How to Enhance Your Immune System | Dr. Roger Seheult

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
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. Roger Seheult. Dr. Roger Seheult is a board-certified medical doctor in pulmonology, which is the understanding and treatment of conditions that impact the respiratory system, such as colds, flus, and other viruses, mold infections, asthma, and more. Dr. Seheult is also board-certified in sleep medicine. He does his clinical work in the intensive care unit at Loma Linda University, and he is actively involved in medical and public health education through his terrific online channel called MedCram. Today we discuss how to avoid getting colds, flus, and other viruses, and how to treat them to minimize discomfort, accelerate healing, and avoid long-term consequences. During today's episode, we discuss long COVID, as well as the use of sun and red light to stimulate mitochondrial and therefore metabolic health across the entire brain and body. That opens up a broader discussion about phototherapy, which is the use of light to control health, and temperature and other levers for improving brain and bodily function. Dr. Seheult emphasizes that sun and red light therapy have a long and well-established medical history and their mechanisms of action are known, and therefore it's not just biohacking as many people think. We also discuss the sometimes controversial topic of the flu shot, and if and when you should get one. Dr. Seheult, as you'll soon hear, is world-class at making medical concepts and the actionable items related to health exceptionally clear. As a consequence, I'm certain that you'll truly appreciate the knowledge that he shares in your efforts to be and stay healthy at any age. In fact, by the end of today's episode, you'll be armed with the real knowledge on how to best get over nasty infections of the sinuses, lungs and throat faster should you happen to get one and even better how to avoid them altogether. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize 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, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Roger Seheult. Dr. Roger Seheult, welcome.

**Dr. Roger Seheult** (2:18)
Thank you so much, Andrew, for having me.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:20)
I discovered you because you were putting out and continue to put out incredible information about how to stay healthy amidst infectious diseases, airborne infectious diseases, skin contact based infectious diseases, and on and on. And nobody likes to be sick. And you've provided me tremendously valuable information about how to avoid getting sick, and in many cases, how to accelerate the progression from sick to healthy again. It's been tremendously helpful for getting me back into life, as it were. Let's talk about some of the things that one can do to avoid getting sick when in the presence of airborne viruses, in particular, colds and flus and other viruses, as it were. If you were to think about the major pillars of remaining healthy, especially when one is exposed to colds and flus from kids, in your case, also in the intensive care unit, where people are coming in specifically because they're sick, often with infections like colds and flus, or worse, you need to take specific precautions to avoid getting sick. What do you think of as the fundamental layer of keeping a healthy immune system to avoid getting sick? And then we'll talk about how to get over and move through being sick more quickly.

**Dr. Roger Seheult** (3:39)
Yes. Well, the question is, how do you avoid getting sick in terms of infectious diseases? And as it turns out, the answer to that is actually the same in terms of avoiding getting sick for anything. And it sort of goes to the pillars, as you call it. In my mind, there's actually a physician that I know very well just outside of Stanford, actually, in a place called Weimar, Weimar University, Dr. Neil Nedley. And he's actually coined this mnemonic called New Start. And each of those letters, to me, in my mind, is something that I go to when I want to improve health in people in general. So the N starts for nutrition. And we can talk about nutrition and what that does to the human body. Obviously, you know, as natural as possible, staying away from processed foods. That's something there. Exercise is E. And when I'm talking about exercise, is I'm talking about the understanding that we have regarding exercise. Not to build muscle necessarily be stronger. I'm talking about exercise in terms of health. And that has more of a J hook type of picture. What I mean by J hook is if you're not doing any exercise, you're going to have higher levels of inflammation. As soon as you start to do some exercise, even mild to moderate exercise, the amount of inflammation in your body starts to come down.