In this video you'll discover how important factors in your day to day life play an important
role in your immune system's ability to function properly and fight off infections.
The choices you make on a day to day basis are either going to improve your immune system
or deplete your immune system. Now, if you have a depleted immune system over here, essentially
next time Covid-19 comes around, influenza, whatever it is, not only are you more likely
to get it, but also have some pretty negative symptoms that come along with it. Now if your
immune system is functioning well and you're able to fight it off, likely you'll have just
minor symptoms, hardly even know you had a problem. So, what I'm going to talk to you
about in this video is the top environmental factors that are going to deplete your immune
system and make you more susceptible to getting sick. So, stick around to the end. But before
we get started, I'm Dr. Zyrowski and welcome to the channel. If you're new to the channel,
it's a pleasure to have you here. Be sure to subscribe, hit that notification bell,
and join our notification community and I'm going to help you excel your health and your
life.
Now this is going to be part three of a multiple part series and how to improve your immune
health. One of the things that I saw with Covid-19 is a lot of people just felt that
with a viral infection is random chance that you'll get it and it's random chance that
you'll die for it. But the truth is, is that your body has its own innate ability to fight
this stuff off and I'm going to teach you how to boost your immune system up so that
you can fight these different viruses off very effectively.
So, let's go ahead and talk about sleep because when it comes to one of the top things that
really depletes your immune system, sleep is a major factor there according to the research.
Now what we find with sleep is that not only are you going to have a decrease in T-cells,
but you'll just have an immunodeficiency problem altogether. Now T-cells, you're probably wondering
what these are. These are just a special type of immune cell. They're responsible for regulating
the immune system response and they're also responsible for actually neutralizing the
foreign invaders. These T cells play an important role. There's many different types of them,
but the thing that’s important to understand here is that sleep is going to deplete your
T cells and also just have a negative immune response altogether if you're not getting
enough of the sleep.
Next thing we'll find here is increasing cortisol. Now, cortisol is a stress hormone, which we'll
talk about in depth a little bit more over here, but this cortisol is going to be increased
if you're not getting a good amount of sleep. Now this increasing cortisol leads to many
problems throughout the body. One of them is going to be just an immune deficiency problem,
but it also leads to weight gain. Lack of sleep leads to weight gain. And what happens
when you have weight gain in your immune system is trying to function well? It just can't
function as it should. When we look at Covid-19, what's the number one thing in the United
States? Nobody's probably told you this. What's the number one thing in the United States
that would be a huge risk factor as to whether or not you got co Covid-19 and died or not.
Obesity is number one. That's a big thing to understand here. Okay, so we want to make
sure that we're not having weight gain, we're not having increased cortisol and we're not
having insulin resistance. This is one of the things that's also a big deal Type II
diabetics, Covid-19, immune deficiency, a greater risk of death. When we look at places
like New York, guess what? There is an enormous population of Type II diabetics there. That's
another thing that nobody might've told you about. And when you have insulin resistance,
that's not good. Sleep can be correlated with insulin resistance.
Also, it's going to have an increase in inflammation through the cytokine response, this is going
to equal immunodeficiency. We have to make sure that we're getting a proper amount of
sleep. According to the research, what is a proper amount of sleep? Well, on average
it’s right around seven hours. Some people can get away with six, some people can get
away with eight or they need eight, I should say. But for the most part, let's say right
around seven. Now, the other thing that's important to understand about sleep is it's
not just about the quantity of sleep, it's about the quality of sleep. Some people can
lay in bed for eight hours but never fall into a state of deep sleep and not even hardly
actually sleep while they're laying there. And so, what we want to do, if we're really
focused on improving our sleep, we want to make sure that we're getting to bed early
enough and we're getting a good eight hours of sleep, but the other thing that we want
to do is even use a sleep tracker if we don't believe that we're getting into a deep sleep
throughout that time. Find ways to actually keep modifying and improving your sleep in
order to help boost your immune system. So, sleep is a major factor here.
Now let's talk about stress. Now this is one that many people face. Stress is a huge thing.
I can't tell you how many patients have come in over Covid-19 so stressed out. I'm like,
you know what? The stress response alone is going to make you get the virus if you come
in contact with it. And so, let's talk about stress and how it works. So, the central nervous
system, basically when stress hits it, there's going to be a fight or flight response. This
fight or flight response is completely natural. If we think in the time of our ancestors,
essentially what happened is, let's say your village was being invaded or maybe some sort
of like animal, like a tiger was about to attack, this fight or flight response was
good because what happens is it increase adrenaline and cortisol. These are two stress hormones.
It is good for those to be increased, but not to be increased for a long period of time
because increased in a short period of time essentially is going to improve your immune
system. It's going to increase your ability to fight off infection and heal and all the
things that are good. But what happens is when we have a chronic immune response, which
is the place many people are in today, essentially, and I should say a chronic stress response,
what happens is it depletes your immune system. This chronic stress response is going to cause
havoc in your body.
What are a couple of ways that people are having chronic spreads stress responses today?
First of all, it could be like work. It could be family, it could be relationships. Those
are all ways you could have chronic stress. But one of the ways that I see it today is
people watching the news. So, for instance, when you watch the news, one of the things
that is actually going to entice you to keep watching is fear. The news companies knows
that know this. They have clickbait headlines. They're very deceptive with their information.
They keep telling people the total number of cases of Covid-19 versus the number of
new cases. Who cares about the total cases, because that's including people who got it
and they're completely healthy and they moved on in life right. Many people correlate total
number of cases to total deaths, which is not even remotely true. And so, they're giving
you information and spinning it in a way that's causing more fear, making you continue to
watch. And as this fear response keeps hitting you with all this negative information, you
have these hormones just raging in your body, these stress hormones, and it leads to political
glucocorticoid resistance. This essentially is like a cortisol resistance. So, if you're
familiar with what insulin resistance is, same type of concept, different scenario,
but with cortisol. And so when you get this cortisol resistance, essentially what happens
with this cortisol just surging in your body, you have a decrease in antibodies. These antibodies
that are responsible for going around and tagging the foreign invaders and even neutralizing
some of them, you have a decrease in the ability to identify those foreign invaders. You have
a decrease in white blood cells. This is your army against foreign invaders, pathogens,
viruses, whatever it is. This is your army. They're depleted when you have chronic stress.
The other things, you're going to have a decrease in T cells, which we talked about those right
there.
And there was a study that they did in this study. They took 250 plus individuals. They
put a group of them under chronic stress and they had another group that were not under
stress. From there, what they did is they actually gave both of these groups a virus.
And what they found is that the group that was under chronic stress was much, much more
likely to go and have an increase in viral infection versus those were who were not under
stress. So, it's very important to make sure we mitigate stress, avoid the situations,
turn the news off, whatever it is. Avoid stressful situations, practice medication, breathing
techniques, be sure to make sure that we're getting things in our life like yoga, which
can help decrease stress, and then what I like to do in order to decrease stress is
go in and exercise.
And that's the next thing on our list, which is incredibly important because when you exercise,
you improve your immune defense system. Research shows that time and time again, those who
are exercising on a regular basis are going to have improved immune defense and also a
decreased risk in illness. So, if you're exercising and the virus comes around and you're getting
adequate sleep and you're decreasing stress and you're exercising, guess what? Your body
knows what to do with that. Then your body is smart and it's going to just wipe it right
out instead of the virus wiping you out. And so, exercise is important as it also has an
anti-inflammatory benefit, which as I mentioned before, through the cytokine reaction essentially
that's going to help improve your immune system.
Now the other thing that I want to mention here is that this is part three of a multiple
part immune series that I did that will help you fight off any virus or any infection that
comes your way. Now if you haven't seen part one, you can click on it right here and I'll
also put a link in the description below so that you can really become a master at just
having incredible health and also making sure that you're able to fight off any foreign
invaders that come your way.
When it comes to exercise, let's go ahead and talk about habitual exercise. Now, what
has been shown in the research is that if you have habitual exercise that is just like
causing more stress through exercising too much, over-training, then essentially what
happens to actually deplete your immune system. So, imagine you're somebody who's going in
and exercising for two, three hours every single day. That's going to cause an immune
depletion, but habitual exercise, regular exercise, that's 30 to 60 minutes actually
has been proven to do a couple of things for you. Not only improve immune regulation - immune
regulation is important because if our immune system isn't regulated well and it's working
too much, it can lead to autoimmune issues. If it's not working enough, essentially it
can just not be there for you when you get hit with a virus or something. So, it helps
improve immune regulation and it also has been shown to offer a delayed onset of age-related
immune dysfunction, which is important because let's take Covid-19, influenza, any of these
problems into consideration, those who have the most devastating impact is going are going
to be those who are elderly, those who actually have other conditions. And so, it's important
if we can exercise and improve our immune system and fight off that immune system decline
as we age, incredibly powerful.
Now I also want to mention here like all of these pour into one another for me. Let me
talk about me for instance. When I have chronic stress, I don't get enough sleep. When I don't
get enough sleep, I have increased cravings. It's harder to eat healthier during that time
and because I'm not sleeping well, I don't want to exercise and then it causes more stress
and this cycle just keeps on going. This is how it is for most people. I see this time
and time again with my patients. So, make sure that you're working to improve your body
function in all ways, and you're working to get better quality sleep, reduce stress, and
also get exercise on a regular basis.
Give this video a thumbs up, share it with your friends so that they can boost their
immune system and fight off any foreign invader that comes their way. And then check out this
video, which is going to be the next part in our series.
It is your immune system that will protect you from all the different foreign invaders,
the pathogens of viruses, influenza. Your immune system is incredibly powerful. It's
your innate ability to actually fight these things off.