Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

I wanted to start off by talking about our immune system, our misunderstood immune systems.

Many of us think that our immune systems are solely there to defend us against infections, but in your new book, you make the case that the immune system is one of the central systems within our bodies shaping how we age.

Why is this so misunderstood?

The immune system seems to be at the heart of so many of the things that people struggle with these days.

Autoimmune disease, asthma, heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer.

And we're going to talk about that throughout this conversation.

But of course, as you point out in your book, one of the hot topics at the moment is longevity.

You know, how well we're going to age.

Do you think that we can say that the health of our immune system directly correlates with how well we're aging and arguably can predict how long we're going to live?

It's interesting, if I reflect back on my medical school education, I went to Edinburgh Medical School back in 95 and in 98, I took a year out to do an immunology degree.

It strikes me as I look back that there was a fundamental flaw that might be an understandable flaw, but a fundamental flaw nonetheless, which was to look at everything as separate.

Right.

This is what's going on when the heart's not working.

This is what's not working well when the lungs are not working or the brain's not working.

And I think our understanding as clinicians, as researchers, as scientists has really evolved over the years where we're now seeing this as a connected system.

And of course, the immune system lies at the very heart of it all.

Yeah.

I really love the introduction in your new book.

And I think in the introduction, you make the case that the immune system is made, not born, which I think is something for us all to reflect on.

The immune system develops depending on our life experiences, depending on the inputs we give our body that then shapes the immune system and how it functions.