Andrew Huberman

You also have things, again, waste products that are being generated by the cells of your body.

And the lymph nodes are the place where all that stuff can be surveilled by the immune system.

What do I mean surveilled by the immune system?

Well,

Within the lymph node, you have immune cells.

You have things like T cells and B cells, so named because the T cells mature in the thymus, which is a structure that is very prominent when you're young as a baby and as a kid.

And then over time, you actually lose your thymic tissue as you become an adult.

And by the time you reach kind of 40s and 50s and 60s, 70s, you may not even have any thymic tissue whatsoever.

You have T cells, you have B cells, which come from the bone marrow.

These are different types of lymphocytes, different types of white blood cells.

Again, these are all different categories.

So I'm talking about lymphocytes, white blood cells, T cells and B cells, different subcategories that go into the lymph nodes and then

check out and see whether or not there are bacteria and viruses and other kinds of foreign invaders that might need to be dealt with by the immune system.

In addition to that, you have cells that go out into your body, things like macrophages, things like dendritic cells, okay, the names don't matter so much, that are looking for foreign invaders.

Again, it could be viruses, bacteria, funguses, could be even just, you know, physical bodies that somehow made it into your system one way or the other.

And they will literally...

present things to the T cells and B cells and other immune cells within the lymph nodes so that the T cells and B cells can generate, through a process, this takes some time, to generate antibodies to fight those things off, okay?

I've talked about the immune system in previous episodes.

You have an innate immune system, which is a kind of generic response to all forms of foreign invaders that causes some local inflammation, some swelling, sometimes some symptomology in response to a virus.

that's just very generic, like feeling stuffy, lethargic, a little bit of a headache or a stomachache, this kind of thing.