Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

in how we age, how much energy we have, and whether we develop chronic disease.

Jenna calls it our wellness system, and once you hear why, you won't think about your longevity in quite the same way.

Jenna gives one of the clearest breakdowns I've heard of how stress works in the body.

She explains the close links between chronic stress, immunity, and inflammation.

We talk about why midlife is such a critical turning point for your biology.

And we discuss what self-compassion, good oral hygiene, and even martial arts can do for our immune health.

What I love most about this conversation, though, is where else it takes us.

Jenna and I go way beyond the basics, talking about identity, alignment, and even pondering the meaning of life.

It's both practical and philosophical, scientific and surprising.

And I think you're going to find it incredibly powerful.

So settle in and let's get to know our body's all important wellness system a little better.

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?