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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast matt Rick

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Speaker 1: Tell with us. Matt we were talking about these microbes

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Speaker 1: that are on our bodies, and most of them are

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Speaker 1: good and essential. One of the things you have talked

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Speaker 1: about is to avoid antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers because

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Speaker 1: they kill off the good ones too, don't they. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're killing off the good ones, and they are weakening

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Speaker 1: your immune system and they may be giving you allergies

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Speaker 1: and even autoimmune disorders. Gosh, although I don't want to

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Speaker 1: overstate the last part, you want to hear how that's happening.

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how okay? So check this out. We're

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Speaker 1: talking about the bouncer and the ballet dancer. Well, the

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Speaker 1: deal with your body, to deal with this incredible system

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Speaker 1: going on inside of you is it must be trained.

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Speaker 1: It is trying constantly to figure out how to calibrate,

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Speaker 1: how to react with the bouncer, how to react with

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Speaker 1: the ballet dancer, and how to react with something in between.

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Speaker 1: The way it learns, the way it gets trained, is

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Speaker 1: by interaction with the natural world. So all those microbes

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking about on your desk, on the wheel,

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Speaker 1: you know how you're always going and you touch a

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Speaker 1: door handle and then you put the goop on your

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Speaker 1: hands or you see all the people. I did this myself.

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Speaker 1: I got kids, you know, they sit up, they touch

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Speaker 1: a banister, and then you squirt all that stuff all

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Speaker 1: over them. Ye. What that is doing is starving their

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Speaker 1: immune systems of the interaction with good, bad, or indifferent,

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Speaker 1: and then the immune system can't learn, and that's when

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Speaker 1: it either overreacts or underreacts. So see, but some people think, Matt,

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Speaker 1: if you don't kill those microbes in those germs, your

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Speaker 1: immune system will get beaten by So that's why they

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Speaker 1: want to kill them. And I will say, I understand

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Speaker 1: why people have fallen for that, because we have come

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Speaker 1: not so long ago from physical environments where things where

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Speaker 1: we had no capacity to deal with really bad things

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Speaker 1: that hit us. We didn't understand where they came from.

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Speaker 1: We didn't cook our meat properly. You saw some cultures

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Speaker 1: say well, we're not going to eat beef or pork.

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Speaker 1: Those were probably put in place due to hygiene. I

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Speaker 1: go back in this book and quote from Exodus where

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Speaker 1: they talk about ritual handwashing. But as we have moved forward,

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Speaker 1: our water systems have gotten clean, our sewage that now here.

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about the developed world, but we have much

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Speaker 1: less to fear, and so we have overcorrected. And we

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Speaker 1: have overcorrected partly because there are big marketing campaigns are

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Speaker 1: that are directed at people saying be careful. Your door

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Speaker 1: handle will kill you. That's true. The public bus will

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Speaker 1: kill you. Don't get on an airplane, you'll be dead

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Speaker 1: by the time you It is not true. Since I've

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Speaker 1: written this book, George, you know, the dog licks my

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Speaker 1: face in the morning, I don't even I don't even

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Speaker 1: wash it off, because that's just that's just microbes building

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Speaker 1: up your system. I am building my system. There is

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Speaker 1: ample evidence that overly hygienic environments lead to more allergies

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Speaker 1: because your immune system doesn't know how to react properly,

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Speaker 1: and it overreacts to things like pollen. I could see

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Speaker 1: that happening too. I could see that where if you

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Speaker 1: don't give your body a chance to build up its

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Speaker 1: own immunity, it's not going to be able to fight

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Speaker 1: this stuff off. Just think about kids going to kindergarten

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Speaker 1: and how they get in preschool, they get sick all

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Speaker 1: the time. Everybody knows what that is. That's the immune

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Speaker 1: system growing accustomed to the world around it. So I

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Speaker 1: will say this to people. Just again. I mentioned I

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Speaker 1: had my college roommate, and he can be, you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes not all that bright. I'm not telling you don't

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Speaker 1: wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. I'm

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Speaker 1: not telling you don't wash your hands before you eat.

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Speaker 1: I am saying, hey, the five second rule may actually

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Speaker 1: be okay. You don't need to spray the goop on

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Speaker 1: yourself all the time. I think of it as hygiene,

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Speaker 1: not hysteria. What do you think if you're in the

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Speaker 1: crowd and you're shaking hands and you're hugging people by

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Speaker 1: the hundreds, after it's done, okay to wash up? You know,

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Speaker 1: I would say under that circumstance, wash up. If you

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Speaker 1: go shake somebody's hand or your fist bump, I think

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Speaker 1: you're generally okay. I mean, the reality of the thing

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Speaker 1: is that for most of us walking around, our immune

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Speaker 1: systems are pretty robust and we're not going to get

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Speaker 1: sick all the time. And the truth is that getting

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Speaker 1: sick occasionally is not only no big deal, it might

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Speaker 1: be part of the strengthening process. Well, I was talking

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Speaker 1: with our doctor and our news segment while you are

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Speaker 1: on hold before the show started for you, and we

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Speaker 1: were talking about the measles. I've heard that, yes, you know,

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Speaker 1: and I had in my day, I had the measles.

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Speaker 1: I haven't had the measles since I have the chicken pox.

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Speaker 1: I don't have it anymore. My body has built up

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Speaker 1: an immune system to that, Yes it has, and that

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Speaker 1: is you know, there are those happen to be two

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Speaker 1: very rare diseases for which we have essentially effective vaccines.

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Speaker 1: But you in a sense inoculated yourself, that's right, once

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Speaker 1: you grew accustomed to it. And so one of the

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Speaker 1: things we know about the immune system is that it learns.

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Speaker 1: And another thing we know is that it must learn

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Speaker 1: and does it compensate for new things? Then how do

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Speaker 1: you mean compensate? Well, let let's say there's a new

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Speaker 1: disease that enters the body. Let's say age, for example,

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Speaker 1: how does your immune system compensate for that? You have

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Speaker 1: asked possibly the deepest most cosmic question of all about

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Speaker 1: the immune system. And I'm going to phrase it a

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Speaker 1: slightly different way. How the heck, can our bodies come

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Speaker 1: prepared to deal with a possibly infinite number of different

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Speaker 1: organic threats. It is the question that vexed immunologists, vexed

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Speaker 1: immune system scientists for centuries. It just blew them away.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going to give you some more information that Again,

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Speaker 1: the details are in the book, but I refer to

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Speaker 1: the immune system as the infinity machine based on what

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Speaker 1: I'm going to describe to you here. So, just to

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Speaker 1: make this all the more astounding, bacteria and viruses replicate

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Speaker 1: on the order of minutes. What that means is they

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Speaker 1: can mutate into new forms. We replicate every twenty or

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Speaker 1: so years, you get a new generation. We couldn't possibly

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Speaker 1: be in a Darwinian arms race with parasites. So how

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Speaker 1: can our body come equipped to fight all these things? Well,

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Speaker 1: it turns out that the genes in the immune system

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Speaker 1: do something that no other genetic material in our species

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Speaker 1: is capable of doing. And I'm not sure that other

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Speaker 1: than in the immune systems, any genetic material does in

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Speaker 1: any species. What happens is when you are born, When

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Speaker 1: you are I believe in embryo, in ingestation, you are basic.

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Speaker 1: Immune cells have a function where they rearrange themselves at

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Speaker 1: random that underlying genetic material, so as to create literally

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Speaker 1: billions of different genetic combinations, different keys. This is the

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Speaker 1: metaphor to use. Inside your body are billions of different

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Speaker 1: possible keys to fit any lock, any bacteria, virus, parasite

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Speaker 1: lock that might come along. Most of those, George, most

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Speaker 1: of those keys never get used. In fact, there are

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Speaker 1: keys inside your body right now, George, for alien organisms

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Speaker 1: that could come from outer space and land and be

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Speaker 1: of such bizarre genetic permutation that we've never seen anything

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Speaker 1: like it, and yet your body may well be prepared

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Speaker 1: to fight it. Interesting. Well, remember that movie The Andromeda Strain. Ever,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean that tells it exactly like you've

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Speaker 1: been pointing out. There's an organism from space comes and

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Speaker 1: most people couldn't handle it, And most people couldn't handle it,

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Speaker 1: And you mentioned HIV, and I want to say that

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Speaker 1: is about as devilish a disease as you could have.

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Speaker 1: But but some people could handle it, including one we've

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Speaker 1: talked about. Jason. I'm going to tell you in a

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Speaker 1: second about Bob Hoff, whose immune system is so amazing

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Speaker 1: it's studied by the National Institutes of Health. What makes

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Speaker 1: him so amazing is he got HIV the night of

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Speaker 1: Halloween nineteen seventy seven and has never had a symptom,

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Speaker 1: and he's never gotten AIDS. He has the keys inside

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Speaker 1: of him to fight a virus that is so nasty.

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Speaker 1: The way HIV attacks the body absolutely diabolical. Most of

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Speaker 1: us would die of it, like the black plague. Our

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Speaker 1: virus is smarter than our bodies. Well, they're not smarter

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Speaker 1: than our bodies, but they do have the capacity to

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Speaker 1: replicate very quickly. And when you can replicate, when you

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Speaker 1: can reproduce very quickly, you can create lots of different

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Speaker 1: versions of yourself. One of the things that's happening right now,

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Speaker 1: in particular with bacteria is that they are replicating and

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Speaker 1: creating defenses to antibiotics. They are very very smart. Have

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Speaker 1: you heard of drug resistant infection? Yes? And also this

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Speaker 1: feeling now that any biotics will become useless because the

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Speaker 1: viruses are smarter. There's a statistic that says that by

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Speaker 1: the year twenty fifty, more people will die of drug

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Speaker 1: resistant infection in the world than will die of cancer.

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Speaker 1: And I should rephrase that any biotics can't fight viruses.

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Speaker 1: They go after bacteria I was just I was just

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Speaker 1: moving on from that. Now, also, let me ask you

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Speaker 1: this too, and then we're going to take after the

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Speaker 1: break a whole bunch of calls. People are lining up

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Speaker 1: like crazy for you. Yes, why is it that when

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Speaker 1: people are under incredible stress, whether they put it on

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Speaker 1: themselves or not, they seem to get sicker, more old

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Speaker 1: than most people. They do not seem to, they do.

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Speaker 1: And it's a great question, and I'd love to tell

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Speaker 1: you about it. I get into this deeply in the

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Speaker 1: Practical Answers part of the book and to explain to

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Speaker 1: you why stress so radically weakens the immune system. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to take you back and we need to picture ourselves,

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Speaker 1: George about let's say about four thousand years ago. So

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Speaker 1: just picture us but a lot harrier, and we are

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Speaker 1: running across the savannah from a lion. Now, in that moment,

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Speaker 1: our body is shifting its resources radically. It is moving

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Speaker 1: the resources through a series of chemical releases of things

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Speaker 1: called cortisol, which is a steroid, epinephrin and nor epinephrin,

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Speaker 1: and those chemicals help keep us alive. They almost superpower

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Speaker 1: us under acute threat. But we get in that moment

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Speaker 1: a great weakening, a shifting of resources away from our

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Speaker 1: immune functions. And here's a basic logic behind it. If

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Speaker 1: you've got to survive a lion, a head cold can wait.

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Speaker 1: But what research has shown over time is that those

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Speaker 1: fight or flight adrenaline experiences that once we're associated with

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Speaker 1: fleeing a lion or fighting a foe now can come

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Speaker 1: up and we can experience from them under all kinds

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Speaker 1: of experiences, like say taking a final exam. Lots of

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Speaker 1: research has been done around what happens when people, how

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Speaker 1: sick people get taking final exams. There is no lion,

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Speaker 1: but in that moment, the immune system has been so

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Speaker 1: radically weakened that it cannot fight off what otherwise would

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Speaker 1: be fairly simple for the immune system to take on

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Speaker 1: because kids are so stressed getting ready for the exam.

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Speaker 1: Kids are so stressed. It happens. Though. There's a character

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Speaker 1: in my book, a woman named Linda, who was an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary businesswoman, once a professional golfer, and she was pushing

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Speaker 1: herself so hard, in fact, she wound up giving herself

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Speaker 1: strep and then not even treating it, sleeping several hours

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Speaker 1: a night, and wound up with terrible a terrible autoimmune disorder,

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Speaker 1: possibly triggered by the stress that had led to disease.

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Speaker 1: So there are major outcomes for all kinds of people

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Speaker 1: from stress. And the secret of all of this is, folks,

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Speaker 1: don't stress yourself out. The secret is you said it

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Speaker 1: so well. There is no lion. Don't don't make a

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Speaker 1: don't make a created into a lion. That's right. Listen

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Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more