Professor Fulvio D’Acquisto discusses boosting our immune system in BBC documentary
- Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Professor Fulvio D’Acquisto, Professor of Immunology from our Department of Life Sciences, has been featured in a BBC One documentary, The Truth about Boosting your Immune System.
Broadcast in early January 2021, the documentary features A&E doctor Dr Ronx Ikharia speaking to leading experts in immunology, to find out how much we know about boosting our immune response.
Dr Ronx Ikharia spoke to Professor D’Acquisto on his previous research exploring the impact of massage on the immune system. He discussed how emotions in general have an impact on the immune response and why there is both an emotional response and a biological response to being touched.
Professor D’Acquisto explained that massage increased the number of T cells, one of the most important white blood cells in our immune system, in blood. When we are massaged, nerves in the skin connect to organs where T cells are stored, and this stimulation causes T cells to be released into our blood. In the programme Professor D’Acquisto took Dr Ikharia through an experiment where he tested Dr Ikharia’s blood before and after a one-hour massage and found there was an increase in their T cells of around 20%.
The programme also saw Dr Ikharia talk to different specialists to investigate the roles of diet, supplements, alcohol, stress and exercise on our immune responses. It was first broadcast on January 6th and is available on iPlayer.
View it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r0hx/the-truth-about-boosting-your-immune-system
Screenshot image credit to the BBC.