Lab 047: All Immune Systems Go (Re-Air)

It's August and we're finally getting some relief from the summer heat.

Right, but we're also seeing the fall woes creeping in. COVID numbers are spiking again across the country, and a lot of people we know keep talking about this like mysterious one day cold. They're like, oh, you know, my nose is running, I'm sneezing, I'm coughing, and it doesn't last very long.

But also, I mean it kind of tracks. We're at the very beginning cusp of flu season, you know, And I feel like every time this happens, summer ends, it cools off people going back to school, so stuff is spreading around the same conversation pops up. People are asking how do you actually strengthen your immune system?

And that's why this week we're bringing back one of our favorite labs. It's Lab forty seven. All Immune Systems Go. And if you've heard it before, just let this be your refresher. And if you haven't, listen, close because there will be a pop quiz. And I'm Zachiah and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. This week, we're talking all about the

Yes, it's peak cold and flu season, and I've seen a lot of you sharing elderberry syrup, ginger lemon emergency, all of that on your IG stories. You're telling us all about your immune system hacks and boosters. So this lab is really for you. We're going to get into what the immune system is and how it works. So let's get into the recipation.

So before we say what do we know? What I know and what Tekia knows, It's two very different things. To be clear, I feel like I know next to nothing about the immune system and how it works. I feel like I know very very basic things that I think most people know, like your immune system is important and having a good immune system will help you. But that's kind of where it stops for me.

Well, that's okay, because I'm going to help you ask some other questions like where exactly is immune system in the body, how does it work, what happens if it's not working or if it's overworking, what's going on there? And then I think the question we both have TT is about all the hacks we see about strengthening and boosting and enhancing the immune system.

Yes, some of it just seems like made up stuff, Like I'm just like, who told you that? Who told you that? Like, oh, chew on your big toenail for three minutes and then spit it out and spin round like I don't.

Know, Oh yeah, I would chew on it, but if you do have to get you on it, definitely spit it.

Out all right.

That makes me feel like we are ready for the dissection. You're ready, CC, I'm ready.

Hold my hand. Friend.

Our guest for today's lab is doctor Piel Gupta.

My name is doctor Pyle Gupha. I am an adult and pediatric allergy and asthma specialist and also a nominologist, and I live and work in New York City.

Okay, for me, let's start with the basics. What is the immune system?

Our immune system is our body's way of protecting us from foreign invaders. And what I mean by foreign invaders are things like viruses, like bacteria, like fungi and even cancers.

Okay, so these are all the things we definitely don't want in our bodies.

So if we zoom out, we can think about the body as this single tube from the mouth to the booty basically, and your skin is wrapping all of that and keeping everything in a closed system. So your skin is like your protective barrier. Right, Our skin is a physical barrier to those foreign invaders and particles.

You know, you gotta stay moisturized. You gotta put lotion on those elbows. Yes, moisturized skin is soft and supple and plump, but not moisturized skin or dry skin cracks and bleeds and things like that.

All right, we have our protective barrier of skin protecting everything inside. If anything penetrates that barrier, it's then facing our immune system. And the immune system can be split into two parts, the innate immune system and the adaptive or acquired immune system. So innate being the immune system that you are born with. Yes, and that's not unique to us. So if we look at it, all animals have an innate immune system, and so do plants.

Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, I need to treat my snake plant better. There it's currently three leaves sitting on the floor. Okay, So there's our skin, which provides a physical barrier. Then there's the innate and acquired immune systems. So let's talk about the innate immune system first.

And so then innate immune systems are first line of deference, and this line of defense or this army reacts to fight infection quickly.

The innate immune system is non specific, so it just says, invader, respond right. It doesn't know who you are. It just knows that it is not right.

That's like your house security system when you come in the door. It's like, hey, I don't know who you are. You may be the owner, you might not be. Yes, but you better put it in a security code or there's gonna be some problems.

Yes, you know. So let's say that system is not very specific. It's just a strong first response. Our second line of defense is the acquired immune system. So if we were to compare these things, the innate immune system is not specific, acquired is specific. The innate immune system is permanent and the response is immediate. For the acquired immune system is transient. It's not always permanent, and the response is not immediate, but it is specific and is

When a baby is first born, they're not ready to fight every infection. They are fragile, and our immune systems when we're born aren't where we want them to be.

Then, even thinking about what happens as soon as you're born, you have been inside this other closed system, so you don't have any bacteria. You know, how we talk about the microbiome on the skin and how we talk about the bacteria that's part of our personal environment. You acquire that as you pass through the birth and canal, or if you are delivered by c section, you acquire that from that delivery process, and then you know that skin

So your adaptive immune system starts developing from the jump through the birth canal, skin to skin. All those germs getting into your tiny baby body are what your body needs to adapt to the outside world.

And so when you think about when a baby t t is always sick, you know, like you've seen your nieces and nephew with those running noses, Yes, that is them being exposed to these foreign particles and pathogens, and their immune systems are beginning to recognize these things and getting smarter. So that's why kids get so sick when they first go to like preschool or todaycare.

Because their bodies are being introduced to new bacteria that they've never seen before, bacteria, viruses, all of that, and that is how you develop that learned or acquired immunity. So then when you get to a big age like our age, we've seen a lot of the things that were in the nursery already, so our bodies are better equipped to fight it.

Yes, and you may be able to clear those things really quickly. So a cold that may have your little toddler cousin with a running nose for a week, you may have the sniffles for like one day, and you're good. You're ready to bounce back and keep it moving.

And then as we get older, we get exposed to the environment, which also exposes our body to foreign particles, foreign substances, and our body starts to recognize what is normal what is abnormal, and then the immune system slowly starts to grow.

So our immune system generally peaks between puberty and young adulthood and starts to decline around the age of sixty.

That's why older individuals we have to be extra careful, just like we are with babies, because they are more susceptible to infection.

Really young babies in infants, so under six or seven months, can't get a flu shot, so everybody around them gets a flu shot to kind of cocoon them and to keep themselves from passing something on to the baby. Similarly, older adults, so over sixty five, they also have a week immune system, but their immune system can handle a

So now we know what the immune system is. We know that there's some that is innate, so that stuff that you're born with, and then we know that there's some aspects of our immune system that we acquire over time based on exposure. But where is all of this happening? Is there like an immune system orgon? Is it near? My pancreas was just one of the one of the only organs I remember from biology.

Like kid, me, you're doing good, You're doing good. Stomac well, basically it's all over. It's not in any one place. So in your bones, and I'm not just talking about one bone, all your bones. Inside there's bone marrow, which is this like spongy kind of stuff. That is the place where lymphocytes are made. Lymphocytes are also maturing in the thymus, which is if you think about like where your neck is that butterfly organ over your neck, that's

Really, our tonsils are spleen.

What was the other one? The lymph nodes.

Lymph nodes spleen.

Okay, you're getting it.

I'm following. I'm following some.

Of the fighters in this army are things like macrifages, bhasa, fylls, dendritic cells, or neutrophils. So these are all fancy names for cells in our body that do different things to get rid of the bacteria or viruses or other foreign invaders. Macrifages are kind of like these big cells that kind of engulf whatever foreign particle they see. The chemicals inside of the macrophage just eat up whatever they see, and

Those cell types and neutrophills, basophylls, mass cells, dendritic cells, those are all part of our innate immune system and so tt like you mentioned, if things slip past our innate immune system, they move on to our second line of defense, which is our acquired immune system.

The acquired immune system uses lymphocytes, so those are cells that circulate in the blood and are made up of T cells and B cells to target specific pathogens.

These cells take longer to develop because their behaviors evolve from learned experiences, but they tend to live longer than innate cells and the adaptive immune cells remember foreign invaders after their first encounter and then fight them off the next time more easily. So this is really the fundamental concept and promise for how vaccines work.

For example, yes, remember in the HIV episodes with doctor Christine Daniels, we talked about creating that mugshot, and so your immune system is like I already know who you are and I know what to do. Uh huh. That's basically what we're doing when we expose our bodies to vaccines, speeding up that learning process.

So, now that we understand how the immune system works, what are some signs we can look for to know that it's working.

One of the most common misconceptions is that if you get quote unquote sick, so like if your nose is running, or if you are achy, or if you have a fever, that your immune system isn't working. But that's actually a sign that it is. Let's take lymph nodes for example.

Lymph Nodes are tissues that are found all over our bodies, and lymph nodes produce white blood cells and white blood cells help fight off infection.

Lymph Nodes can be found underneath our neck, under our arms, near our gurn and literally all over.

When we actually get sick, then our lynth nodes go into action, and that's when they get inflamed, and that's when they get bigger. That's evidence that your body is doing something to fight off infection.

And so when we think about people's response to the COVID vaccine and boosters or even the flu shot, sore arms, fatigue, all of that is just a sign that your immune system is working.

You know that the flu shot makes me hurl every time I get it.

I didn't know that, girl.

It happened at your house in North Carolina.

Oh the flu shot did that to you, haven't. You just had a different kind of responding.

Paint the picture for you, okay, o was as a kid's parents' house.

Oh, at my parents' house.

Yes. We were hitting golf balls with her dad, and I had just gotten a flu shot like two days before. It was my very first flu shot, so I didn't know nothing was going to happen to me. He put lamb on the grill. We was eating good, okay, hitting golf balls. Her dad is launching those golf balls into the stratosphere. And then all of a sudden and I'm like, something is not right. I start to feel lightheaded. And then I say I'm about to throw up. I run

And does this happen every time you get a flu shot? Not that extreme?

So that was my very first flu shot. So it makes sense based on what you and doctor Gupta have been saying about the immune system. My first experience with the flu shot, I had a really strong reaction because my body's like, okay, is how do we get rid of this? What is this? This is something new that we've never seen before. But now every time I get the flu shot since then, I'll get supernauxous. Sometimes I'll

Yeah, and if you don't have those symptoms. If you don't have that akiness or you didn't really get sick, it doesn't mean the immune system wasn't working. It just means that you can feel your immune system working more than maybe somebody else.

Another example of the immune system working. Baby, you've seen me suffer from this is allergies. That's our immune system overreacting.

Listen, I have allergies, but I have never seen someone suffer like my friend.

Okay, you don't want to be outside with me without a Xytec and a flow naz spray nostril.

I've got to get my friend inside. She is perishing. Every time our.

Immune system all of a sudden looks at a dog protein or a cat protein or you know, dust mighte and all of a sudden thinks that this is something that I need to react against, when in fact, it's not something that you need to react against. So it isn't like the tree because tree protein is actually good.

So when we think about how people are treating their allergies, a lot of people are taking antihistamines and things like this, and what they're doing is actually dampening their immune system. They're turning that reaction down so that they're not getting so much of the running nose and the inflammation. Histamines are chemicals involved in our immune system, and if you take benadrill or something like that for allergies, you'll see

It's holding your immus as Tom back home back.

Yeah.

Yes, that's exactly what it's like. And the nice thing is that it's specific to the allergens, so it doesn't mean that your immune system is impaired from protecting you against other things. So that's really nice to have that kind of specific targeting for allergies.

Okay, so let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk all about what happens when the immune system doesn't work and what we can do to strengthen our immune system.

We're back and we're talking about the immune system with doctor Piel Gupta. Now that we have a better understanding of what the immune system does and how it works, what happens if it's not working. So what we've learned is that there are some immune system disorders and they mostly have to do with the immune system operating out of balance, either underreacting or overreacting to a foreign invader. When the immune sys is underreacting, it's called an immune deficiency.

So an immune deficiency is when our body isn't reacting to viruses, bacteria, fungi. And it can be from the cells, you know, all of these different cells, from a part of those cells not working properly, or that there aren't enough of those cells to help fight infection. So it can be either the function or it.

Can be the amount. And immune deficiency can be primary which means it was inherited at birth, or secondary which means it's not an innate disorder. But something that is secondary to another condition such as cancer or AIDS, which stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and those immune deficiencies can range in severity and treatment.

So in those situations, you know, those patients need extra boosters, they need more antibiotics, they need stronger antibiotics than other people.

So then what about the other side of the coin when our immune system is overreactive.

And then the overactive immune system is you know, things like autoimmune diseases, so you know where like thyroid dysfunction, lupus, rheumatrate, arthritis, things like that where our immune system might be acting against us. Then we get other issues where a lot of inflammation, a lot of the things that we use to fight infection and turn then causes problems in our body.

So some parts of our immune system we cannot change because it's just what we're born with and so there's not much we can do to fix it. But there are aspects of our lives that do affect our immune system that we have some control over, like sleep. And we just finished talking about sleep in the last two labs, and what we know about sleep is that it is

But definitely for the immune system, we know that during sleep we're actually producing certain side of kinds that we need in order to fight infection. So cyto kinds are essentially just chemicals that then call other players into action.

If we don't produce those side of kinds, we're susceptible to all types of attacks on our immune system. So, like you said, TT, yes, sleep is key for a healthy immune system. But what are some of the other things you've seen people doing to increase their immune health.

Oh, my goodness, so many things. I think you mentioned that elderberry, which yes, I had never heard of, but not everybody is, you know, injecting into their veins.

The other thing that I remember being big was celery juice. When everybody was drinking all that celery.

Juice, Yes, and everybody is me. I was drinking celery juice for a little bit. I didn't know then it's disgusting. That's why I was adding it into my juices that I was making at the time that had apple, cucumber, gender and things like that. And I was like, oh, celery, and I put the celery in the thing. Celery. Let me tell you, you'll know if they're celery in that juice that you're drinking, because it turns it to something pungent.

When you think about those things, celery feels like the tuba, like you're praying a beautiful siphony with your juices, and if you put celery in there, it's like coming like, yes, it's not right. But I wonder, like when I think about immune health and all of these things the stomach and the acids in our stomach, they're destroying things that we put in there, So oh, is that really working, can we eat our way to better immune hill As far.

As nutrition goes and diet and the immune system in general, having a healthy diet is going to allow you to have a healthy immune system and a healthy body. So I'll take, like, for example, vitamin C. Our bodies don't make vitamin seed, right, but we need it for our

But if you're eating any of those things, then I'm not saying anybody on this line is not eating those things, but some people might not be.

I do take a vitamin seafood.

Well, that's a good pay you are taking a supplement. So does that make a difference?

You know?

According to Harvard Health, the data on vitamin C is that it's only marginally beneficial when it comes to things like the common cult and when you see something like that where it says it's only marginally beneficial. That means that more than likely taking large amounts of vitamin C is maybe going to help you a little bit, but maybe not so.

Doctor Gupta is saying that at least for something like vitamin C, focusing on a healthy, balanced lifestyle is the most important thing and getting plenty of exercise and sleep as well. Those are the best things you can do to keep up a healthy immune system and best to focus on before you start adding supplements.

And then the other big, big, big factor for all of these supplements and things like that is the cost and the safety. So you know, even though it says quote unquote natural on something, if you're taking an enlarger doses because they're saying that these higher doses might be beneficial, well it could also be the opposite. It could also yield a side effect because anything in a higher concentration can also cause problems.

Well, just know, our bodies can't absorb all those vitamins and they really can end up as waste.

Something that my girlfriend just said the other day, which is super important and she's a physician, also is that Americans have the most expensive p in all of the world.

Ah literally liquid gold.

This is perfect because in next week's lab we are talking to doctor Alice Lichtenstein about vitamins and why our p is so expensive in the United States. We're going to talk about the vitamin industry, and we're going to be talking about what we need to be considering if or when we decide we want to take vitamins. I think one of the things that I feel like is really important with what doctor Gupto was saying, is that our immune system, our innate immune system or the immune

If we think back to the things we've talked about psychologically socially, those things have biological implications. The health you had at fifteen is not the health you're going to have at thirty, and it's not the health you're gonna have at sixty. And it's designed that way. So when people say I'm at the best health of my life, that may be different than somebody else's health. You know, as much as we feel in control, we're not really in control of, you know, what's happening in our bodies.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. So it also makes you think, like, check in with yourself. Are you noticing anything abnormal or something that you feel like it happens to you more often? You are getting sick more often than other people. Maybe that's the perfect time talk to your doctor about it. Yes, like we said in our early episode, protect your neck. Did you see how people were making fun of Kevin Durant because his leg was ashym.

Yes, so you know that's social commentary, but that's also health advice. Kevin Durant, please moisturize your first line of defense.

But one of the symptoms for hashimotives disease is dry skin. Is dry skin? Yes, so now I feel bad. Yeah, I mean I didn't comment on the internet.

Yeah, but we don't never comment on the internet like that. You were yourself under your.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean go out and start diagnosing people with stuff, No mind your business, they will go to their doctor.

That's the main diagnosis. That's what I'm doing in my business.

It's none of my business. It's none of my business.

Yes, Special thanks to today's guest expert, Doctor Payel Gupta.

Find her on Instagram at NYC doctor and on Twitter at NYC Doctor Gupta. Dope Labs is an original production from Mega Oh Media Group. Producers are Jenny Rattlett Mast and Lydia Smith of Way Runner Studios. Editing and sound designed by Rob Smerciak, Mixing by Hannis Brown. Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Segira from Spotify,