Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
How To Support Your Immunity, Reduce Inflammation & Age Better with Dr Jenna Macciochi #648
14 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the role of the immune system beyond fighting infections?
The nervous system and the immune system are completely integrated. So if we're stressed every day, your immune system is primed for inflammation, which is then causing more wear and tear on our bodies and ultimately is feeding into chronic diseases.
But if we start to consider how the immune system plays a role in driving these conditions, then we can start to get ahead of what is probably the biggest health crisis that we have.
Hey guys, how you doing?
Chapter 2: How does chronic stress impact inflammation and immune health?
Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. I believe that today's conversation will transform the way you think about your immune system, what it really does, why it matters, and what we could all be doing to support it.
My guest is Dr. Jenna Machoke, one of the UK's leading immunologists and someone whose work I've admired for years. Since Jenna was last on my show back in 2020, she's been through some significant life changes, and that depth of experience is woven beautifully into her latest book, Immune to Age.
Now, you might think it's strange to focus on the immune system just as we're coming out of cold and flu season. But that's the thing that most of us get wrong. We think immunity is just about fighting infections.
Chapter 3: Why is midlife considered a turning point for immunity and health?
In fact, as Jenna reveals, the immune system is a key player 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.
Chapter 4: What practical steps can we take to support our immune system?
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?
Yeah, I think this is going to be my life's work to try and rebrand the immune system as much more than just infection protection. In fact, I like to think of it as the wellness system and it's kind of our arbiter of our health across the life course. So we only think about it when we get sick.
Chapter 5: How does self-compassion influence immune health?
We're like, oh, I've got that fever. I've got a flu. I've got that seasonal allergy that's going around. And I think we have to think about it a bit differently now. And that's kind of where my idea came for the book.
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.
Chapter 6: What is the connection between diet and immune function?
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?
I think quite possibly. I think we're not quite there yet in being able to do that as a consumer test, let's say. But we do have ways to measure what we call immune resilience. And this is a sort of research-based marker that would allow us to determine if somebody's immune system was functioning well. And so I don't say...
you know, something like boosted because that's not quite the right word. We have all these different components of the immune system need to be balanced. And it's kind of like a rubber band, like it can respond when it needs to, but come back to baseline effectively and not kind of get triggered unnecessarily or in an unwanted fashion, like an autoimmune disease or an allergy.
And you mentioned a few diseases that people might not expect to have an immune system component like cancer, heart disease.
Chapter 7: Why is oral health crucial for overall immunity?
We have things like metabolic syndrome. Now, these all have components of immune dysfunction going on, which I think has long been sort of misunderstood. And if we start to consider how the immune system plays a role in driving these conditions, where does it go awry? Then we can start to get ahead of what is probably the biggest health crisis that we have.
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.
Yes.
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.
Chapter 8: What does living in alignment mean for health and longevity?
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.
Yes, exactly. And I kind of see it as a network. So we call it the immune system. But unlike other systems in our body, you know, you would be able to tell me where anatomically your digestive system is or your respiratory system because they're located in a specific anatomical area. But your immune system is everywhere. It's this network system that's sort of connecting all.
It's using your lymphatic vessels and your blood vessels to move around. It's interwoven with the barriers to your body. So the lining of your digestive tract, your skin, it's in your brain, it's everywhere, it's in the gut.
And it's there because it's constantly sensing your outside world and your internal world and working together with your nervous system to feed all that information back and give you a sense of if there's danger, what needs healing, what needs repairing and how well you feel day to day.
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.
Yes.
First of all, have I got that right? And secondly, if so, can you give us some sort of practical examples of what are the kinds of things that we can do that positively shape our immune systems?
Yeah, I think it's broadly true to say it's made not born. We are born with certain immune functions, but then it develops much of our early life. So a little bit like the nervous system, like we're born with a nervous system, but a baby can't talk and think and articulate in the way that an adult does. It has to do a lot of learning and training after birth.
And so the immune system is kind of similar to that. And because it's responsive to your environment, it will respond to what inputs we get. So I think childhood is a real window of opportunity. And this was kind of what sparked and partly sparked writing this book because I wanted to think about life course health.
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