How Your Immune System Works & How to Improve It | Dr. Max Krummel

A famous uminologist in the nineteen seventies drew this parallel in wartime and said in World War II, submarines had two sets of books. One of them Was a book that gave them the sound profile of all the US submarines. And so they could listen to the whir of the engines. And if they heard a whir of the engine that had the certain cycle of a general mo you know motors engine, they wouldn't fire. So that's the sort of like self, I know what self is. And then they had another book that was the engine sounds of the known diesel engines of whatever engines of the German submarines. And if they heard that, then they absolutely would fire. And that's a self versus non-self discrimination problem, just like the immune system has to do. But what I bring you with it aging is this concept that as you get weirder and different, your your body is getting like more complex.

Then that is those books. you know, start to have every possible possibly every possible permutation of every biomolecule could could could be made by your body at that point. And then a virus doesn't necessarily have anything unique about it. 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 ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Max Crommel.

A professor and leading expert in immunology and cancer biology at the University of California, San Francisco. Today we discuss your immune system, how it works, what it needs to function at its best, and how things like aging vaccines, sleep, and even your thoughts and emotions shape immune function. For instance, most everybody knows that being sleep deprived makes you more prone to getting sick. But why, meaning mechanistically why? Well, it turns out there's a specific set of cells that need to migrate in a particular way during sleep, and we talk about how you can reinforce that process in ways other than sleep. We also discuss incredible findings that certain brain states and memories can be associated with an immune system status you had when those memories formed. And evidence that just recalling those memories, thinking about where you were, what you were feeling at those times when the memories formed, can activate your immune system in the same way, which is remarkable.

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