How Your Immune System Works & How to Improve It | Dr. Max Krummel
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A famous immunologist in the 1970s 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 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 and your your body is getting like more complex then as 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 [music] and science-based tools for everyday life.
[music] >> I’m Andrew Huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Max Krummel, 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. We also have a very candid discussion about vaccines and medications more broadly.
You’ll notice that Dr. Cromer is incredibly balanced throughout today’s conversation, and yet he’s also willing to state his views very clearly. So, it provides a very rich discussion about vaccines and all the rest. Indeed, thanks to Max’s incredible breadth of understanding of immunology and much more, and his ability to break down complex topics and make them accessible, plus his genuine care for public education and science, today’s is a truly special and important episode to educate and inform you in actionable ways. I should also mention that Dr.
Cromer has an incredible zero-cost Substack. It’s called The Immune Beyond. You can access it by going to the immunebeyond all one word {dot} substack {dot} com, and there he teaches about science and more. Again, it’s awesome, it’s free, so definitely check it out. 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, today’s episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Max Cromer. Dr.
Max Cromer, welcome. >> Thanks. >> Most everybody, including me, has heard of this thing we call the immune system, and most people just think, “Okay, this is the thing that when I’m rested keeps me from getting sick, and when I’m not as well rested, I tend to get more sick, and there are these airborne things, and we can get sick, and there’s like funguses and viruses and and I think that’s probably what most people understand, and they probably also understand that there are like cells and T cells and B cells, but if we want to think about a little bit of the history of our understanding of the immune system and what we understand now, maybe you could orient us because in reading your work prior to this discussion, I’m realizing that this is a very recent field, and also there’s still a lot that we do not understand. >> When I started immunology, sort of 30 years ago, I was rotating in labs at Berkeley, where I think you were at Berkeley as well. And one of the transcription factor biologists, you know, mentor said, “You know, why do you want to work in immunology?
It’s not really a field. ” And so at the time it was kind of true, you know, everything was about DNAs, cloning. We still, you know, it’s obviously still a lot about molecular biology what we do. But you know, at the time it was pretty simple. We thought of the immune system as something that on the one hand it had to come into play when you saw a virus or something foreign.
Um and otherwise it generally had to be quiescent and kind of leave you alone. I think cancer immunotherapy changed that a lot. That that gave us the idea that you could tune its reactivity, so that you could get to the point where if you gave an immunotherapy, what it was actually doing was raising the threshold if when a T cell would activate, and allowing T cells that might be just letting the tumor get by, get they they’d be able to go and go after that tumor and and and kill it. I think that changed the spectrum to a certain degree where we suddenly thought, “Okay, this isn’t just a just a, you know, foreign versus self thing, because it’s a tumor is kind of not exactly self, but it’s it’s actually it’s also not foreign. It was once you.
It’s a cell that’s kind of evolved. ” So I think tumor immunology really changed our perspective on that, you know, to the point where we now think of it as a as a tunable system. But then I think, you know, a lot has happened in the last 20 years. There’s been a lot of excitement about cancer immunotherapy because well, we’re we’re curing people with cancer, which really wasn’t done before. And you’re now in the space where um the immune system is showing all these other roles.
I mean, you know it in the in the nervous system, the brain, there’s microglia that do various functions, cleaning up, etc. But it’s in your gut. It’s allowing microbes to live in you, but it’s titrating them. It’s keeping them there in the kind of like the right quantity. So, it’s kind of guarding yourself.
It’s uh you know, it sits in your liver regulating how how much you metabolize. There’s a collection of cells there. Um it’s in your heart. It’s you know, regulating cardiomyocyte function. Uh those are the the muscle cells of your heart.
Uh they have to be cleaned up from time to time. So, there’s a set of immune cells that will help get rid of their byproducts in the in the in the heart. So, it has all these additional functions that kind of before where where lost in the in the just you know, the foreign battle against the foreign. And now we have this kind of perspective of the system that measures us all the time. It measures everything about us and it exists in some ways.
I think it’s to to help us be who we are. You know, and that’s hopefully that’s you as a healthy person. You know, in chronic disease unfortunately it can be part of the problem where it becomes part of the things that’s letting the chronic thing whether it’s a tumor or kidney disease or what have you. It can it can actually help perpetuate it because well, it’s you know, in some ways it’s trying its best. But it’s applying the wrong program to the wrong situation.
Come on. >> So, yeah