In this episode, I explain the biology of the common cold and flu (influenza) and how the immune system combats these infections.
I describe behavior, nutrition and supplementation-based tools supported by peer-reviewed research to enhance immune system function and better combat colds and flu. I also dispel common myths about how the cold and flu are transmitted and when you and those around you are contagious.
I explain if common preventatives and treatments such as vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D and echinacea work. I also highlight other compounds known to reduce contracting and duration of colds and flu.
I discuss how to use exercise and sauna to bolster the immune response.
This episode will help listeners understand how to reduce the chances of catching a cold or flu and help people recover more quickly from and prevent the spread of colds and flu.
Thank you to our sponsors
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Articles
A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking: https://go.hubermanlab.com/eWMWr5T6YT
There is chemistry in social chemistry: https://go.hubermanlab.com/wIjg4eIiYT
Alterations in Oral–Nasal–Pharyngeal Microbiota and Salivary Proteins in Mouth-Breathing Children: https://go.hubermanlab.com/pww3thWHYT
Human nasal microbiota: https://go.hubermanlab.com/XWfDZyZBYT
How (and why) the immune system makes us sleep: https://go.hubermanlab.com/TL09NaWxYT
The compelling link between physical activity and the body’s defense system: https://go.hubermanlab.com/XXvkR83eYT
The effects of a single and a series of Finnish sauna sessions on the immune response and HSP-70 levels in trained and untrained men: https://go.hubermanlab.com/0uiWBVO5YT
Retracted: Extra Dose of Vitamin C Based on a Daily Supplementation Shortens the Common Cold: A Meta-Analysis of 9 Randomized Controlled Trials: https://go.hubermanlab.com/WxCUtZmXYT
Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data: https://go.hubermanlab.com/POdJvqscYT
Attenuation of influenza-like symptomatology and improvement of cell-mediated immunity with long-term N-acetylcysteine treatment: https://go.hubermanlab.com/TLcxQb74YT
Books
“Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic”: https://amzn.to/3TUXc9Z
Other Resources
Non-sleep Deep Rest (NSDR): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPNW_gerXa4P6-7EC4twzLBjR22rQYk3u&feature=shared
Toolkit for Sleep: https://go.hubermanlab.com/AEUHya3EYT
Foundational Fitness Protocol: https://go.hubermanlab.com/fyv8uNAsYT
Dr. Roger Seheult (YouTube): https://youtu.be/fZ8rqZK_RiA
Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned
Dr. Noam Sobel: How Smells Influence Our Hormones, Health & Behavior: https://go.hubermanlab.com/HvLJaHqOYT
Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep & Sleep-Wake Timing: https://go.hubermanlab.com/KLIjm41TYT
How to Enhance Your Gut Microbiome for Brain & Overall Health: https://go.hubermanlab.com/WYUmGKSpYT
Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety: https://go.hubermanlab.com/UMxC11EAYT
Dr. Justin Sonnenburg: How to Build, Maintain & Repair Gut Health: https://go.hubermanlab.com/R1k012Z1YT
Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health: https://go.hubermanlab.com/PO8bdasCYT
Using Your Nervous System to Enhance Your Immune System: https://go.hubermanlab.com/20F6rGcHYT
Guest Series with Dr. Andy Galpin: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPNW_gerXa4N_PVVoq0Za03YKASSGCazr
Timestamps
00:00:00 Avoid Colds & Flu
00:01:58 Sponsors: Joovv, Helix Sleep & ROKA
00:06:00 Common Cold: Source & Transmission; Cold Temperature Myth
00:13:48 Spreading a Cold; Symptoms & Contagious Myths
00:17:43 Flu Virus & Transmission; Flu Shots
00:23:56 Tools: Injections & Safety; Charting Health Trends & Sickness
00:27:16 Sponsor: AG1
00:28:44 Spreading Cold & Flu, Symptoms
00:30:43 Immune System, Physical Barriers
00:39:33 Tool: Social Connection & Touch, Avoiding Flu & Cold
00:45:14 Innate Immune System
00:53:13 Sponsor: InsideTracker
00:54:15 Adaptive Immune System; Lymphatic System
01:00:19 Tools: Enhance Innate Immune System
01:06:19 Tool: Microbiome & Nasal Breathing
01:10:58 Tools: Enhance Gut Microbiome: Foods & Water Protocol
01:16:13 Exercise When Feeling Sick?, Sleep
01:21:39 Tool: Exercise & Preventing Sickness
01:28:13 Exercise When Sleep Deprived?
01:32:24 Tool: Exercise Recovery & Carbohydrates
01:34:52 Tool: Sauna & Enhance Immune System
01:42:20 Supplements: Vitamin C, Vitamin D
01:50:58 Echinacea, Zinc
01:55:08 N-acetylcysteine (NAC), Decongestants
02:03:42 Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, YouTube Feedback, Sponsors, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
#HubermanLab
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Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday Life I’m Andrew huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford school of medicine today we are discussing colds and flu we will talk about what a cold really is and what a flu really is in terms of how they impact your brain and
Body and of course we will discuss how to avoid getting colds and flu there are indeed some excellent science supported techniques to avoid getting colds and flu but of course it is impossible to completely avoid ever getting a colder flu in your lifetime so we also discuss
How to more quickly get over a colder flu should you happen to catch one so during today’s discussion I’ll talk about the immune system I’ll give you some mechanistic understanding of how your immune system works and I promise to make that discussion accessible to everybody regardless of whether or not
You have a background in biology and with that understanding of how your immune system works you will be in in a much better position to understand which tools that is which protocols to implement should you be exposed to a colder flu or if you are trying to get
Over a cold or flu more quickly than you would otherwise you’ll learn about some potent behavioral tools for bolstering your immune system and we will also discuss various compounds that you might consider taking to enhance the function of your immune system to ward off or treat colds and flu I will also be
Dispelling a number of common myths about treatments for the common cold C and for the flu there are oh so many ideas out there about what one could take or do in order to avoid getting the colder flu or more quickly get relief from a colder flu however many of those
Are pure myth there’s just no sence to support them and indeed there’s some science that counters those ideas but the good news is there are indeed science suppored behavioral protocols and compounds that one could consider in order to avoid and treat colds and flu before we begin I’d like to emphas ize
That this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I’d like to thank the sponsors of today’s podcast
Our first sponsor is ju ju makes medical grade red light therapy devices now if there’s one thing I’ve consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible role that light can have on our biology and of course I’m always telling people that they should get some sunlight in their eyes as soon as
Possible after waking on as many days of their life as possible for sake of setting circadian rhythm daytime mood focus and alertness and improve sleep now in addition to sunlight red light and nearin red light has been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ
Health including faster Muscle Recovery improved skin health and wound healing even improvements in acne or that is removal of acne reducing pain and inflammation improving mitochondrial function and even improving Vision itself what sets ju apart and why it’s my preferred red light therapy device is that it has clinically proven
Wavelengths meaning it uses specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination that trigger the optimal seller adaptations personally I use the handheld ju every day the handheld ju is about the size of a thick piece of toast and I also own a ju panel that allows for full body
Exposure and I use that one approximately five times per week for about 10 to 15 minutes per session if you’d like to try ju you can go to ju spelled jv.com huberman again that’s jv.com huberman for this month only January 2024 juv is offering exclusive discounts to huberman lab listeners with up to
$500 off select ju products again that’s ju spell jv.com huberman to get up to $500 off select ju products today’s episode is also brought To Us by Helix sleep Helix sleep makes mattresses and pillows CL that are tailored to your unique sleep needs now sleep is the foundation of
Mental health physical health and performance when we are sleeping well and enough mental health physical health and performance all stand to be at their best one of the key things to getting a great night’s sleep is to make sure that your mattress is tailored to your unique
Sleep needs Helix sleep has a brief two-minute quiz that if you go to their website you take that quiz and answer questions such as do you tend to sleep on your back your side or your stomach do you tend to run hot or cold in the
Middle of the night maybe you don’t know the answers to those questions and that’s fine at the end of that two-minute quiz they will match you to a mattress that’s ideal for your sleep needs I sleep on the dusk D mattress and when I started sleeping on a dusk
Mattress about 2 years ago my sleep immediately improved so if you’re interested in upgrading your mattress go to helixsleep.com huberman take their two-minute sleep quiz and they’ll match you to a customized mattress for you and you’ll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows again if interested
Go to helixsleep.com huberman for up to $350 off and two free pillows today’s episode is also brought To Us by Roa Roa makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality I’ve spent a lifetime working on the biology the visual system and I can tell you that
Your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly Roa understands those challenges and has designed their eyeglasses and sunglasses accordingly so that you always see with Crystal Clarity Roa eyeglasses and sunglasses are designed with a new
Technology called float fit which allows them to fit perfectly and not move around even when you’re active in fact whenever I’m wearing my Roa eyeglasses or sunglasses I usually forget that I’m wearing them I happen to wear Roa eyeglasses at night when I drive or if
I’m reading at night and I wear Roa sunglasses during the daytime if it’s very bright especially if I’m driving into sunlight if you’d like to try Roa eyeglasses or sunglasses you can go to roka.com that’s r.com and enter the code huberman for 20% off your first order again that’s
R.com and enter the code huberman at checkout okay let’s talk about the common cold first off no unfortunately today I cannot tell you the cure for the common cold because indeed there isn’t one one interesting question however is why don’t we have a cur for the common
Cold and the reason is that the cold virus as it’s referred to is actually a bunch of different viruses some colds are caused by one what’s called serotype of the virus other colds are caused by a different serotype of the virus there are over 160 different types of what
People call the cold virus now cold viruses fall under an umbrella of a general category of viruses called Rhino viruses you can remember that easily because rhino sounds like Rhino horn the rhinoceros horn which is of course in the center of the Rhino’s face which is
Where your nose is and the cold almost always causes some degree of nasal symptoms in humans it’s either runny nose or sneezing or stuffed up nose or sometimes unfortunately all three now the reason we don’t have a cure for the common cold is that all of those different serotypes of the cold virus
Mean that the virus itself has a different shape on its outside and as a consequence even if you’ve been exposed to a cold and you’ve developed antibodies against that cold virus the next cold that comes along very likely has a different shape and therefore your body’s antibodies to the cold virus it
Combed successfully before can’t latch onto and defeat that next different serotype of the cold virus now a little later I’ll talk about the immune system and how those different antibodies are generated but for the time being understanding that there are a lot of different types of cold viruses explains
First of all why we don’t have a cure for the common cold but also why you can get multiple colds within a given year or even within a given season because even if you develop antibodies against one serotype of the cold virus a different serotype can come along and
You can get sick again with that new serotype of the cold virus so how do you catch a cold now one of the problems with the cold virus being called the cold virus and the fact that indeed there are more cold viruses present and transmitted between humans in the cold
Winter months of the year is that people generally assume that it is the cold temperatures outside that actually give you a cold virus and that is simply not true however what you heard as a kid if your mom most likely but maybe your dad said hey don’t go outside without a
Sweater or jacket on you’re going to catch a cold or you’re going to catch cold you know has ated this uh this myth that the cold temperatures themselves are the cause of catching a cold virus and that’s simply not true the virus that we call the cold virus is spread by
Breathing or by sneezing or by people sneezing or coughing or breathing onto their hands and then touching surfaces and then other people touching those surfaces and then touching most likely their eyes in order to self- infect now we’re going to get into the details of how far the virus can spread with a
Sneeze how long it can survive on the hands Etc but for the time being know this the cold virus is a pretty stable virus in that it can survive on surfaces nonhuman or human surfaces meaning skin or on a table or on a glass or on a door
Handle for up to 24 hours so for all you hypochondriacs out there I probably just gave you a little spike in cortisol and for you non- hypochondriacs I hope what I just said cues you to the fact that just avoiding people who are sneezing and coughing is not sufficient to avoid
Getting colds and flu However the fact that a cold virus is Alive and Well on a given surface let’s say on a door handle does not mean that if you touch that door handle that you will necessarily be infected with that cold virus and that’s because your skin actually provides an
Excellent barrier against most viruses and bacteria your skin also includes a lot of antiviral substances on it even if you haven’t put any of that you know alcohol stuff or the hand sanitizer stuff on your skin is a very important barrier component of your immune system
We’re going to talk about that a little bit later but if somebody has a cold and they happen to perhaps you know wipe their nose or sneeze into a tissue hopefully into a tissue and then discard that tissue the cold virus particles are extremely small how small well most of
Us are familiar with thinking about centimeters or inches if you think about a millimeter being 1/ 100th of a cmet well you can take a millimeter and you can divide that up into a bunch of little slices also such that you get the Micron the Micron is 1
1,000th of a centimeter and if you want to get a sense of how thick or thin that is the side of a credit card the little thin side of a credit card is about 200 microns thick so if you set your credit card flat on a table and then you look
At it from the side that tiny tiny thin little Edge that’s about 200 microns the cold virus is made up of particles that are probably in the range of about five microns or so so it’s extremely small I mean the cold virus therefore with a good sneeze or even a light sneeze can
Spread really far now the good news is those particles are relatively heavy they don’t tend to mist about in the air for very long they tend to fall down onto the ground or onto surfaces but as I mentioned before they can survive for a very long time on those surfaces so
Should you touch your hand to a door handle or table or shake the hand of somebody that has cold virus on their hands either because they themselves have a cold or they contacted somebody else had cold virus and it somehow landed on their hands just cu the other
Person sneeze all these scenarios are very realistic that cold virus will not infect you unless it can get inside of your body and one of the primary entry points of it getting inside your body is via the Eyes by wiping that cold virus on your eyes now you may think okay I’m
Just not going to touch my eyes but a little bit later we’re going to talk about a study that shows that almost always indeed almost always when you meet somebody new you touch your eyes and the frequency of people touching their face that is the region of the
Face around the eyes and their eyes throughout the day is extremely high so this is one of the primary routes by which the cold virus is transmitted from one person to the next but of course there’s also the route that we’re all familiar with which is the person that
Is sneezing or coughing or blowing their nose into tissues and then throwing them in the trash and not washing their hands after each and every time they do that so an important aspect of today’s discussion that we will get into once I also present to you what a flu is and
How it differs from the cold is that we’re going to need to talk about what stage of infection people are actually contagious with the colder flu and there’s actually a lot of Mythology about this in fact there’s a lot of just lying about this people will be coughing
Or sneezing and they’ll say oh yeah I’m not contagious any longer or people make up these things like oh you know if you had the flu for 2 days then you’re no longer contagious or that you can’t be contagious until you have symptoms so we’re going to go through all the
Aspects of contagion and how coughing or sneezing or how long you’ve had a cold or flu actually relates to whether or not you’re contagious in a little bit but for the time being know that the cold virus is very very small it can be transmitted through the air it can be
Transmitted via contact from skin to- skinin contact and it can survive on surfaces for up to 24 hours and when you touch those surfaces or a person with the cold virus most often the way it’s going to get into your body and infect you such that you get a cold is by
Touching your eye region although touching other regions of your body can also pass the cold virus into you for instance the mouth and lips but that’s actually far less common so we’ll get into that in just a little bit now different serotypes that is different types of cold virus tend to create a
Different array of overall symptoms such that you know one cold might be a really quote unquote bad cold others are more mild some tend to induce more runny nose others more stuffy head and a little bit of a fever or in some cases a lot of fever one thing that’s important to
Understand is that if people are going to be infected by the cold virus they tend to develop symptoms one to two days after they were exposed to the virus now the good news is if you are exposed to the cold virus that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to catch that
Cold virus that is if your immune system can fight off that cold even if you’ve never been exposed to that serotype before then you won’t actually have that cold and you won’t transmit it so put differently it is is possible to avoid getting a cold virus even if you’ve
Never been exposed to that serotype of cold virus and you happen to come into contact with somebody who has that serotype of cold virus or you touch a surface of some object door handle Etc that has particular serotype of the cold virus on it and God forbid you then wipe
Your eyes that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get sick and a good portion of today’s episode is going to focus on tools that are supported by science that allow you to bolster your immune system and greatly increase the probability that even if you’re exposed
To a novel serotype of the cold virus that is one that’s new to you that your body’s never seen before that you won’t get sick another thing to understand about the cold virus is that you’re generally most contagious to other people when you feel at your worst that
Is when you’re coughing and sneezing and you got the stuffy head watery eyes and so on but you can also be contagious to other people when you are starting to feel better that said most of the data point to the fact that about 5 to 6 days
After you hit your peak of worst symptoms or I guess we should say your Nader the dip of worst symptoms because it’s such an awful state to be in you are probably exiting the phase in which you’re contagious now I want to be very clear that does not mean that if you’ve
Had a cold for five or six days that you are no longer contagious if you continue to experience sneezing and coughing watery eyes in the evening you’re feeling much worse first thing in the morning you’re feeling especially groggy Etc well then you are still contagious another way to frame this is you know
Those people that continue to show up at the gym and show up at work and they tell you yeah I got this cold but I’ve had it for a few days I’m no longer contagious and they’re wiping their eyes and they’re blowing their nose frankly they don’t know what they’re talking
About they are basically a walking talking breathing sneezing coughing cold virus Vector a vector is a route for passage of a virus so please if you are sneezing if you are coughing if you are still experiencing the symptoms of a cold stay home stay away from other
People as much as possible and I realize that some people simply cannot avoid going to work or cannot avoid interacting with other family members or other people if they have the cold virus but this mythology that if we’ve had a cold for a few days and we’re starting
To feel better but we’re still exhibiting symptoms that we’re not contagious that is pure myth it’s simply not grounded in fact now there’s nothing that could be done about that first day or two after which we’re exposed to a cold virus where we are not not experiencing symptoms and it’s quite
Possible to pass the cold virus on to other people but I think that every workplace every home environment every gym every society would benefit greatly if people who were sick with the cold did not expose other people to that cold virus as much as possible and indeed
This is a serious issue it’s not just about a few sniffles and watery eyes there’s an enormous financial and mental health cost and physical health cost to people getting the cold and it’s not just about people who are immune compromised or elderly people what we’re generally referring to as the cold today
Can be mild it can be moderate it can also be very severe and it can exacerbate other health issues that people have and we’ll talk about that a little bit later and how to offset some of those health issues okay so now let’s talk about the flu virus the flu virus
Is as I mentioned a virus and just like with the cold there are different serotypes of the flu virus there are also different General categories of flu virus so you’ve got your a type flu viruses your B type type flu viruses and your C type flu viruses and by the way
I’m saying flu viruses but of course I’m referring to influenza but it’s just kind of Common Place nowadays to refer to influenza as the flu similar to cold viruses the different types of flu viruses exist based on the different types of proteins that they express on
Their surface in fact in the news over the last few years there have been a number of different flu virus strains that have been described according to their surface protein character istics things like the H1N1 virus what is H1N1 H1N1 describes the different types of proteins that are expressed on the
Surface of that particular flu virus now the most common type of flu viruses are in that a category of flu this is the type of flu that caused the Spanish flu now the Spanish Flu which by the way did not originate in Spain people think it probably originated in New York or
Perhaps elsewhere but certainly not in Spain killed anywhere from 17 to 50 million people depending on which literature you read that’s an enormous number of people and it occurred in four different waves of infection that occurred between the years 1918 and 1920 the Spanish Flu was a type A H1N1 virus
And actually it’s worth noting that this winter season there have been some cases of H1N1 already reported in the United States and elsewhere now of course the goal is always to contain the propagation of those flu viruses and that is done through a number of different approaches the best and most
Reliable approach of course is to not come into contact with somebody that is carrying the H1N1 or any other type of flu virus however based on the way that the flu virus infects the body the way that the symptoms emerge and the ways that viruses propagate that can’t always
Be avoided one thing to know and I consider this a fortunate aspect of flu virus biology is that the flu virus unlike the cold virus can only exist on surfaces for for about 2 hours after about 2 hours it tends to die off so the flu virus is most typically passed by
Human human contact or coming into contact that is walking into a cloud of somebody’s sneeze that contains flu virus or somebody’s cough that contains flu virus and yes it is possible that shaking someone’s hand could actually introduce flu virus to your hand and then if you wipe your eyes or I’ll talk
About a few other portals of entry for the flu virus and cold virus in a few minutes can get into your body and infect you and yet you can pick up the flu virus from surfaces however that is far less common than the flu virus passing from human human contact now
There aren’t as many different types of flu virus as there are types of cold virus and that’s why there have been attempts at making flu vaccines or so-called flu shots I think most people are familiar with the signs and advertisements online and in the workplace and school saying you know get
Your flu shot this season the reason that flu shots can exist at all is because there are limited enough types of flu virus present in a given year that specific vaccines that is flu shots can be generated against that particular strain of the flu virus so how effective
Is the flu shot and I want to be very specific here when we say the flu shot singular it sort of implies that there’s one flu shot that can combat all the different types of flu and as you just learned that is not the case so we
Probably should be saying the flu shots but just for sake of Simplicity when I say the flu shot I mean the flu shot that’s given in a given flu season that is directed at specific strains of the flu because researchers have determined that that particular strain of flu or
Strains of flu are the ones that are most abundant for that particular flu season Studies have shown that getting the flu shot reduces one’s risk of Contracting the particular flu that is most abundant That season by about 40 to 60% but of course the flu shot is completely ineffective at combating any
Other forms of the flu virus and of course colds or other types of upper respiratory infections Studies have also shown that taking the flu shot can reduce the severity of one’s symptoms if they in fact get the flu anyway now personally I don’t typically get the flu
Shot and the reason for that is that I don’t tend to go into environments where I am particularly susceptible to getting the flu I don’t work in a hospital or clinic I don’t tend to interact with large numbers of people on a daily basis
So for me I’ve opted not to get the flu shot now that doesn’t mean that I’ve never contracted the flu as I mentioned earlier I tend to get sick with a cold or flu about once every 18 to 24 months and the severity of that cold or flu has
Ranged from you know at one point a very high fever in one case but typically a moderate fever and the usual symptoms of malaise that we’ve been discussing and I’ve managed to get over those without having taken the flu shop pretty easily now of course we also don’t know that
Those were actually flu despite the distinct differences between the symptoms of Cold and Flu most people don’t really know whether or not they have a cold or flu so this is another thing to think about when considering whether or not to get the flu shot ultimately because at least to my
Knowledge most workplaces do not mandate that people get the flu shot I could be wrong about certain workplaces but my experience is that most workplaces do not mandate that people get the flu shot when you take the flu shot you’re really hedging a bet you’re hedging a bet
Against the fact that you will be or not be exposed to that particular strain of flu virus that’s most abundant That season or strains of flu virus that are most abundant That season and that the flu shot that you’re taking is directed at those particular strains so again in
My case I don’t tend to take the flu shot but of course you need to make the decision that’s right for you for instance if you have family members that are immune compromised or you work in a school or you think that you are exposed to a lot of flu or you’re concerned
About transmitting flu to any one individual or group of individuals those are all things that need to be taken into consideration and of course speak to your physician I will also say this which is that I mentioned that I’ve tended to catch colds or flu at a rate
Of about once every 18 to 24 months and when I say a cold or flu I mean a serious one one that keeps me in bed where I have a fever and I’m sweating what I have done and I continue to do is because I pay pretty close attention to
How well I’m sleeping or different life events my different workouts Etc and I put those into my calendar and I have a short hand to do that so it only takes about 30 seconds each day okay did this work out it was kind of level seven out
Of 10 intensity got good sleep last night or poor sleep in know what good in poor sleep is for me I mean that’s about the level that I’m charting these things I have been able to go back and look at the events preceding when I’ve come down
With a cold or flu again I don’t know whether or not it was a cold or a flu but before I got sick and I have seen for instance if I’ve ever done two hard workouts in a day something I never do any longer I’ve tended to get sick after
That if I’ve tended to do hard workouts and then expose myself to cold temperatures while traveling especially traveling overseas that tended to precede those colds or flu which again for me are very seldom so it’s a limited data set this is entirely anic data meaning related to my own history of
Getting colds and flu but it’s something that I actually recommend people do which is you know to pay attention to when you first started getting symptoms pay attention to when you got over a given what you think is a colder flu and then to look at what was happening in
The days before in that day I don’t think it’s possible to do hyper precise forensics on a colder flu right I mean you could have gone into to the gas station put your credit card in the machine to you know grab a drink out of the refrigerator and picked up a colder
Flu from the handle of the refrigerator or from the credit card machine or even from the gas pump you simply don’t know however if you look at the pattern of behavior travel sleep exercise sorts of interactions you were having prior to getting a bad cold or flu chances are
You’re going to learn something interesting and be able to avoid getting a serious cold or flu at least to some extent going forward and I’ve done that I think fairly successful y because I can tell you that the frequency or colds or flu that I’ve come down with has
Indeed been dropping from year to year so where’re as a decade ago I tended to get colds or flu probably about once a year and in some cases even twice a year although that was pretty rare that really expanded to about once every 18 months and then in the last five years I
Think I’ve gotten sick uh two times pretty badly with a colder flu and then once with a kind of mild colder flu so I tell you all that just as an example of how you can start to think about how your immune system interacts with different types of behaviors different
Types of situations such that you can learn something about your immune system and what’s going to best protect you against getting colds and flu going forward which of course is a great thing to do because we all think that we can get out there be around people that are
Coughing and sneezing we can go to the gym when it’s crowded and winter oh that person over there is you know coughing but I’m going to just you know stay a few feet away no big deal and while I don’t want to turn anyone into hypochondriacs that’s how you get
Infected that’s how you get a colder fluid and at the same time I don’t think anyone should you know get to the point where they’re afraid to go into a gym or afraid to go to the workplace but I will say once again if you’re sick with a
Colder flu if you are coughing sneezing blowing your nose runny eyes and you’re walking into work or the gym or onto public transportation and you’re telling people I’m not contagious you’re lying I’d like to take a brief moment and thank one of our sponsors and that’s ag1
Ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens I started taking ag1 way back in 2012 the reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it every day is that it ensures that I meet all of my quotas for vitamins and minerals and it ensures
That I get enough Prebiotic and probiotic to support gut health now gut health is something that over the last 10 years we realized is not just important for the health of our gut but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators things like dopamine and
Serotonin in other words gut health is critical for proper brain functioning now of course I strive to consume healthy Whole Foods for the majority of my nutritional intake every single day but there are a number of things in ag1 including specific micronutrients that are hard to get from Whole Foods or at
Least in sufficient quantities so ag1 allows me to get the vitamins and minerals that I need probiotics prebiotics the adaptogens and critical micronutrients so anytime somebody asks me if they were to take Just One supplement what that supplement should be I tell them ag1 because ag1 supports so many different systems within the
Body that are involved in mental health physical health and performance to try ag1 go to drink a1.com huberman and you’ll get a year supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free travel packs of ag1 again that’s drink a1.com huberman now the Diabolical thing about the flu virus is that just like the
Diabolical thing about the cold virus you start shedding virus that is you are contagious about 24 hours prior to the onset of first symptoms for you so that means that you can be a flu viral Vector even when you aren’t having symptoms that’s just the unfortunate aspect of
These viruses they’re very clever they don’t have brains but these viruses have adapted to propagate from host to host to host they have a drive to continue to stay alive and to infect more host so even though they don’t have a brain they have a sort of uh let’s call it viral
Intelligence and as I’ve said several times now if you are still exhibiting symptoms of the colder flu you are contagious however with respect to the flu you are most contagious during the three days when you feel the absolute worst when your fever is at its worst
We’ll talk about how to deal with fever a little bit later when you are coughing and sneezing headache all of that when that is at its peak that is when you are most contagious so again I realize that people can’t always avoid contact with other people you know you live under the
Same roof sometimes caretaker is interacting with the person that has the cold or flu and I do want to remind you something I said earlier which is just because you come into contact with a colder flu does not necessarily mean that you will come down with that is be
Infected by a colder flu whether or not you come down with a colder flu is of course dependent on whether or not you come into contact with it you can’t catch a cold or flu that you’ve never come into contact with just like you can’t get eaten by a shark if you never
Go in the ocean however the probability of coming down with that cold or flu of it getting past your immune system barriers and infecting you is going to be strongly dictated by the different aspects of your immune system for which there are three major aspects which
We’ll talk about next and of course the things that you do to bolster those three aspects of your immune system okay let’s talk about your immune system and I have to confess that even though I’ve spent well over three decades being a student of and a researcher of the
Nervous system the immune system is oh so cool and I say that because it has this incredible elegance and logic to it it basically consists of three major lines of Defense there’s a physical barrier or rather a set of physical barriers that exist between the organs
Of your body and the outside world and you’re probably immediately thinking skin and yes indeed it includes your skin but also some interesting things like the mucosal lining of your nose and mouth and even some of the liquids that are on the surface of your eyes we’ll
Talk about those in a moment then there’s a second line of defense which is for any virus or bacteria or fungus for that matter but today we’re talking about viruses colds and flu viruses any viruses that get past the physical barrier of your skin and the mucosal lining of particular regions of your
Body well then you have What’s called the innate immune system the innate immune system is this very generalized response system it’s General in the sense that it deploys a basic set of neurochemicals that are not specific to the particular virus that’s made it into your body so not only is it not specific
To a particular serotype of the cold or a different type of flu virus but it’s not even discriminating between cold or flu virus this thing we call the innate immune system is a generalized response system to go and combat viruses so it could be a cold it could be a flu it
Could be a bacteria it could be a fungus it could even be a physical object and your innate immune system responds by saying okay let’s go deal with this now the third component of your immune system is What’s called the Adaptive immune system and I alluded to this
Aspect of your immune system a little bit earlier the Adaptive immune system is the aspect of your immune system that recognizes because the innate immune system told it that something has infected the body at some level at some organ or set of organs and there’s an emergency and the Adaptive immune system
Goes in and in a very targeted way figures out what sorts of proteins it needs to produce that is antibodies to combat that specific serotype of virus okay so the immune system has a physical barrier component and it’s not just skin some other things as well you’ve got
Your innate immune system which is this generalized response system and then there’s the Adaptive immune system let’s talk about the physical barrier component first and this is actually a good opportunity for us to just take a brief step back and realize that anytime we’re talking about our physiology
There’s going to be a mechanical set of features and there’s going to be a chemical set of features so right now we’re talking about the immune system and the mechanical feature or the physical feature of the immune system is this barrier between the organs of our
Body and the outside world and the most obvious of those is the skin you are contained in this bag of stuff that we call skin the skin isn’t just for putting clothing on and for adorning with jewelry or tattoos if that’s your thing watches Etc your skin is a living
Organ in and of itself I think we’re most accustomed to think about the heart and the lungs and the liver and the Brain as organs of the body but the skin is an organ of the body as well it has a bunch of different layers of cells from
The outside to the inside actually the skin cells themselves are made in the deeper layers of the skin and they migrate out towards the surface of the skin and at the surface of the skin on top of those cells and made by those cells are different types of chemicals
That actually serve as antibacterial and antiviral agents meaning if a cold virus or flu virus or other type of virus lands on the skin it can neutralize and kill that virus so your skin is a very important physical barrier against viruses such as the cold or flu virus
Getting into your body and infecting other cells and tissues now your skin is not contigous meaning there are holes in it so let’s think about those holes for a second as we go from head to foot it’s pretty obvious that your eyes have these two openings and those are openings in
Your skin right as you open your eyelids beneath there are your corneas the shiny part of your eyes and a little bit further back at the back inner lining of your eyeball you have a very thin three cell layer thick piece of tissue that we call the neural retina and I say this
Because the neural retina is actually a piece of your brain so you have two pieces of brain that line the back of your eyes and that’s the light sensing tissue in the back of your eyes now I say this because what this means is that it’s a very short distance between the
Opening of your skin that we call your eyelids and your brain now most of the brain of course is contained in the cranial Vault within what most people call the skull but your brain isn’t far away from those openings that we call your eyelids so as a consequence on the
Surface of your eyes those corneas the shiny part of your eyes on the outside there are a bunch of different chemical features there are tears that are made by your lacrimal glands but there also a lot of antibacterial agents that actively kill off stuff that could potentially infect your body could make
It into your body maybe even into your brain if you’ve ever woken up in the morning and you have some crust on your eyes and you look at that crust that kind of yellowy stuff sometimes it’s yellow I know this is kind of gross that’s actually dead bacteria that your
Eyes have successfully defeated during your night’s sleep so when you wipe those away you’re taking the casualties of a war that you won during your night’s sleep and you’re whisking those away now as we descend a little bit further down the face they’re of course the nostril openings and the nostril
Openings tend to be kind of sticky right they’re moist sticky and warm right you don’t have to put your fingers up them right now you just know they’re moist sticky and warm get your fingers out of your nose please the mucosal lining of your nose is actually a very important
Substance that is sticky in order to trap viruses such as colds and flu viruses and then chemical components within the mucosa lining can neutralize them that’s the best case scenario there are of course scenarios in which the cold or flu virus takes residence in your mucosal lining and can make its way
Back into your sinus passages and can then infect other cells and tissues of your body because the virus replicates and spreads throughout the body and then going a a little bit further down I realize this is obvious you have your mouth and what’s really interesting is that your mouth also has mucosal lining
Which is sticky and it has chemical components to neutralize incoming viruses but we know that the type of mucus and the type of bacteria that live in your nose and mouth that by the way are very healthy for you and encourage healthy immune system function that is
Act as ways to neutralize viruses within your nose and mouth are very different so your nose and your mouth may seem similar at the level of okay well it’s warm and sticky in there there’s mucus but they are very very different tissues in fact if you think about your mouth
It’s this incredible structure that not only lets you eat and breathe in and out through although I suggest most people be nasal breathers for most of the time of their day and night if you can of course sometimes you have to mouth breathe but keep this in mind that you
Have this big opening in the front of your face and bacteria are getting in there all day long viruses are getting in there all day long and in most cases you are successfully combating those viruses and bacteria because the mucosal lining of your mouth and your nose for
That matter and the microbiota those little micro organisms that have taken resonance in your nose and mouth are helping to contribute to fight off bacteria and viruses provided the microbiota there are diverse and are of the type you want which we’ll talk a little bit more about later and then
Descending further down the body of course there are other openings Into Your Skin Barrier namely the urethra of the penis or vagina and of course the vaginal Canal so the genitals of course have their own mucosal lining and as you can imagine it is distinct in terms of
Its physical makeup and its chemical makeup from the mucosal lining of your nasal passages and mouth and then of course we have the rectum and anus which is the outflow pathway of your intestines which are post-design and frankly there need to be more data in order to really resolve
This but it seems like the primary entry site for viruses to get into the body tends to be the eyes or the mouth and we can get into some of the reasons why that would be so but if you think back to our conversation about the way that
Colds and flu exist in the world either as aerosols or on surfaces of objects or on surfaces of skin well then what I’m about to tell you next will make it oh so obvious why the eyes and the mouth are the primary sites of for colds and
Flu and if you keep that in mind there’s a good chance you can avoid a lot of colds or flu that you would otherwise catch okay so before I talk about the important roles of the innate and the Adaptive immune system in keeping colds and flu at Bay I’ll tell you that you
Have a problem and that problem is that you tend to touch your eyes very often in fact you tend to touch your eyes most often after you shook somebody else’s hand now why am I picking on you well in fact I’m not I’m picking on all of you
And I’m picking on myself included because there have been several studies now primarily from Noam soel Lab at The whitesman Institute showing that when people encounter another person and they shake their hand they either touch their eyes or touch another region of their face very close to the eyes or that they
Touched their hand to their mouth now there are a bunch of theories as to why people do this there’s the idea that people are actually sniffing their own hands and in particular sniffing their own hand more often after they Shake someone else’s hand as a way to detect what
Chemo signals exist on the other person not necessarily conscious smelling of the other person’s smell but rather some sort of unconscious mechanism by which we take the chemicals of the person we come into contact with and we bring them to our nose our eyes or in some cases
Our upper lip and that our olfactory system that is the neurons that exist just behind the back of our nose are processing that information and getting all sorts of important information about how stressed the other person is their hormones uh whether or not we recognize them the fact that they are different
From us that’s right we are also smelling ourselves all day long noom’s lab has shown this that people are kind of walking around in their own odor Cloud we tend to touch our armpits we tend to touch different aspects of our body yes and smell ourselves multiple
Times throughout the day this is all being done unconsciously I suppose some people are doing it consciously and that there’s a lot of information about our physiology and health and when we do this after shaking somebody’s hand that there’s a lot of information about the other person’s physiology and health
That our nervous system our factory system and deep parts of our brain that are involved in primitive type behaviors but also some pretty sophisticated behaviors are taking into account now Noom soel was a guest on the hubin Lab podcast I encourage you to check out that episode if you have time it’s a
Fascinating Voyage into the olfactory system and not just conscious smelling or sniffing of things so we go oh that smells good or that smells bad or that person you know is somebody I want to mate with or hang out with or avoid it’s also unconscious processing of so-called
Chemo signals chemical signals but the reason I’m bring up these studies now in the context of colds and flu and how to avoid getting colds and flu is as a reminder that we are pretty much wired to contact our own face with our own hands at the level of our eyes nose and
Upper lip and around the eyes very shortly after we touch somebody else’s skin and if you are mindful of it you can actually avoid bringing colds or flu to your face now in doing so are you’re going to shortcircuit a bunch of other important biological processes involved
In understanding what’s going on in your environment because you’re not bringing in those smells I suppose that’s possible but with respect to avoiding colds and flu it seems like a pretty good trade-off to me so the point that I’m trying to make here is that in order
For you to catch a cold or flu that cold or flu virus the little particles of cold and flu virus need to make it into your body and the primary entry sites are eyes nose mouth and the primary actions by which we bring colds and flu
Viruses to our eyes nose mouth are by touching other people or by touching other surfaces that have colder flu virus just to remind you cold virus can exist up to 24 hours on a given surface flu virus tends to die off after about 2 hours on a given surface and we’re
Bringing to our face we are literally bringing the virus to ourselves so a little bit more conscious awareness about that fact means that you can probably avoid colds and flu to some extent how much well it’s unclear it’s unclear because as you recall some people have and are passing along cold
Or flu virus prior to any symptoms and of course it’s possible that you can walk into an aerosol cloud of cold or flu virus even if a person isn’t there and you don’t come into contact with them but some conscious awareness of these routes of path passage for the
Colder flu virus I do believe can reduce the probability that you will catch a colder flu and of course I’m not encouraging people to never touch touch is an important part of social connection and social bonding but if you start to think about these portals of
Entry for the cold and flu virus into your body well then you you know perhaps might think twice before you know hugging someone kissing them on the cheek during a time in which you’re trying to actively avoid getting the cold or flu now I feel a little bit funny about sharing this information
Because again I don’t want to encourage will always be at you know arms distance you know uh you know fake fist bumping you know keeping a gap between them again touch is an important component of social connection but since today’s topic is colds and flu and how to avoid
Getting colds and flu just like you can’t get eaten by a shark if you don’t go in the ocean there’s a much lower probability that you’re going to get a colder flu if you’re not touching a lot of hands and bringing those hands to your eyes nose or mouth I suppose one
Way around the sort of do I hug do I shake hands thing is to just be conscious of the fact that when you shake somebody’s hand that you’re very likely to touch your eyes or face within the next 30 seconds or so and maybe you end up being that person who puts some
Hand sanitizer on your hands sometimes that can feel a little awkward to do that right in front of somebody you know it’s kind of sending a signal like hey I don’t want you to infect me but guess what you don’t want them to infect you okay let’s imagine that a cold or flu
Virus makes it into your system it breaches the physical barrier of your skin and mucosal lining now you have in mind all the different ways that could happen and all the different ways that could be prevented but we are starting at a point here a hypothetical point
Whereby that colder flu virus has made it into your body your immune system has an absolutely exquisitely sophisticated way of knowing you versus other meaning cells within your body that are of you and cells of your body that are from other organisms or viruses from the
Outside world and when viruses such as a cold or flu virus are detected in your body your body might not even recognize that it’s a cold or flu virus it might not even recognize that it’s a virus at all it just knows that this thing that’s
In me is of other it’s not me I’ve never seen it before this is not me these are not my cells these are not the chemicals that I’m producing and your immune system is amazing in that way and when it occurs your innate immune system launches a response what is that
Response well first of all the response is very rapid right colder flu makes it into your body and your innate immune system immediately or near immediately launches an attack on that Invader or Invaders because as soon as the virus gets into your body it’s going to start replicating as quickly as it
Can what happens white blood cells that your body produces will go to the sites where those viruses are and the by the way those viruses are basically getting into cells of your body and then hijacking the genetic Machinery of those cells in order to replicate within those cells and then
Exit those cells and then go infect more cells that’s how these viruses work your body’s making white blood cells things like neutrophils natural killer cells macras these are what we call affector cells that act as a kind of ambulance system and go to the sites that those
Viruses exist and the cells that they’ve infected and start trying to physically barrier them in and also use specific chemical mechanisms to neutralize and kill those viruses again anytime you’re think about biology think mechanical features and chemical features of a response now a key component of the innate immune system is What’s called
The complement system not complement like oh you look very nice today but complement okay the complement system which exists in the plasma within your blood these are chemicals in your bloodstream that go and Mark specific cells that have been infected or viruses with a signal a chemical signal that
Essentially looks like an eat me signal to these other cell types of your immune system such that those natural killer cells go through the body and go looking for the cells that have this eat me signal on them and try and destroy those particular cells the other thing that
Urinate immune system does is that the cells that have been infected and that are undergoing damage remember they have colder flu virus within them and they’re hijacking the cell or Machinery of those cells and using it to produce their own virus more of the virus and as a consequence the genetic Machinery of
Those cells is not able to do a bunch of other things that it normally can do or at least not as well well those cells that are really hurting release a help me signal and then in response to that help me signal your immune system releases what are called cyto kindes
Things like interlukin 1 interlan 6 tumor necrosis Factor Alpha just fancy nerd names for different types of molecules that go to the site of infection and try to help or assist to remove that infection and they also Tred to assist the repair of the cells that have been infected by those viruses now
One of the mechanical or physical consequences of these chemical signals like Incan 1 Incan 6 tnf Alpha again those are all cyto kindes being drawn to a particular cell or region of cells that have been infected is that it creates some physical swelling of the area it impacts the vasculature the
Veins and capillaries that feed that area and in response to they put more blood there so you get some swelling or you’ll get in some cases the release of histamines right we think of anti-histamine drugs well histamines are an aspect of your immune system they move around in your body in these really
Cool cells called masted cells Mas mass cells and when the histamines are released that area becomes kind of hot and swelling it’s what we call edema and that whole area is marked as really a sight just like a crash site on the side of the road it’s like hey we’ve got eat
Me signals to get the debris and the bad stuff out of here try to get those viruses out of here we’ve got help me signals to try and help the injured cells just like you would try and help people at a car crash and there’s a bunch of swelling so there’s additional
Blood flow sometimes there’s some other physical features as well now the important thing to know is that the innate immune system is very fast and it is agnostic to the type of infection in fact it doesn’t even matter if it’s a bacterial physical fungal or viral infection but it certainly isn’t paying
Attention to the exact serotype of cold virus or whether or not it’s an H1 influenza or another type of influenza so way to think about the innate immune system is that it is a very fast and non-specific response to a viral or other type of Invader now that’s all a
Bunch of biology but if you think about it let’s imagine a scenario where you go to a party hang out the party you don’t see anyone coughing or sneezing but maybe one person there has a cold virus or they have a flu virus and they aren’t
Even aware of it they’re not going to come down with symptoms for another day or so you talk to that person you shake hands maybe touch your eyes maybe you don’t but you’re exposed to that colder flue virus you go home you go to sleep you wake up the next morning you feel
Fine and then sometime in the next afternoon you know you start to feel a little tickle in your throat or you start to feel just a little bit of fatigue or malaise do you have that colder flu well possibly okay we don’t know for sure but
Assuming that that cold or flu virus did indeed make it into your system then your immune system is starting to create a set of responses that we talked about a moment ago but it also tends to impact things at the level of your brain such
That you kind of feel like you know I don’t feel quite right I feel like a little bit I don’t feel great and there are a lot of reasons why you would feel that way and we’ll talk about those reasons a little bit later but does that mean that you’re necessarily coming down
With a colder flu well technically yes your inate immune system is deployed to fight this foreign viral Invader but whether or not you actually get a full-blown cold or flu or put differently how severe that cold or flu infection is depends depends on whether or not your innate immune system can
Fight off that colder flu at the outset and indeed there are many cases we believe where you get exposed to a colder flu it makes it into your body but your innate immune system is sufficient to beat it to fight it back this is one of the reasons why it’s so
Important that if you’re starting to feel a bit under the weather and you think you’re coming down with a colder flu that you do certain things in order to make sure that your innate immune system is both ready and that it can launch a fullscale attack on that colder
Flu virus we’re going to talk about how to do that a little bit later I’m not trying to withhold it’s just it’s important to understand that just because the virus makes it into your body doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get a full-blown cold or
Flu and in fact that inate immune system sometimes is sufficient to prevent that colder flu from replicating enough that you get the full-blown set of symptoms and that’s kind of an ideal scenario so we’re definitely going to talk today about what to do if you start to feel a
Little bit of malaise what to do if you just discover that oh you know that person I was hanging out with at the party the night before they’re really sick with a colder flu because there are things you can do to increase the probability that your innate immune system can handle the battle
Sufficiently such that you never have to get to the next component of the immune response which is the Adaptive immune response I’d like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor insid tracker insid tracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you
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You okay the stuff we talked about up until now the physical barrier the innate immune system so so cool but the Adaptive immune system is really a mindblower the most important thing to understand about your adaptive immune system is that as the name suggests its job is to create antibodies specific to
The very Intruder that made it into you and infected your cells the very specific serotype of cold virus the very specific type of influenza such that you defeat that virus but then in an amazing way your adaptive immune system also maintains a memory of that battle and
Keeps within your body believe it or not within a population of stem cells which are cells that can rise to more cells such that if you ever encounter that same serotype of cold virus or same strain of influenza again that your antibodies can immediately neutralize that colder flu virus the Adaptive
Immune system has the ability to make proteins that have a particular shape on their surface that matches the shape of the thing that your immune system is trying to kill now the Adaptive immune system has two basic phases in the first phase the Adaptive immune system makes these things called
Immunoglobulins IGS and the immunoglobulins come in different forms there’s IGG there’s IGM there are other types of IGS as well for sake of today’s discussion know that the initial wave of antibodies that the Adaptive immune system makes or of the IGM variety and the IG antibodies can travel
To and latch on to the surface of the colder flu virus and it matches it pretty well it’s not perfect but it matches it pretty well think about uh for instance a particular serotype of cold virus or the H1N1 flu virus having you know very particular Contour on its
Surface the M approximates that Contour such that it’s better at fighting that colder flu virus than is the innate immune system but it’s not a perfect fit however the Adaptive immune system doesn’t stop with the production of those igms the Adaptive immune system takes that information about how precise
Or imprecise that fit is between the IGM antibodies and the surface of that particular cold or flu virus and then in an amazing way send signals back to the stem cell populations in the bone marrow and other tissues and then more antibodies come out of the IGG variety
And the IG proteins are very specific to the shape of that particular cold virus or flu virus such that the Iggs then can Define to and neutralize those viral particles okay so when we talk about the immune system we’re talking about a physical barrier that if it is
Breached a cold or flu virus takes residence and starts to replicate the innate immune system launches a generalized attack on that colder flu virus and then the Adaptive immune system kicks in usually a couple days later first with the production of antibodies that are pretty specific to the particular virus that happened to
Make it into the body and infect cells but then there’s a second wave of production of antibodies and those antibodies are incredibly specific for that particular cold or flu virus and as I mentioned earlier the Adaptive immune system then acquires a memory of the specific fit between a given antibody
That it made and the viral Invader and the successful battle that those antibodies waged on that Viral Invader and that memory is maintained such that if the next week or the next season you encounter the exact same serotype of cold virus or same type of flu virus well then you already have antibodies
Ready to be deployed sometimes the antibodies continue to circulate in your system sometimes you need to generate more of them and the immune system is that amazing it can actually send a message back to that stem cell population in the bone marrow or elsewhere say Hey listen this virus that
We beat a few weeks or months or years back it’s back we need more antibodies and boom your adaptive immune system churns those antibodies out and kills the virus now as a final point about the immune system I’ve been talking a lot today about cells traveling to and
Killing viruses and sending signals eat me help me Etc it’s important to understand that while cells can migrate through the the body a lot of what we’re talking about here is the movement of proteins through the vascular through the blood system of the body but there’s another system that’s very important for
All of this that’s collaborating with the vascular system and that’s the lymphatic system we don’t have time to go into a whole lecture about the lymphatic system but suffice to say the lymphatic system can pull stuff from the blood such as viruses but also cells that have been beaten up or cells that
Have been eaten and are contained within other cells such as macrofagos and it can do some filtering of those different cell types and it can produce its own useful chemicals that then can be reintroduced to the bloodstream in order to help combat the infection now this becomes very important when later we
Talk about how specific forms intensities and durations of exercise can increase the ability for your innate immune system to combat infections so that your adaptive immune system perhaps doesn’t even have to get involved in the battle because your innate system handled it there are data to show the exercise of sufficient intensity and
Duration but not excessive intensity and duration can recruit the lymphatic system and recruit or increase the activity of the innate immune system even in the absence of an infection such that if you go to that party and you encounter that person with a colder flu you can defeat that colder flu virus at
The outset and never have to deal with making antibodies to that colder flu virus at all okay so now you have a fairly sophisticated biological understanding of what colds are what flu are and the way that immune system works to fight off viruses like colds and flu
So with that in mind I think now is the appropriate time to start talking about what the scientific peer-reviewed research says about how to allow your immune system to function at its best such that you can combat colds and flu meaning if you are exposed to a cold or
Flu that is if it breaches that physical barrier of your skin and the mucosal lining of your nose your mouth or it gets into your eyes that you stand the greatest chance of defeating that colder flu at the the level of your innate immune system such that your adaptive
Immune system never even has to respond to it by creating all those specific antibodies now fortunately there are a lot of different things we can do to improve the function of our immune system in fact I feel like anytime the winter months roll around we start to
See the same list of things surface online and in the press and I don’t want to diminish these things they are in fact the Bedrock of maintaining and enhancing the function of your innate immune system so what are those well some of these will be pretty obvious things like getting enough
Quality sleep each night we know for instance that if you’re sleep deprived so especially if you stay up all night but certainly even if you only get 50% or 75% of your sleep requirement that your innate immune system is going to suffer it’s not going to be as effective
At combating flu or colds in addition to that we know that exercise of specific type and specific duration and specific intensity can serve to bolster the innate immune system and we’ll talk about the specific exercise protocols that can best achieve that we also hear and it’s absolutely true that we need
Adequate nutrition if we are in a caloric deficit for instance if we’re trying to diet through the winter months which many people try to do that can place our innate immune system in a bit of a compromised state that said things like intermittent fasting or even longer duration fast have been implicated and
Here I really want to underscore implicated in brief improvements in the function of the immune system however extended fast or not eating enough calories to maintain body weight for many many days in a row can actually compromise the function of the innate immune system I’ll go into this a bit
Deeper in a moment and then of course we hear about stress that we’re all supposed to regulate our levels of stress not get too stressed and here I have to put an asterisk next to those statements because yes indeed chronic stress meaning stress that continues day after day after day or even short
Periods of stress that impede our ability to sleep at night can indeed reduce the functioning of our innate immune system however it’s also clear that short bouts of stress provided that they don’t inhibit our ability to sleep that night can actually enhance the function of the immune system and this
Is something that I don’t think is talked about enough you know we hear so often that quote unquote cortisol is bad it’s a stress hormone listen cortisol is fantastic provided that it is elevated early in the day and not late in the day or evening also cortisol does have
Thresholds Beyond which if it’s too high can be bad for us but it’s also the case that if cortisol levels are too low that’s bad for us and it’s especially bad for the functioning of our immune system because glucocorticoids of which cortisol is have an important role in
Activating those natural killer cells of the innate immune system they are one of the primary signals by which those inter lucans like interlan 1 and interlan 6 are deployed in our body and so very often we’ll hear stress increases inflammation and indeed interlukin 1 interlan 6 are pro-inflammatory you
Might think oh my goodness I don’t want that I don’t want cortisol I don’t want these Incans elevated but guess what the inflammation response is also an important component of that innate immune system that allows us to combat infections so in trying to keep our innate immune system tuned up I realize
That’s not a biological statement tuned up but keep our immune system functioning at its best we want inflammation available as a tool to combat infection we want cortisol available as a way to activate that inflammation and other aspects of our immune system we just don’t want so much
Cortisol and so much inflammation that we can’t sleep and that our gut microbiome suffers and that brings me to the other component that’s important for the basic functioning of your immune system so that you can be at your strongest when you inevitably encounter those cold and flu viruses why do I say
Inevitably look if you exist in the world that is if you live live on planet Earth you are going to be bombarded with different viruses and bacteria and funguses and all this stuff throughout your days and yes in those winter months because people are spending more time indoors and they’re touching each other
And surfaces more breathing on each other more sneezing on each other more and so on and so forth there is more propagation of colds and flu so if we take a step back and we ask how can I have my immune system as strong and ready as possible to combat cold and flu
Viruses we get to those Basics it’s make sure you’re getting enough quality sleep each night how much is enough however much you need in order to not feel sleepy during the day except maybe the requirement for a short nap of anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes not everyone requires that but that’s perfectly
Normal to have an afternoon dip in energy that can be restored with a short nap or non-sleep deep bre we’ll provide links to non-sleep deep breast and other tools in the show note captions that you know are zero cost tools to allow you to recover your energy some people just
Simply take a nap and that sort of thing if you want tools for improving your sleep and making sure that you’re getting enough quality sleep each night we will also provide a link to our zeroc cost sleep tool kit that details that in PDF form it just lists out the things
That you can do or take if that’s your choice and so on and so forth and of course we’ve done episodes on quality nutrition and what that means we’ve done episodes on stress and how to combat stress and we’ve done episodes on the so-called gut microbiome but right now I
Just want to mention that the gut microbiome which are the trillions of little microbacteria that interact heavily with the immune system and help support the immune system you want to keep the gut microbiome healthy so you’ll notice that we include some tools related to the gut microbiome here in a
Moment and and this is very important keep in mind that the microbiome doesn’t just exist in the gut so often these days we hear about the gut microbiome and I’m oh so happy that the gut microbiome is getting the attention that it deserves in the context of mental health physical health and performance
But we can’t forget that the microbiome also exists on the surface of the eye and in the nasal passages and indeed the microbiome that’s specific to the nasal passages as I mentioned before is very different from the microbiome that exists within the mouth and the microbiome that exists within the mucosa
Of the nasal passages seems to be the most effective at combating any viruses that we encounter especially cold and flu viruses so while ideally you would never encounter a colder flu virus we know that if the colder flu viruses go in through the nasal passages you stand the greatest chance of combating that
Particular cold or flu so what does that mean this is where I get to make a strong push for being a nasal breather certainly in sleep you want to be a nasal breather but also throughout the day unless you’re speaking or unless you’re exercising hard enough that you
Need to breathe through your mouth or unless you’re eating being a nasal breather is known to provide the right millu the right environment to keep that nasal microbiome at its healthiest and to promote the diversity of microbiota in the nasal passages that can best protect you against colds and flu and
There are a growing number of studies that point to this fact I’ll provide a link to one that I like very much which is entitled alterations in oral nasal Fingal microbiota and salivary proteins in mouth breathing children this is but one study pointing to the fact that
Being a nasal breather is a good thing mouth breathing children and mouth breathing adults meaning children and adults that default to mouth breathing tend to get more in C of of the upper respiratory tract including colds and flu consciously focusing on nasal breathing is one of the best things that
We can all do to combat any colds or flu that we might encounter so earlier we talked about trying to avoid touching your eyes at least without washing your hands first or sanitizing your hands first after you meet somebody keeping in mind that most people do that unconsciously here we are also saying
When you enter a room you’re hanging out with peoplebe you’re waiting for public transportation or you’re at work work or walking down the hallway unless you are exercising hard unless you are talking try to focus on being a nasal breather there are a bunch of other reasons to be
A nasal breather as well but this is one of the primary ones and I’ll provide a link to another reference which is the book Jaws by my colleagues at Stanford which talks about nasal breathing and the importance of nasal breathing but also the degree to which children and
Adults open themselves up to increased levels of viral infections as well as bacterial infections but viral infections in particular when they rely on mouth breathing and the incredible benefits of doing this very simple zeroc cost thing of whenever you can consciously remember to breathing through your nose as opposed to
Breathing through your mouth and just as an additional point about nasal breathing because I can’t resist telling you this I just think it’s so cool such an interesting adaptation when we breathe through our nose we heat the air in a way that’s very different from the way we heat the
Air when we mouth breathe and by heating the air that’s coming into the nasal passages it shifts the probability that colder flu viruses will successfully embed in the mucosal lining and infect the underlying cells and get into the other cells and tissues of our body so this whole thing about nasal breathing
Is important and effective at the level of temperature regulation of the millu within the nose and therefore the viruses that end up in the nose as well as the mucosal line and the chemicals made by the mucosal line and again the nose is a very different place than the mouth in fact I’ll
Provide a link to yet another paper uh which is entitled human nasal microbiota it’s a really interesting paper it’s actually an interview with a scientist who’s expert in the nasal microbiome talking about how this structure within our nose really is the primary defense site by which we destroy potentially
Incoming viruses so if it sounds overly simple just breathe through your nose it is very simple but it’s also very effective now it’s also clearly the case that keeping your gut microbiome is advantageous for keeping your innate immune system at its most robust level of functioning and I should mention that
Your gut microbiome isn’t just about your stomach you know we hear the word gut and we think stomach but it’s actually the entire length of your digestive tract from your mouth out the other end and different microbiota exist at different locations along that tract of mucosa and there are a couple things
That one can do in order to make sure that the gut microbiome is best supported along that entire length the first one is that and this was covered on the episode that we did with my colleague Justin sonenberg who is a world expert in the gut microbiome and
That is to consume anywhere from two to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day so things like sourkraut things like kimchi things like kefir things like kombucha it can be a little bit of work to figure out which of these you like and which ones you’re willing
To consume on a regular basis but it’s very clear that the brine you know that kind of uh salty solution around the sauerkraut and by the way when I say sauerkraut what we’re talking about here is the type that has to be refrigerated it contains what are called live
Cultures as opposed to the sauerkraut that can exist in the non-refrigerated portion of the store or pickles that also have that Brine and that have to be kept in the refrigerator even before they’re opened and of course like yogurt which have active live cultures those are the sorts of things that are going
To best support the diversity of microbiota along the entire length of the gut microbiome such that your gut microbiome can do its job in supporting your nervous system but here especially in the context of today’s discussion your immune system now the low sugar component of low sugar fermented foods
Is important because what we know is that if you’re consuming yogurts with a lot of sugar or you’re consuming kombucha with high levels of sugar or you’re consuming pickles or sauerkraut that have a lot of sugar in them you’re probably going to start to create some other issues related to the sugar what
You’re really looking for are these low sugar fermented foods and they can be a little bit tricky to seek out in the store but they’re usually there and once you identify the ones that you like you should really aim to get two to four servings of those per day you can also
Consume a Prebiotic or probiotic in the form of capsule form things like ag1 athletic greens also contain Prebiotic probiotic but it’s very clear that consuming two to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day is among the best ways to promote health of the gut microbiome and that the gut
Microbiome is so so important for keeping the innate immune system thriving such that it can combat the colds or flu that are trying to bombard your system now there’s another tool that you can use to enhance your gut microbiome I have to warn you this one
Might make a few of you um cringe a little bit but this is one that I actually started doing about four months ago um it’s an interesting one it kind of dates back to some older quote unquote traditional medicine practices but it makes really good logical sense
To be fair I’m not aware of any randomized control trial exploring the use of this protocol but it’s so simple and completely cost-free and it stands so strongly on the logic of how the gut and oral microbiome work that frankly I started doing it and you know whether or
Not it’s placebo effect or not I don’t know but I feel better and it’s so easy to do and it stands to potentially improve the fun of your gut microbiome enough that I figured I would at least share it with you and then you can decide so what this protocol essentially
Consists of is before you go to sleep at night or in the morning you pour yourself a little bit of water whatever water you happen to consume just clean clear water and then you take a sip of that water when you wake up in the morning and you swish it around in your
Mouth and then you swallow it now for those of you that are like oh gross let’s think about this is it really gross to swish a little bit of water around in your mouth and then swallow that water when you first wake up prior to brushing your teeth of course well it
Might seem gross to you but throughout the night when you’re sleeping especially if you are a nasal breather while you sleep the environment within your mouth is such that you’re breeding a lot of bacteria you are creating all those little microbacteria that potentially can inhabit your digestive tract and provide
At least some of the substrate for the microbiota in your digestive tract to thrive and if that seems gross to you keep in mind that’s what having a healthy gut microbiome really is all about so the protocol is very simple at zero cost you take a swig of water swish
It around and swallow it oddly it doesn’t taste bad um in fact it’ll just taste like swallowing um and in fact it tastes like swallowing a little bit of water it’s not as if it tastes like um bad breath or something like that it’s a very simple protocol that again no
Randomized control trials but really stands on the logic of how the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome interact and because what we’re talking about here is supporting the function of your gut microbiome such that it supports the function of your inate immune system such that you can avoid
Colds and flu at least to me it seems like a pretty low bar yes okay so to bolster your inade immune system you want to get that quality sleep as often as you possibly can you want to support the gut microbiome in the ways that we just described what about exercise we
Hear it all the time time exercise is so good for us it enhances the immune system and on and on and listen I’m a huge believer in exercise I personally like to do three bouts of cardiovascular exercise per week one long one medium one short and I do three bouts of
Resistance training each week all of that and specifically what I do is available to you as a zeroc cross protocol in the form of a PDF we have a link to that in the show note captions I also have a whole episode about foundational Fitness and so on and so on
The discussion we’re going to have now now is about what general forms of exercise actually do support the innate immune system and and this is really important what forms of exercise actually deplete your innate immune system this isn’t talked about enough I think there are certain intensities and
Durations of exercise that make us more vulnerable to colds and flu so we’re going to discuss that before we do that I want to just briefly touch into something that I hear a lot which is the question if I’m feeling a little bit rundown should I exercise or not and to
Be honest there isn’t a straightforward answer to that question it’s impossible for me or for you to know whether or not you were indeed exposed to a cold or flu and you’re starting to combat it at the level of your Nate immune system or whether or not you’re just you know
Feeling a little bit sluggish however what we do know is that if you are feeling malaise at the level of the body like your body is feeling different it’s feeling heavier you’re feeling tired you’re feeling tired at a time of day that doesn’t make sense given your usual patterns of being tired
You’re feeling tired in a way that doesn’t make sense given how much sleep you got the night before right I mean here what we’re talking about is ruling out any possible you know life stressor you were up too late or you drank caffeine at the wrong time or something
Like that what we know is that you’re if you’re feeling that General malaise across your whole body it is fairly likely that you’re coming down with something and that your best response to that would be to go home take a hot shower or bath I’ll explain why you
Would want to do that in a few minutes and then get into bed early and even if you can’t fall asleep to just be as still and as relaxed as possible we know that if you push into bouts of intense activity or even just push yourself to engage in activity when you’re feeling
Run down at that sort of whole body level maybe a little tickle in your throat you are going to compromise the function of your innate immune system and it’s very likely that you’re going to get more sick than you would otherwise so here’s my suggestion if you’re starting to feel rundown at the
Level of whole body malaise or you just don’t feel right you’re best off taking a hot shower bath and getting into bed or just getting into bed and trying to rest and get as much sleep probably even a little bit of extra sleep and here’s why that whole
Body malaise that extra fatigue that’s not easily explained by other factors in your life have to do with the fact that when your innate immune system is activated meaning it’s already combating a cold or flu interlukin 1 and interlukin 6 have a way of interacting with a particular
Brain area called the dorsal rafay nucleus which is choa block full of neurons that release serotonin and serotonin from the dorsal rafay nucleus acts on specific regions of your hypothalamus areas like the preoptic region for those of you that want to know and other areas of the hypothalamus
That generate a state of sleepiness in addition when we are getting sick our sleep patterns change we feel like we need to sleep more but we don’t feel as rested from that sleep and that has to do with the ways that serotonin interacts with some of the components of
The brain circuitry involved in sleep that controls slow wave or deep sleep and this is a whole discussion unto itself I actually covered a lot of the mechanistic aspects of this business of immune induced sleepiness and Malay is associated with feeling sick in an episode about interactions between the
Neural and immune system that I will also provide a link to in the show note captions but suffice to say if you’re feeling that whole body Mala is and especially if you also have a little bit of a throat tickle you’re just not feeling right for you you’re not
Accustomed to feeling that way at that time of day or night well then I encourage you to get rest because chances are you’re already combating an infection however if you are out and about a lot during the winter months or you’re interacting with a lot of people by virtue of work or public
Transportation or whatever the gym Etc you’re a school teacher maybe your kids are coming home with colds and flu and you’re not yet feeling that malaise you’re not feeling any throat tickle you’re not getting that kind of um kind of burning or tickle within your nasal passages when you breathe you know we’re
All familiar with these things the watering the eyes that kind of precedes the getting the full-blown cold or flu well if you’re not experiencing that stuff and you want to keep your inate immune system strong and able to combat off colds and flu then we know that
Exercise can be an excellent way to increase the output of that innate immune system what I mean by that is the appropriate intensity and duration of exercise can act as a stressor that promotes a bit of inflammation yes the release of cyto kindes and a bit of activation of the innate immune system
Including the production of more white blood cells natural killer cells such that you’re sort of prompting the innate immune system to almost think that there’s something to battle such that if you ever encounter an infection you can defeat it right off the bat so we’re going to get granular here about what we
Mean by proper intensity and duration of exercise there’s a wonderful review that was published in 2019 in the Journal of Sport and Health Science entitled The compelling link between physical activity and the body’s defense system and there’s a lot to this review article but I’ll just highlight a few of the
Critical features that are going to directly relate to protocols that I think all of you are going to be interested in first of all we know that exercise that’s of 60 Minutes in duration or less and that is intense but not allout effort okay here we’re not talking about percentage of single
Repetition max weight here we’re not talking about 70 to 85% of one’s VO2 max what we’re talking about is you subjectively gauging what is a 10 out of 10 effort like you could not do any more you could not contribute any more effort to that exercise bout and that’s true
Whether or not we’re talking about resistance training exercise or cardiovascular exercise like running or rowing or things of that sort what we know is that if you do that sort of exercise for about 60 Minutes or Less you promote the exchange of components between the blood and the lymphatic system that increase the
Circulation of those cells and chemicals within the innate immune system such that not just during exercise but for many many hours afterwards maybe even as much as 24 hours afterwards your innate immune system level of Baseline activity is ramped up allowing you to better combat infections such as colds and flu
Okay so this is an incentive for getting a regular exercise of 60 Minutes or Less per day making it of sufficient intensity for your anate immune system to deploy more of those chemicals and for your lymphatic and blood circulation to increase their exchange of materials enough that your Nate immune system is
Bolstered however it is absolutely not the case that more is better in fact it’s probably the case that less is better here’s what we know for sure and this review covers sort of the extreme of these examples but for instance people that do bouts of walking each day
For about 60 Minutes brisk walking experience increased te- cell function so that’s an immune cell that goes out and combats cold and flu viruses and natural killer cell activity so those increase increase macras function you are now familiar with these cells if you don’t know exactly what they do just keep in mind
That you heard about these in the context of what the innate immune system does to go out and fight colds and flu cyto coses increase but not dramatically okay so this is a mild inflammation response stress hormones such as cortisol epinephrine norep nephrine also called adrenaline and noradrenaline those are deployed as well
So 60 minutes or less of this moderate to high-intensity exercise creates this mild stress response and an increase in the function of the inate immune system however people that run a marathon and as I recall a marathon is 26.2 miles if I’m not mistaken they experience a very
Different pattern of immune response to that long bout of exercise so here we’re comparing one hour of exercise to 3 hours is that what it takes to run a marathon I have some friends that are marathoners I’m guessing about three maybe four hours if you’re really slow
But somewhere between you know I don’t know two and a half and three hours if you’re trained up and you’re doing it and you’re doing them regularly well here’s the point people who just ran a marathon and people who have been training for a marathon and are approaching that Marathon are severely
Immune compromised the levels of their te- cell function are way below Baseline meaning their inate immune system is not functioning nearly as well as it would if they were to not exercise at all their natural killer cell activity is also greatly diminished these are huge huge reductions in these cells that is
In the function of the inate immune system and their stress hormones and their inflammatory molecules such as cyto circulating in their blood are extremely high now again we’re representing opposite ends of the spectrum here with 1 hour or less of exercise daily versus 26.2 mile marathon exercise or half marathons as the case
May be and let me be very direct I’m not discouraging people from running or training for marathons or half marathons I think that’s great just understand what you’re doing to your immune system when you do that and take the necessary precautions but I think most people listening to this are trying to think
About ways that they can avoid getting colds and flu and certainly running marathons is not going to be the way to do that quite the contrary the way to do that is in addition to the other things we’ve been talking about to get regular exercise maybe not every single day I’m
Actually aan of taking one day per week completely off from exercise usually on that day I’ll do some sauna and cold if I have it available to me but the point is this you don’t have to exercise for an hour a day in order to get this Improvement in the inate immune response
Data show that you can get this Improvement in anate immune response with as little as 20 minutes per day and probably even as little as 12 minutes per day however if you’re going to try and accomplish this increase in the innate immune system function or output
With a shorter bout of exercise such as 12 minutes it better be 12 minutes of very high-intensity training in fact that’s what lands on my uh for me it’s Friday but it doesn’t really matter which day of the week there is one day of the week where I do a very short bout
Of cardiovascular exercise but I’m sprinting hard for anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute and then I’m taking a brief period of rest and then repeating that for a total of 12 minutes now some people here oh only 12 minutes of exercise required and they default to
12 minutes every single time they train I don’t think that’s a good idea I think we can take the law of averages here and say the following I do believe everyone should do a combination of cardiovascular training and resistance training perhaps I think in general not
On the same days but if you’re going to do that and you want to maintain healthy immune system function my suggestion what I do is unless it’s the long bout of cardiovascular training that I do once a week and long for me means 60 to 90 minutes and sometimes longer if it’s
A hike which certainly doesn’t require that much intensity I suggest warming up for about 5 to 10 minutes and then limiting your total workout duration to about 50 minutes maybe 60 minutes if that’s what’s required to complete what you need to do in order to keep with your exercise
Goals but to be very careful about exceeding 75 minutes of exercise in any one single exercise bout and if you remember back to the beginning of the episode when I said that I track what I do on a day-to-day basis and I don’t do
It in a very detailed way but I do take note of when I’ve gotten a bad flu or cold I can tell you that in almost every single case where I’ve gotten a bad flu or cold there are two things that have preceded that bad flu or cold one is
Sleep deprivation typically it would be nights where I got two hours of sleep or less for more than one night okay the second thing is anytime that I really pushed it with exercise and went all out and I went for 75 minutes and then I continued to 90 minutes and then maybe
Later that day because somebody invited me on a run or something like that I also did that second run or that second workout of some kind could be running in the morning and weight training in the afternoon some people can do that kind of training on a regular basis even and
Not get sick I am not such a person I’ve managed to maintain fairly consistent Fitness output meaning the three cardiovascular and the three weight training sessions per week for more than several decades now and part of the reason I think I’ve been able to do that
Is because I don’t ever push too hard for too long within a given workout so this is really a call for moderation in terms of the duration and intensity of the exercise that you’re doing but we’re not talking about really being laidback we’re not talking about easy workouts
What we’re talking about is an hour or less of moderate intensity to high-intensity exercise depending on the duration of that exercise and keeping in mind that when you’re doing that you are activating that innate immune system you are literally creating an immune response you’re increasing inflammation you’re increasing those cyto kindes
You’re increasing stress stress hormones we have to start to think about exercise for what it is which is a form of stress that induces adaptations Dr Andy Galpin talked a lot about this in the series that he did on exercise physiology it’s an excellent series that covers everything from strength to hypertrophy
To speed to endurance nutrition supplementation you can find all that at hubman lab.com very easily exercise is a very potent tool we know that we know that in the context of changing Aesthetics like body mass composition you know increasing muscle reducing fat we know that in the context
Of reducing resting heart rate reducing resting blood pressure we know that in the context of all these other health metrics here we’re talking about using exercise as a very potent tool to increase the function of the Nate immune system to keep you healthy not just through the winter months but around the
Year and especially if you’re getting less sleep if you’re interacting with kids or adults that are carrying infections home from school or work on a regular basis or maybe you even work in an environment like a hospital or a clinic where you’re regularly interacting with patients that have
These issues one thing that I often get asked is if I am sleep deprived should I exercise and that’s a little bit of a tricky one my initial response for many years was no no if you’re sleep deprived you’re better off not exercising however I now need to qualify
That answer because there are data showing that if you’re sleep deprived and you exercise especially if you exercise early in the day and it doesn’t disrupt your sleep schedule so it’s not making you go to sleep even later the next night that it actually can cause some adjustments in the function of your
Immune system and in the way that you regulate your blood sugar that offset some of the negative effects of sleep deprivation that said you should never ever compromise the amount of sleep you could get in order to get exercise such that you run yourself down so what I’m
Really saying here is if you get one bad night’s sleep should you skip your workout and you feel like ah you know I’m not feeling sick and should I work out or should I go back to sleep probably going back to sleep is the better idea but if you don’t have the
Option to go back to sleep for whatever reason you can’t fall back asleep then you would be wise to do a bout of exercise but I would suggest reducing the intensity and duration of that exercise by about 25% maybe even 50% and that should allow you to offset any of
The negative effects of sleep deprivation for that one night keep in mind exercise is not a replacement for sleep and then to allow you to get to sleep at the appropriate time later that night and back onto a regular schedule keeping your innate immune system tuned
Up and ready to combat any colds or flu now one more point about exercise and here we’re also going to dovetail in an important point about nutrition in the review that I mentioned a few moments ago they cover some of the data from studies exploring the post exercise
Stress response so this is the post exercise induced increase in things like cortisol those natural killer cells the production of white blood cells and so on it’s very clear that if you are in a state of chronic stress because you’re you’re exercising a lot Andor because you’re not sleeping enough or for
Whatever reason maybe you have a lot of Life stress it’s very clear that ingesting carbohydrates after exercise can help attenuate some of the inflammation that exercise induces when we talk about carbohydrates we’re talking about rice oatmeal pasta those sorts of things soal complex carbohydrates and fruit post exercise
Has been shown to attenuate to reduce some of the markers of inflammation by about 30 to 40% when contrasted with water only intake especially if you’re training fasted so for those of you like me that like to wake up in the morning and just drink fluids you know for me it’s water
Y bate coffee and by the way I’ve said before that people should delay their caffeine intake 90 minutes if and only if they’re experiencing an afternoon crash but that if you are exercising first thing in the morning it’s perfectly fine to ingest your caffeine right away so that gives you increase in
Energy for that exercise that’s certainly what I do on days that I exercise but if you fast and then you’re drinking caffeine and then you’re exercising and that exercise goes longer than 60 Minutes certainly if it goes longer than 75 minutes you would do well to ingest some complex carbohydrates
Maybe also some fruit perhaps not immediately after exercise but within the 45 minutes or so or hour or so after exercise so that you’re not ramping up those inflammatory molecules and leaving them ramped up for many hours into the morning and throughout the day because of course this episode is not about
Exercise and nutrition but here we’re talking about the role that exercise and nutrition play in helping us combat colds and flu by increasing the function of that innate immune system and the reasons why carbohydrates can have this effect on cortisol Etc is an interesting and important discussion into itself
We’ll leave it for another episode but keep that in mind also I don’t know about you but a nice bowl of oatmeal some fruit and a protein drink or some eggs after an hour or so of exercise in the morning when I haven’t eaten anything since the night before tastes
Really really good so continuing with the theme of things that we can do at the level of behaviors to improve the function of our innate immune system and combat colds and flu perhaps even prevent us from getting colds and flu at all but certainly help combat them if
They’ve initially made their way into our system but we haven’t developed full-blown symptoms and we want to prevent those full-blown symptoms is the use of deliberate heat exposure in particular sauna there’s a nice study on this that was published very recently 2023 the title of the study is the
Effects of a single and series of finished sauna sessions on the immune system response and heat shock protein 70 levels in trained and untrained men it’s a very interesting study they compared athletically trained and non-athletic trained men as most of you probably know when you get into a hot
Sauna heart rate increases there’s vasod dilation there’s the increase in the release of heat shock proteins there’s the increase in things like dorphin which if it’s sufficiently hot are increased to levels that make us feel kind kind of agitated and not so good we have to actively calm ourselves in the
Sauna so we’re not talking about an easy cruise at 150° fenhe we’re talking about getting up into the you know 180 degree Fahrenheit or 210 degree Fahrenheit range maybe even higher if you’re heat adapted and that the dorphin makes you feel lousy in the short term but that it
Upregulates a bunch of different biological mechanisms that give you kind of low-level Euphoria and actually the capacity to experience more feelings of well-being from the endorphins that you make after you get out of the sauna this is oh so important to understand whether or not we’re talking about exercise or
Deliberate cold exposure or deliberate heat exposure what happens during the heat exposure cold exposure exercise is more often than not just the trigger for the long-term adaptation that we’re seeking just like exercise increases your heart rate and blood pressure but then leads to reductions in resting
Heart rate and blood pressure and so on and so forth this study is interesting and there are a lot of different takeaways from this study because they compare these two different populations I’ll just give you the top Contour of what the protocol entailed there were 10 sauna sessions each of
Those sauna sessions were three rounds of 15 minutes of sauna so one session meant going into the sauna the sauna was of a given temperature but I think for most people what’s going to work in terms of what parallels the study is going to be somewhere between 176 and
210 degrees Fahrenheit depending on how heat adapted you are always be safe don’t do this if you’re pregnant don’t this if you’re a child Etc so they’re doing three rounds of 15 minutes each separated by 2 minutes during that 2 minutes they take a cool shower where
They cool off in some way they’re not going into a cold plunge but they’re cooling off with a cool shower and they’re doing that three times that’s one session they do 10 sessions those sauna sessions were spaced apart by at least a few days and the entire experiment
Meaning all 10 sessions were completed within a 3-we period and then a bunch of things were measured like the amount of white blood cells and immune cells that were deployed after the first session versus the third versus the eth versus the 10th and so on as well as the levels
Of cortisol and inflammatory markers there are a lot of different things measured in this study here’s what we know sauna baths as they’re calling them resulted in a statistically significant increase in cortisol concentration after the first and the 10th sauna session okay so every time you go into the sauna
You’re getting an increase in cortisol we know that because the heat is a stressor again don’t think about heat as oh you’re just kind of relaxing in the onet so nice you’re getting a cortisol response cortisol is a glucocorticoid stress hormone as it’s sometimes called
Which can be a good thing if it sets in motion a number of other things such as the increase in the activity of the anate immune system and indeed that is what they observed after and here I’m paraphrasing after the first and 10th Saab baths they witnessed an increase in
Lucite count lucaites are a particular type of cell of the inate immune system however only after the last sauna session did this change reach statistical significance in the trained group so what they observed was that athletes who are trained are used to being in high heat conditions because of
Their athletic training people who are not trained in athletics are not used to that there are a lot of different ways to look at these data but the simplest takeaway is that if you are already very heat adapted because you do sauna regularly or you exercise regularly well
Then it’s going to take a stronger stimulus or more sauna either longer or hotter or more frequent to get the sorts of increases in innate immune response as compared to someone who’s never done sauna who’s not exercising regularly and that just makes sense if something isn’t
Stressful to you you’re not going to get the stimulation of that innate immune response and the overall takeaway from this study was that I do believe that if you’re feeling run down a little bit bit or if you’re just trying to keep colds and flu at Bay having some regular is
Practice of getting into the sauna for three rounds of 15 minutes separated by two-minute cool off you don’t necessarily have to do a cold shower or a cold Plunge in between although I don’t see why you couldn’t or wouldn’t you could also just get out of the sauna
And be in the cool air and then get back in or perhaps you do something more akin to what’s been shown in other studies that explore the relationship between heat exposure and immune response which is to do two rounds of 20 minutes or one round of 30 minutes in the sauna
Whatever you can do safely and comfortably keep in mind safety is Key Don’t harm yourself I say that not to protect me but to protect you that sauna is an effective way of increasing the activity of the inate immune system it increases Lucy levels yes it increases cortisol levels but in
A way that promote the activity of the inate immune system however and here we are back to exactly the same thing we said about exercise if you’re already feeling really rund down feeling kind of heaviness in the body you don’t feel well you’re starting to get some
Sniffles don’t get in a very hot sauna but for sake of keeping colds and flu at Bay sure do three rounds of 15 minutes in the sauna between 176 degrees 210 degrees whatever you can safely tolerate take those two-minute breaks in between maybe do a cold shower or coolish shower
Maybe just stand outside the sauna in between if you’re feeling really strong do a coal plunge for a minut two minutes in between you don’t have to but you certainly could and then get back in and then repeat or just do one 20 minute session or 30 minute session all of
Which have been shown to promote the activity of the Nate immune system however and I realize I said this before but I feel like I need to say it again especially For You hardcore exercisers or people that really feel like oh I can push through if you’re already sick and
You have the symptoms of a colder flu you want to limit the amount of stress to your body you want to get into bed and sleep if you can’t sleep you want to relax you do not want to exercise you should not exercise not only do you
Stand to get other people ill by going places where you exercise but even if you exercise at home or in total isolation you’re going to prolong the duration of that illness because there are many many reasons why being still slowing your circulation and allowing your innate and then in that case your
Adaptive immune system to kick in and combat those infections is going to get you back into a regular exercise and work regimen much much faster than would be the case if you were to push through okay so now we get to the portion of the discussion that I think probably many
People are anticipating which is what can you take to reduce the probability of getting a colder flu or shorten the duration of a colder flu and I actually put out a call on social media I asked the question on Instagram and on X formerly called Twitter you know what do
You do for a colder flu and what are you curious about in terms of what one can take for cold or flu and I got thousands upon thousands of answers however many of those answers converged on some common things things like taking garlic I heard for instance that some
People are chewing a raw clove of garlic every day during the winter um I heard about people who take fermented garlic some people swear by eonia some people swear by eonia vitamin C and Zinc now there are far too many compounds that exist in the wellness and indeed in the
Medical literature to cover all of them so I’m going to highlight a few that I think are especially interesting and that have been shown in p reviewed science to be potentially useful some of these you’ve heard of before and some of them I think are going to be surprising
Or at least new to you first let’s consider what most people believe to be a very effective way to hasten colds or flu that is to make them last shorter duration of time than they would otherwise maybe even prevent colds or flu the big one there is vitamin C we
Hear all the time vitamin C antioxidant I grew up in an area where the Noel prize winning chemist lonus Pauling who was a fanatic about vitamin C he took many many grams of vitamin C each day used to tout the benefits of vitamin C here’s the deal there is some evidence
And it’s not great frankly that points to the fact that taking 6 to8 grams grams so that’s 6,000 to 8,000 milligrams of Vitamin C per day that is a lot of vitamin C each day can perhaps delay the onset of a cold or shorten the duration of a cold so here
We’re talking about very high doses and not a very robust effect I should mention that for most people who aren’t accustomed to taking much vitamin C if you were to take 6 to eight grams of vitamin C in capsule or powder or pill form chances are you’re going to experience some significant gastric
Distress some people can build up to that level or take it with food in a way that doesn’t cause that gastric distress but many people will experience gastric distress there’s been a lot said about vitamin C and its other potential roles in our physiology and I don’t want to
Touch on those now because it may have some interesting roles in other aspects of our physiology but I have to say that in scouring the literature on vitamin C I encountered a recent paper so this was published in 2023 and the title of this paper is retraction extra dose of
Vitamin C based on a daily supplementation shorten the common cold a metaanalysis of nine randomized controlled trials what is this paper that was recently published why is retraction the first word in the title Well turns out that the metaanalysis of nine randomized control trials showing a small but significant Improvement in the outcomes
For colds and flu or reduction in probability of getting colds and flu that study was retracted and it was retracted on the basis of multiple instances of an error in which the placebo groups had been double counted in Trials more than the two intervention arms so there were some serious data
Analysis flaws in that metaanalysis now that is not to say that vitamin C is of zero benefit for reducing the probability of colds and flu but must say provided that you’re getting sufficient amounts of vitamin C from your food intake maybe you’re also get a little bit in your vitamin mineral
Supplement or if you take a foundational supplement like ag1 or something similar almost certainly you’re getting enough vitamin C it does not seem that taking high doses of vitamin C and I would Place 6 to8 grams of vitamin C in the high dose range is going to be effective
For treating or preventing colds and flu so more data may arrive in the near future but vitamin C is probably not a very good investment if you’re taking it solely for the purpose of enhancing your immune system function and staving off colds and flu now what about vitamin D
We hear a lot these days about the importance of having sufficient vitamin D levels and ideally everyone would get their vitamin D levels measured by regular blood test I do get my blood work done every 6 months I find it be incredibly informative tells me what’s
Going on below the hood in ways that I never could be aware of where I not to get that test but I realize that there’s a cost to those tests and not everyone can afford them I think most Physicians would agree that supplementing with anywhere from a
Th000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day is probably safe for most people and will buffer that level of vitamin D in their system such that they’re unlikely to be deficient and unlikely to far exceed what’s safe in the body however there are people who need higher levels of vitamin D
Supplementation in order to achieve sufficient amounts of vitamin D for their mental health and physical health I mean vitamin D is involved in a lot of different processes in the brain and body now it is clear that people who are vitamin D deficient so these are people
Whose vitamin D level levels have been measured oftentimes have diminished immune system function and are more prone to acute respiratory tract infections there’s a very lengthy and very interesting review entitled vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections systematic review and metaanalysis of individual participant data this is a beast of a
Thing um I did read it all very very interesting many many studies the exact takeaways from a large review like this of 20 randomized control trials is a little bit tricky I mean they did conclude that vitamin D supplementation did reduce the risk of acute respiratory tract infection among
All the participants however the degree of prevention was small to moderate in some cases they did point out however that just because people with low levels of vitamin D tend to get colds and flu more often than people that don’t does not necessarily mean that vitamin D
Deficiencies are the reason for that for instance we know that people that get regular sunlight exposure and as everyone knows I’m a big big proponent of getting sunlight in your eyes as early as possible in the day after waking up and if it’s cloudy out to get
Even more time outside if you can and if you can’t get access to sunlight for whatever reason to perhaps invest in a 10,000 Lux light tablet you can find these online at reasonable cost you know $100 to $200 in some cases getting sunlight sets in motion a huge number of different things
Including increasing the amount of vitamin D in your system but a bunch of other things as well increases in cortisol increases in dopamine increases in serotonin that Cascade toward and relate to improved immune system function so what is the takeaway here I think that for most people supplementing
With a th to 2,000 international units of vitamin D it’s probably safe however if you need more vitamin D you won’t know that unless you take a vitamin D test that is you measure the amount of vitamin D in your bloodstream and some people indeed need 5,000 to 10,000 IU of
Vitamin D per day but you don’t want to overdose yourself on vitamin D that is if you already have sufficiently high levels of vitamin D in your system and you’re getting sufficient sunlight well then taking 10,000 or more international units of vitamin D could possibly be detrimental I think it’s fair to say
Based on the metaanalysis and review that I mentioned a moment ago and the other papers that I was able to glean that vitamin D itself is unlikely to be the sole protectant against colds and flu but it’s probably a good thing to include in your general kit of nutrition
And supplementation tools if your goal is to keep your innate immune system fighting off colds and flu sufficiently other things that perhaps support the innate immune system are going to be as I mentioned earlier the things that support the gut microbiome so those low sugar fermented foods maybe a Prebiotic
Probiotic capsule maybe something like athletic greens ag1 although certainly you could achieve sufficient microbiome support from Foods if you’re careful and intentional about the foods that you select now the other compound or substance that we often hear about in the context of colds or flu is eonia
Eonia is a compound that has been proposed to improve immune system function now when you go into the data and you explore what does taking eonia tinctures or other forms of eonia really do to avoid colds and flu the answer that comes back is not much if anything
Now is taking eonia dangerous probably not however it has been shown in a few studies that people that take eonia regularly at high doses can potentially impede the function of their innate immune system that is reductions in white blood cell count reductions in those natural killer
Cells so my suggestion would be if you absolutely love e eona for whatever reason you’re convinced that it helps you that you reserve to taking it when you’re starting to feel a little bit rund down or perhaps just in the winter month not months plural but month when
You’re most prone to those cold and flu infections but then not taking it continuously throughout the year and certainly not for more than four weeks at a time but again if you’re doing that just know that there aren’t really any strong scientific data to support the
Use of eona by contrast there are pretty darn good data that support supplementing with zinc as a way to combat colds and flu in particular colds now here the dosages really matter it’s been shown that if you take less than 75 milligrams of zinc in supplement form to try and impact the probability
Of getting or shortening a common cold it’s not going to work you need to take 100 milligrams or more and now 100 milligrams or more of zinc for some people it’s going to cause some gastric distress if you take it on an empty stomach I’ve actually made the mistake
Of taking I think it was 50 milligrams of zinc on an empty stomach and I felt really nauseous did not feel well so don’t take zinc on an empty stomach and if you’re trying to shorten a colder flu that you think you’ve already contracted or you’re trying to keep a cold or flu
At Bay because you were around people with cold or flu or you’re just worried about it taking 100 milligrams of zinc perhaps divide it up into two doses of 50 milligrams each or maybe 100 milligrams all at once but making sure that you take that with at least a
Moderately sized or full meal certainly could be advantageous keep in mind that people that are older than 65 are perhaps the ones that need to supplement zinc the most also keep in mind that children meaning people younger than 15 should probably not supplement with too much zinc it can be problematic and
Certainly pregnant women should have talked to their doctor before supplementing with zinc indeed anytime you’re going to take anything whether or not you’re young old pregnant or not you should consult your physician before you take anything or remove anything from your health protocols one of the more interesting aspects of supplementing
With zinc that I was able to find in the literature is a three times faster recovery rate for people that already contracted a cold so in this study people weren’t taking 100 milligram but the dosage came pretty close they were taking 90 milligram per day of zinc acetate and they experienced a three
Times faster recovery rate from that cold compared to people who were not taking the zinc now of course there could be other factors as well but the study was fairly convincing so given that zinc is fairly low cost given that it’s generally safe for most
People and the fact that if you take it with food it doesn’t cause any discomfort supplementing with Inc at a level of anywhere from 90 to 100 milligrams per day probably no more than 120 per day seems like a logical way to Stave off colds and flu and reduce the
Duration of a cold or flu should you contract one now I want to be very clear that I’ve been talking about colds and flu kind of in uh in concert kind of treating them more or less as the same thing some of that is for sake of time
And simplicity most all the studies showing a benefit of zinc are studies showing the benefit of zinc for the treatment or the hastening of colds not for flu specifically however I consulted with a few Physicians one of whom is expert in this area and he said I didn’t
See any reason why you wouldn’t take zinc if you had a flu there’s no reason to think that it would introduce any kind of increased risk but again consult with your physician before taking or removing anything from your supplement regimen now a lot of the compounds that we’re discussing are sort of
Conventional in the sense that I think most people have probably heard of them already perhaps the most esoteric sounding one thus far is eona which we established probably not very helpful for colds or flu but we’ve been talking about vitamin C we’ve been talking about zinc vitamin D making sure you’re
Getting your sunlight supporting your microbiome and so on and so on one compound that I’m guessing most people perhaps have not heard of but that is very interesting that in fact I’ve taken before and that I stock in my supplement cabinet in case I feel like I’m coming
Down with something is an acetylcysteine or Knack what is Knack Knack is a precursor to glutathione what is glutathione glutathione is the master antioxidant it’s involved in reducing what are called reactive oxygen species which build up in cells that are very metabolically active reactive oxygen species build up even more in cells that
Are under stress or a body that’s under stress and it also has the property of reducing reactive nitrogen species reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen species significantly increase under conditions of infection and having sufficient levels of glutathione is a good thing now netal is used in certain
Clinics overseas and in the US as a way to treat cystic fibrosis because it’s also a mucolytic and cystic fibrosis is the buildup of fluid in the lungs and a mucolytic substance is something that loosens up the mucus and allows it to flow more readily out of different
Cavities of the body including the lungs the nasal passages and sinuses and indeed last winter I did unfortunately get a cold I told you about once every 18 to 24 months I get a cold and it was a pretty nasty 1 I was feeling super congested at first I thought it was an
Ear infection pretty quickly I realized I had a cold and I was feeling so congested I wasn’t sleeping well and it was suggested to me to take an acetylcysteine I ended up doing that at a dosage of anywhere from 600 to 900 milligrams three times per day so it was
A 600 to 900 milligram capsule depending on which brand I purchased a lot of different versions of this out there on the market I took it morning late morning and afternoon and indeed it is a powerful mucolytic the mucus just starts flowing out of you you better have an
Extra box of tissues handy and that greatly relieved the pressure in my sinuses and the reason I liked using Knack is because I’ve actively avoided using decongestants that one can purchase over the counter most decongestants are of the Alpha One Agonist variety what’s an alpha 1 Agonist it causes Vaso constriction that
Vaso constriction can be beneficial in preventing some of the intense congestion that one gets when you have a sinus infection or a cold or a flu but then when those decongestants wear off off one tends to get a rebound increase in congestion and it’s really painful headache Etc in addition some
Over-the-counter decongestants can be habit forming not necessarily addictive but habit forming and they don’t seem to have any other positive health benefits so I prefer not to take decongestant if I can avoid it I had a very good experience with Knack and the use of knack and acetal cysteine as a
Decongestant and also as a way to prevent getting colds and flu is not an entirely new idea in fact there’s a paper dating back to 1997 entitled attenuation of influenza-like symptomology and Improvement of cellmediated immunity with long-term anical cinee treatment now in this study they looked at people who were taking
600 milligrams of anal cysteine twice per day for 6 months and what they observed is that the people who took anical cysteine had a significantly lower probability of Contracting influenza now this is but one study there have been a few other studies and unfortunately there isn’t a large body
Of research looking at Knack as a preventive for colds and flu but the data in this paper are interesting enough and I was compelled by them enough to seek out a physician who I noce it was answering my prompts on social media about what do you use for
Colds and flu and when I put that out there as I mentioned I got thousands of responses on both Twitter X and on Instagram and one particular physician who happens to have a YouTube account his name is Dr schwell he’s a medical doctor he works in an INT Ive care unit
And he deals with a lot of patients who have different strains of flu in fact he was the one that cued me to the fact that this year there seems to be a fair number of H1N1 flu virus going around and remember the H1N1 flu virus while
It’s not you know deadly to everyone it can be quite severe in some people so we do want to be on the lookout for and trying to avoid getting H1N1 if we can I spoke to Dr schel he was very generous with his knowledge about anical cysteine he did acknowledge and I’ll
Acknowledge again here that it would be great to get more randomized control trial data on netal cine but we did talk about this paper this 1997 paper and he did mention that he and other clinicians that are forced to be in the hospital dealing with patients all through the
Winter and all year long they’re getting bombarded with cold and flu exposure all the time that they meaning he and some of his colleagues deliberately take anical cysteine as a preventative to try and reduce the probability of getting colds and flu and while we don’t want to
Make too much of any one study or anic data which is what we’re describing when I tell you about a physician who told me this or what I did and experien that I think it is worth paraphrasing the study that I mentioned before NAC prevented the symptomatic forms caused by here
They’re talking about the ah1n1 influenza virus quite efficiently since the large majority of infected subjects in the placebo group 79% developed clinically apparent disease versus only 25% in the knat group in other other words Approximately 80% of people in the study who did not take an acetylcysteine
Got influenza whereas only 25% of the people who were taking anical cysteine contracted influenza so that’s a fairly dramatic difference and certainly the fact that anal cysteine has been shown to increase glutathione that’s its primary mechanism of action as far as we know and the fact that increases in
Glutathione are generally healthy and good for us and the fact that anical cysteine is still available legally over the counter in the US at least currently it is some years back as you may have heard the FDA called for removal of netal cysteine from over-the-counter sales that I should point out was based
On the fact that certain supplement companies were making claims about netal cine as a treatment for hangover and making a bunch of other claims for which there was no real data but either because the FDA was effective in getting those companies to cease those claims Andor because of advocacy groups which
Worked very hard to try and keep netline available for over-the-counter sales as far as I know at least right up until prior to recording this episode netal cysteine is available for sale over the counter so whether or not you decide to use netal cysteine as a preventative and
There again the dosage is about 1,200 milligrams per day divided into two different dosages of 600 milligrams each or if you decide to take anal cysteine in the manner that I did which was not as a preventative but once I had a cold couldn’t fight it off apparently got the
Cold decided to take 900 Mig three times per day avoiding that intake close to sleep because it did disrupt my sleep if I took it too close to sleep because of the way that the mucus would flow so readily you know essentially I know it sounds gross but I felt like it was
Filling up the back of my throat so-called postnasal drip but it felt like post naal waterfall and I decided to restrict my intake of anical cysteine to earlier in the day only and of course there’s the third option which is that you opt to not take anical cysteine
Until more randomized control trials are published or not take an Cal cysteine at all because you’re of the sort that thinks okay with some sleep a hot shower a good meal some chicken soup maybe a little garlic who knows maybe you have some other tools and techniques that you
Like you like that ginger tea lemon Etc maybe that’s all you need and if that’s all you need and that’s all you want in order to deal with a cold or flu be my guest I certainly am not here to convince anyone that you have to take a
Certain supplement but I did feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t cover what are generally referred to as the so-called preventatives and treatments for colds and flu things like zinc vitamin D vitamin C we now know that unfortunately vitamin C gets a you know
Probably a D minus or an F at least as the data stand now but there are these other things like zinc and potentially an acetal cysteine that can be beneficial in shortening the duration of colds or flu and perhaps even helping us avoid getting colds or flu all together
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