LONGEVITY with Nathalie Niddam #422: Lessons from Centenarians: Immunity, Lifestyle, and Changing the Aging Game With Dr. Jeffrey Bland
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Mar 20, 2026 
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, biochemist and pioneer called the father of functional medicine, reflects on decades of work in nutrition, immune resilience, and personalized lifestyle medicine. He discusses immune aging vs boosting. He covers diet retraining the immune system, microbiome and inflammation, tartary buckwheat trials, and practical 90-day immune renewal steps.
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Let Curiosity Drive Root Cause Medicine
- Embrace curiosity and explore outside standard medical teaching to find root causes; Bland switched from clinical track to research to ask more questions.
- His infant son's death deepened his commitment to seek broader answers beyond conventional models.
Avoid Continuous Mega-Dosing Of Nutrients
- Mega-dosing nutrients is not universally beneficial; the body prefers pulsed, hormetic exposures.
- Bland now advocates personalized, cyclical supplementation instead of continuous high-dose regimes to respect biological rhythms.
Autoimmunity Often Follows Altered Self Molecules
- Many autoimmune reactions reflect altered self-molecules rather than a suddenly traitorous immune system.
- Bland explains glycation and pollutant-modified tissues (e.g., A1C, PAHs binding thyroid tissue) create 'non-self' targets that trigger immune attack.
