Unlocking Winter Wellness: Boosting Immunity Through Better Sleep and Deuterium Reduction

Are you struggling to stay healthy through the winter months? Ever wondered how your sleep and diet could be impacting your immune system?
 
In this episode, Anthony Hartcher dives deep into the science of boosting immunity through sleep optimisation and deuterium reduction. Discover how a consistent sleep schedule can enhance immune function and overall health. Anthony shares practical tips for improving sleep quality, such as reducing evening stimuli, embracing darkness, and maintaining a cool sleep environment. He also explores the benefits of evening reflection for personal growth and mental well-being. Tune in to learn how to align your lifestyle for better winter wellness.
 

About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher 

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering. 

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Chapters

• 0:06 Importance of consistent sleep schedule for immune system health.
• 4:51 Importance of evening reflection for personal growth
• 9:56 Importance of darkness for sleep and immune system.
• 15:45 Sleep preparation techniques for better restorative sleep.
• 21:52 Minimizing alcohol consumption and carbohydrate intake during winter for better health.
• 26:58 Minimizing deuterium intake through cold exposure, breathing, and diet.
• 33:16 Winter nutrition and cold exposure for optimal health.
• 37:48 Boosting immune system during winter through diet, sleep, and exposure to sunlight.

Transcript

Anthony Hartcher: 0:06

Welcome back to another insightful and exciting episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher, a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your wellbeing. And today, you have me doing that just for you. And we're talking about immune health. The reason why I'm talking about immune health in the Southern Hemisphere, we have winter. It's a bit colder and there's certainly a lot more viruses floating around amongst people. And so I wanted to share some tips on how you can keep your immune system robust, optimised so that you can avoid those nasties. So for those in the Northern Hemisphere, the listeners up there, thank you for tuning in. And yes, this is equally applicable to you because we want a robust immune system all year round. So how do we look after our immune system? Let's talk about what we need to do. So our immune system is most active at nighttime. So we have our white blood cells taking over. And yes, the white blood cells, they don't like radiation. So they don't go around as much during the day when we are exposed to, you know, the radiation from the sun and all the oxidative stress from being active. So our immune cells like coming out at night and doing their work at night. So it's really important that we get a good night's sleep. A good night's sleep enables the immune system to do its job effectively. So how do we go about getting that good night's sleep? Well, it all starts with consistency, a consistent to bedtime and a consistent to wake time. So when we don't do this, what happens is we suffer this social lag. So just like jet lag, we have social lag. And this is because we choose to stay up and not listen to our body clocks and not allow them to stay in tune with the night-day cycle. And we stay up too late at night and hence we get out of sync with the circadian rhythm. So the circadian rhythm is the night-day cycle. And that's what our body is evolved to work with. So it gets its signals from the outside light and works out what it needs to do internally in order to support you living healthily. So if we don't go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, we get this clock out of sync. And when our clock's out of sync, we don't function as well. Our digestion isn't as great. We're a bit drowsy and groggy during the day when we should be wakeful. We're not as energetic when we want to be. And that's just because we're suffering this social lag or jet lag because we've chosen to stay up late at night. So what we want to do is go to bed at the same time every night. Yes, as much as it may sound boring, it works amazingly in terms of optimising your health and wellbeing. I've been doing this for a long time now and I've realised how important that is. And I generally stick to it like a pig in mud. So I'm very much attached to getting to bed at roughly around the same time. So within an hour window, so I'm somewhere between 8.30 and 9.30, I'm in bed consistently. And then I'm waking consistently between 5 and 6. So you want to find your rhythm, what works for you. And so find a time of night where you feel sleepy enough to go to bed and then stick with it and stick with your to wake time. What you don't want to be doing is sleep-ins and things like that, where you're waking up at significantly different times and then that's causing you to go to bed later at different times. So the number one thing around a good night's sleep is a consistent to bedtime and a consistent wake time. So what else can we do to support our immune and thus our sleep? What we want to do is make sure we're getting the downtime we need in order for the body to wind down cortisol. So cortisol is our awake stress hormone. It keeps us functioning, alive, active during the day, which serves a purpose. But at night, we don't want cortisol to be elevated. We want this stress hormone to be broken down and become less of in the evening. The only way we can do that is start winding down. So the choosing to wind down, we need to actually have downtime. And I find this is a really good part of the day to do some reflectiveness, to reflect on the day rather than keep this stimulus coming in. So what happens, we have lots of stimulus during the day, incredible amount of stimulus, like a lot of stimulus that we're not really conscious of, we're sort of, you know, it's that temperature changing. I mean, sometimes we are, but our body's constantly adapting to the temperature changes and fluctuations during the day, the light adjustments during the day. And so there's constant stimulus coming into the body. We've got constant stimulus in terms of inputs around our work, around our life. And what we want to do is reduce these inputs at night and allow some processing time of these inputs. Otherwise, what happens is all our filing systems remain open and we put our head on the pillow and all these open filing systems, all these files are floating around between our, I guess, our neural pathways and we become too wakeful because we still haven't processed all the inputs from the day. And so the evening can be a great time to stop inputs and allow processing of what went on during the day. And this will start to calm the mind because when you start processing, you start closing files in your brain. And so when you put the head on the pillow, what you find is that you'll be able to fall asleep because there's not many files open. You want very little files open. So what I recommend is in the evening that you start stopping the, or you start stopping the inputs. So what you want to do is stop the notifications, stop looking at the phone, stop arousing the mind to new things, new ideas, new suggestions. What you want to do is stop the inputs and allow the processing to take place. So start processing the day, thinking about your day in terms of what went well, what didn't go so well, what could be improved tomorrow, how can you improve on the day that just went by. And that's constant and never ending improvement approach. And that's what you want to be working on. That's working on yourself. That's working on you being the best version of yourself. If we don't do this, we don't evolve. We don't grow. We don't become better. So what I suggest you do in the evening is have reflective time. And typically people like to refer to this time as journaling. So journaling in terms of your day, how those meetings went, did they go to plan? What could be improved on next time? What are you going to do differently next time? And start focusing on those incremental improvements. And what you'll feel is that you're making progress and that you're starting to close out that day rather than leave that day meeting, you know, open and have frustration around it because it didn't go quite to plan. What you've done is you've closed that file of that, oh, that meeting didn't go so well. It didn't go so well. It didn't go so well. That chatter stops when you think, okay, this is why it didn't go so well. This is what I'm going to improve on next time. The file closes of that bad meeting. So that that meeting, that file is now closed. And you just focus on what you're going to do differently next time. And that meeting or meetings will come up again in the future and you're better ready, prepared for what you're going to do next time. Maybe it was preparing a more decisive agenda or have key outcomes that you wanted to get out of the meeting. And so what you want to do is start processing the day, stop the inputs. So stop the notifications, turn off notifications, allow some reflective time. And reflective time is growth time. It is where you're working on yourself and allowing yourself to grow. And we don't do this enough these days, too much inputs. We just don't have enough time for processing and allowing the learnings and the development from what transpired in the day. How can we improve next time if we're not reflecting on what we've just done? And if you think about high performing people, they're constantly finessing what they're doing. And the only way you can finesse what you're doing is having that reflection time, reflection time on how you can improve and do things better next time. So it's really important in the evening that you allow this reflection time, do some time for journaling, allow the files to shut and close and stop the stimulus, really important. The other thing you want to be doing in conjunction with that is changing the light, allow the natural light to take over your household. So the natural light in the evening is getting darker and you don't want the insides to then reflect daylight because when the insides of your house reflect daylight and outside is nighttime, the body starts to get confused because the temperature is changing. The body is thinking, well, it's getting cooler. Shouldn't the light be less because the sun is going down? And so this sends confusion to the body and the body, if it sees daylight or sees light when it's dark outside, then it continues to do daytime things, which is producing the wakefulness hormone histamines or the neurotransmitters, such as the, or it could be the cortisol. And so it starts producing these wakefulness things, histamines, cortisols, and it keeps you awake, it keeps you alert, but your body should be winding down, it should be allowing the immune system to take over in the evening. And if we're not allowing that to happen, then we're not cleaning out the bugs or the viruses that we've taken in that day. We're allowing that we're allowing them to duplicate, to replicate, and to take over our system. We don't want that. The only way we can stay on top of these viruses and bacteria is that we allow our immune system to kick into gear and that immune system will kick into gear upon darkness. It gets very active, these white blood cells. We want active white blood cells. We don't want to suppress their activation by allowing our retina to see light. So we want our eyes to see darkness. Upon darkness, then the body starts to do it to do what it does in the dark, which is it starts to produce melatonin. So melatonin is going around to all the organs and the cells within the organs and telling the cells within the organs to start doing nighttime things, to start activating the immune system, to start repair and rejuvenation of organs and intestinal linings and, you know, helping that stomach repair and then be robust for the next day. Because if we're not doing this repair work, what happens is we're taking a broken body into the next day and that broken body is more susceptible to viruses and bacteria. You've probably heard of leaky gut. Leaky gut is a typical sign, you know, sign that you aren't doing repair work. Your body hasn't had time to replace those damaged cells from whatever damage you did to them. So what we want to do is allow that repair to happen. And we do that repair at nighttime. So certainly allow this downtime, this relaxful time to do the repair work. And that starts by seeing darkness. So what you want to do is allow the lights in your house to go down with the sun. And how we can do that? Well, there's a few ways in which we can do about it is have minimal lighting, just enough to get by, to get around the house. But also use lights that aren't so bright, such as the incandescent light bulb is a great thing to get back to. Yes, it is much better for our health because it's a much broader spectrum light. The white lights, fluorescent lights of today are very narrow band light. And that narrow band light is really intense in the blue. And the blue is what our eyes associate with middle of the day. We don't want our body doing middle of the day things at nighttime, because middle of the day things is lots of cortisol. And it's and it sends out the insulin to digest food because we eat food during the day. Our our metabolism is active during the day. And so this is why people feel hungry at night is because they're under too much blue or white light or fluorescent lighting. So we want to allow that light to disappear with darkness. We don't want that sort of lighting on. So minimise the lighting at night. Ideal lighting is firelight. So if you've got a fireplace or a gas, a gas fireplace, allow that to burn and allow that to be your light. And a lamp, for example, with the incandescent light bulb is perfect lighting for reading or journaling. We don't need these really bright lights. We don't want to stimulate daytime at night. Candlelight is fantastic. So if you like candles, light some candles. It's perfect light for our eyes and light that is lower than the horizontal. We don't want it, light above the horizontal is signaling to our retina that it's middle of the day because the sun's above us, right? In the evening, it drops below the horizontal, right? So we want the light coming up below the horizontal, which is great to have those sort of candles around or the the fire the fire burning, which is below. So these are some great tips to really help you have a great restorative night's sleep. It all is in the preparation, just like a successful meeting during the day is about the preparation going into that meeting. It's about the preparation. We need to prepare ourselves for a good night's sleep. In the evening, we don't want to eat too much. Ideally, not much at all. A very light meal in the evening. If we have a heavy meal in the evening, it stimulates the heart to get the blood around the digestive system to digest the meal. And so the heart rate is increased with an elevated heart rate, it takes longer to get to sleep and get into deep restorative sleep, because we want the heart to be at a low low resting heart rate to allow the repair work. We want the heart to have some recovery time because it's very active during the day. So we want that heart rate to drop in the evening. To get the heart rate to drop in the evening, we need to have less work for our body to do, and that is less digestion. So we want to have a light meal. Also, we want to feel a temperature drop. We certainly don't want a hot household. A hot household will increase heart rate because the heart rate increases in order to get the blood out to the peripherals to allow the body to cool down. We want a drop in core body temperature, and we can't do that if we're in a hot environment. So we certainly want a cooler environment at night to allow the heart rate to drop. We also want less work for the body to do, and that's eating less at night. So a light meal at night is really helpful. We don't want any stimulus in the afternoon, evening, and that's cutting caffeine. So you really want to cut down on any caffeine intake. Get it to zero or close to zero. Caffeine has a long half-life, and the long half-life means it takes a long time for the caffeine to get down to half the concentration, and that half-life, six to eight hours. So if you have, say, for example, 100 milligrams of caffeine, which is typically what's in coffee, it takes six to eight hours for that 100 milligrams to break down to 50 milligrams in the body, okay? And so it's a really long half-life to get the caffeine out of the system. So we want to not get too much in, otherwise, we overwhelm the body and there's too much for the body to process, and therefore we have active caffeine. Whilst we have active caffeine in our body, it takes us longer to fall asleep because the sleep pressure is less. So what caffeine does is essentially replace the adenosine. The adenosine binds to cells, and the more adenosine binding to cells, the more sleep pressure we have. What caffeine does is break that bind and it doesn't allow it. It blocks the ability for adenosine to bind to the cell, and so that keeps us awake, right? And this is why we crash because the adenosine builds up, and then once the caffeine starts to break down, all the adenosine binds to the cell, and then we feel tired. And so this is why we want to do things in moderation because if we do the extremes, we have these peaks and troughs. We don't want to have these peaks and troughs. We want to have steady level energy. So that's really good prep in terms of what I shared, in terms of how to get a good night's sleep. There's a fair bit there, there's 20 minutes worth of what you can do at night in terms of how to prepare yourself for a good night's sleep. So in summary, what we want to do is reduce stimulus, right? Really reduce stimulus, allow time for processing, processing things, closing files, putting closure to things, putting down the things that you didn't get done that day so that they're on paper for tomorrow. You're not needing to remember them. You don't want to allow anything for memory. Anything for memory, put it on paper because you want to close the files. So what we also want to do is allow the eyes to see more darkness at night. And that will allow the body to start doing nighttime things, which is to start producing melatonin, to start telling each of the cells in the organs to start doing nighttime things, start shutting down, start doing less. We want to do that. I also mentioned the importance of not eating too much at night. You don't want too much work on the body. That will elevate the heart rate. The other thing that will elevate the heart rate is a hot room. So you want to allow the room to be just around that 18 degrees, sort of anywhere between 16 and 20, depending on your body type. So again, I need a much cooler room, probably less than 18. Some people need, my wife certainly needs a temperature that's greater than 18. So again, this is where the pushing off the doona and all the duvet, and you're pushing it around and fighting over it and all that sort of stuff. So the other thing I mentioned was consistency. So to find the ideal bedtime and stick with it. And the ideal wake time, stick with it seven days a week, and you won't suffer the social lag or that thing that's equivalent to jet lag, right? But you're not really jet lagged. So you don't want that experience. And this will enable a immune system that performs, that works well at night because at night, that's when the immune system's most active. That's when it's going around in its surveillance mode and terminating those viruses and bacteria that are in too much or too greater numbers. If we don't do this surveillance work, the viruses and bacteria take over. So that's it for sleep. I won't talk anything more about sleep. The other one I didn't touch on was alcohol. Reducing alcohol consumption at night is really beneficial for a good, deep, restorative night's sleep. Yes, alcohol will help you fall asleep, but it won't help keep you asleep, and it will generally keep you awake because you're processing the alcohol. The body's got to do work. The heart rate is elevated. So we don't want that with alcohol consumption. We want to minimise alcohol consumption at night. Now, in terms of what we want to do to minimise the ability for viruses and bacteria to get into our system, we certainly want that good intestinal lining, and that is through a good night's sleep. We also want to reduce carbohydrate consumption because carbohydrates contain deuterium. And I've mentioned this on previous episodes, so you can go back and tune into the episodes where I discuss deuterium. But deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen. We refer to it as heavy hydrogen. Carbohydrates have a lot of this or a lot more heavy hydrogen than, say, fats, right? Fats and protein. So what we want to do is minimise the carbohydrates. And the reason why we want to minimise the intake of deuterium is because viruses and bacteria love deuterium. It is great fuel for viruses and bacteria. This is why flies like feces, because in feces, there's deuterium. And it, there's got a short, short life flies and insects and bacteria and viruses. And so it's all about survival. It's about getting as much energy as quickly to grow quickly and to allow the reproduction of that species. So they love deuterium. And if we have excess deuterium in our body, what's going to happen is that the flies are going to, or not the flies necessarily, it's more the bacteria and the viruses, will really have an affinity to you. So we really want to reduce carbohydrate consumption. And in particular, in the winter is really important because in the winter months, our metabolism is turned down. It goes into preservation mode. We sort of go into a phase of hibernation in a sense that things are dialed down in our body, such as the thyroid is turned down. So we are less active and we should embrace that less activeness of winter. It is that time to really restore, rejuvenate, and just to get through. It's to get through those cold months so that we can then thrive. And in the summer months, and you know, typically in the hunting and gathering period, that's when the food was really available. And so we consume a lot of food in the summer months when everything's active. You've got all the flowers, the plants, everything's blossoming and booming because of the amount of sunlight and also the animals because of the amount of vegetation that's available. And so everything's, everyone, the whole animal ecosystem is very active in the summer. And it's then to put on the weight to get through the winter months. And so we have this natural evolution that our metabolism is very active and we're very hungry in the summer months. But then in the winter months, we are less active and less hungry. And so we want to go with how we've evolved because it'd be more supporting you in terms of your robustness to get through the winter. In the winter months, you think naturally what's available in the environment, there's less carbohydrates. And so we don't want to be consuming large amounts of carbohydrates, such as fruits, for example. Fruits are really summer items. So in the winter, we really wind down our fruit consumption. That's less carbohydrates. What we want to embrace is more the richer, such as the more fattier and the more protein and the more nutrient dense foods. So the winter months are your typical stews, just slow cooked meals, your curries. And so they're quite full in terms of full of nourishment, lots of fats and proteins, very satisfying. So we embrace them. We eat less. So we have like, typically, sort of one meal or one, maybe two meals. We don't need three meals in winter. We're less active. And so this doesn't apply for everyone. I'm just talking generally here. Some people are very active in winter, but most of us sort of go into a phase of hibernation. We certainly are less active than the summer months. And so if we're consuming more fats and more proteins, we're intaking less deuterium. And so therefore, there's less, we're less attractive to viruses and bacteria. So they're less likely to find a way into our body because if you're less attractive, then they're going to go to someone more attractive, that has higher concentrations of deuterium. So how do we keep this deuterium low so that we can stay healthy throughout the winter months? One thing is, doing saunas during the winter, so sweating, you know, forcing that sweat during the winter months. So we sweat out deuterium, making sure your bowels are moving. So you're, you're moving your bowels regularly. That's another way in which we flush out deuterium, making sure you're breathing. So doing breathing exercise, another way in which we get out deuterium. And then also embracing the cold. So yes, there's a bit of a wive's tale, or not a wive's tale necessarily, but a myth around that if you're cold, you'll catch a cold. That's, that's a, that's a myth because at the end of the day, if you're doing everything I'm sharing today, you're not going to catch a cold. You're actually going to not have, reduce your likelihood of catching a cold. It's only when your immune systems run down and then you get further shock through being cold is you're more susceptible because your body's just not robust enough. But if you do everything I said around sleep, you've got a really active immune system at night, you're doing the repair work at night, then you're invincible the next day. You're really robust the next day. If you're eating less carbohydrates, there's not many avenues and you're not very attractive to viruses and bacteria. Whereas if you're not doing what I'm saying, and then you have a bad night's sleep, and then you get cold, and then your body's struggling to find the energy to warm you up and keep the immune system intact, then you're more susceptible, right. So the other thing is when we have a bad night's sleep, we're more susceptible to wanting to have foods that are rich in carbohydrates, right, so that they're more attractive, the sweets and things like that. So if we have a good night's sleep, we're less tempted by the carbohydrates, the sugars. So that's another thing that really helps is it goes hand in hand. A good night's sleep means that you'll eat better the next day. You'll be more active the next day because you'll have more energy because you had a good night's sleep. So all these things are helping minimise deuterium and keep your immune system robust. They all go hand in hand. So in terms of, I guess, closing out the deuterium picture, yes, we can encourage secretion through exercise, through hot exposure, which is saunas in the winter, and allowing yourself to have an active digestive system in terms of moving the bowels regularly, make sure you're breathing, getting deep diaphragmatical expansion breaths, and therefore you're breathing out deuterium. And so these will be ways in which you can minimise deuterium and also the intake, you want to minimise carbohydrates, and that's really important. The other thing is cold exposure is important too. And so having an element of it's deliberate cold exposure. So it's not excessive cold exposure, it's just being in control of the amount of cold exposure you have. So you want to get to a point where you've got goosebumps and you've got a little shiver and hold that for a period of time and then get warm again. Do that regularly and that's allowing the mitochondria, the the, I guess, the powerhouses of the cells to really get fine-tuned in terms of their energy production. It gets them working well. It activates your brown fat, that metabolically active fat. The more metabolically active fat, the more you're protected from the cold and the more you're protected from gaining white fat, which is the fat you don't want. Okay. So really good to have deliberate cold exposure. It's a lot easier in winter, just wear less layers for a period of time, then put the layers back on. But having constant sort of feeling the cold, you don't want to insulate yourself from the cold because when we have total insulation from the cold, we're not allowing this natural experience with the temperature cycling from the outside. So when we have, I guess, excessive amount of closings, the body's not seeing that environmental change in temperature. It's not experiencing that. It's just got this constant temperature. Whereas if we're allowing us to get exposed to the outside temperature in a controlled manner, then the body's sensing that, yeah, it must be middle of the day because I'm feeling a bit warmer, but then in the evening, I'm feeling a bit colder. And that that is good temperature exposure because it's telling the body that, hey, the sun's going down, let's start doing nighttime things. But whereas if we start to control the environment, we don't get that signaling from the environment and we have evolved with the environment. We have these mechanisms to help us, you know, like, such as the manufacturing of brown fat to help us, protect us from the cold. If if we don't have this cold exposure, we don't produce this metabolically active fat, which is the brown fat, which protects us. It's like provides thermal insulation from the cold. And the more cold exposure you have, the more metabolically active fat you have to protect you from the cold. And it's the good fats, so-called good fat because it's metabolically active and it's there to insulate you from cold exposure or to keep warmth within your body. So we want to keep that brown fat in healthy amounts throughout our body. And the great thing is, in producing brown fat, we use up white fat. Okay. So the fact that you don't want, you'll make the metabolically active fat, which will increase your basal metabolic rate. It will be higher as a result of having more brown fat, same with having more muscle mass. So we can increase our metabolic rate by having more cold exposure. And winter is a great time to get this cold exposure. So a typical morning routine for me is I wake up, I don't turn on devices or look at my phone. I get outside, I get outside, I get cold exposure. So yes, my body's thinking, yeah, it's cold and the sun's not up yet. And then I'm walking out in the dawn, the sun starts rising, my body temperature starts feeling the sun. And so therefore it's starting to realise and through the eyes, it's getting a coherent signal. It's getting a light message through the eyes, the body's feeling a temperature increase. And so it's signaling to my body that, hey, it's daytime, let's get into daytime things. Let's start producing cortisol. Let's start producing dopamine, serotonin, all these great hormones and neurotransmitters that really help us to be mentally robust during the day and active during the day and to have energy during the day. So it's a great sort of morning routine is just to get outside in the morning, experience a bit of cold, feel the sun rising, feel your body temperature rising, get some exercise in by walking and allow the eyes to see the natural sunlight and then to recalibrate to the day and to say, oh yes, it's daytime. I'm going to start doing daytime things. So that is really important in terms of keeping deuterium down, keep you less attractive to viruses and bacteria. So the cold, as I said, is really good, not only for manufacturing brown fat and to keeping that that metabolically active tissue alive and active. It's also really helps drive metabolic efficiencies and energy production efficiencies by getting some cold exposure because your your body has to work hard in order to keep you warm. Okay. And so it really starts driving energy efficiencies, production, and therefore your metabolically or your energy production will improve because you've improved the efficiency of the mitochondria to produce energy. So getting back to nutrition, eating less carbohydrates, more fats in the winter, so more and just focus on what we would have eaten like bone broths are fantastic. It's fat and it's got minerals and it's hydrating and it's warm. So bone broths are fantastic. Stews are fantastic. So you got protein, you got fats, you've got some vegetables, and then you've got your curries. And so these are all very warming, nourishing, nutritionally dense meals that are filling, satisfying, and have one of them or, you know, two meals a day. So in the winter, you can really get away with not having three meals a day and fasting, you know, that little bit of fasting in the winter is helpful because typically in the winter months, we didn't have an abundance of food. So our body's used to eating more nutrient dense foods, rich in fats and proteins, the things that, you know, would have kept better and less carbohydrates. And then we would have, we wouldn't have eaten lots during the winter because we would have carried the fat from the summer and would have relied on having less food in the winter, fasting more and burning the fats from the summer. So what you want to do is stimulate this behaviour in terms of how our bodies evolved, and that's working with your body. So in winter, you want to eat less, eat less, but eat more nutritionally dense foods, eat less carbohydrates, because typically they're not really available in the winter, if you think of a human evolution standpoint. So eat less carbohydrates, that's cut the grains, cut the sugars, cut the fruits, really focus on the nutrient dense foods such as the meats and the fats, have more of the warming, nourishing, gut healing foods, which is the curries, the bone broths, and the stews, the slow cooked meals, focus on getting a good night's sleep and, and then being active enough. You don't need to be super active in the winter if you're doing everything else that I suggested, because you won't gain weight. If you're getting deliberate cold exposure, that's burning calories. If you're eating less, that's taking less calories in. And so you should be able to get through the winter robust and still in a great state for summer months, right? So we don't need to overeat, overindulge in the winter because our metabolisms turn down naturally to preserve you, to get you through the winter. So we want to work with our body, work with the body, and the body will reward us in terms of how we look and feel. So eat less, eat more nutrient dense food, make sure you get a good night's sleep, focus on improving your sleep. As I said, do all those suggestions around minimising inputs, allowing time for processing, and that will enable you to get a good night's sleep. At night, your immune system's most active, and then go through that nice cycle, getting up with the sunrise, allowing your body to feel the temperature change through the day, allow your body to see the sun during the day, and to keep in this circadian rhythm to ensure a good night's sleep when the immune system is most active. So that's very much it for this episode on making your immune system robust during the winter's months. I've kept it to human evolution and biology as what we would have once experienced. The more you can work with how our bodies have evolved and what works best for them, the better your bodies will work for you and you won't get a cold, you won't catch the flu. So it's it's just a matter of doing the things that resonate with your body, what your body needs, and getting away from some of the comforts such as keeping warm and staying warm and don't leave and don't this, it's a whole myth around if you get cold, you'll catch a cold. That's not true, okay? It's what gives us is out, we get colds because we are broken, essentially, and we don't have a strong immune system and the viruses and the bacteria take over. That's how we get a cold. But if you do the things that I shared today, just getting back to the basics of health, then what you'll find is that you have a robust immune system and there's no inlet for the virus or bacteria, or they may get in, but they won't survive because at nighttime, your immune system will be super-surveillant and to be wiping out all these viruses and bacteria. So make sure you embrace the outdoors. Allow allow yourself to feel the temperature, the sunlight during the day, eat less, eat less carbohydrates, eat more nutrient-dense food, get a good night's sleep, same time to bed, same wake time, and you will remain robust. And stay tuned for more insightful episodes of me&my health up. I look forward to continuing your education. I have lots of guests coming up on the show. So stay tuned and I really appreciate you listening and tuning in each week to me&my health up.

Podcast Disclaimer: 40:40

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