. She shares so much wisdom. You can also check out more of her work at Aviva Rom. That is Rom with 2Ms.com. I hope this episode was helpful. I hope that you got lots of tips and tricks that you can use in your life. Thank you so much for listening. And I can't. I can't wait to hear what helps you the most this cold and flu season. If you love this episode, you will love my series where we ask multiple doctors to break down the health effects of alcohol, including how they personally approach drinking in their own lives.

They're similar multi-doctor episodes. We cover gut health. We cover cancer risk. We cover heart health. We cover brain health. We cover all of these different ways of approaching the health impacts of alcohol with the leading experts in those fields. I will link that series for you in the show notes.

You can go and listen next. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.