---
title: 'How Your Memories and Emotions Impact Your Immune System'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=PensChQQKg4'
video_id: 'PensChQQKg4'
date: 2026-08-27
duration_sec: 155
channel: 'Andrew Huberman'
---

# How Your Memories and Emotions Impact Your Immune System

> Source: [How Your Memories and Emotions Impact Your Immune System](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PensChQQKg4)

## Summary

In this video, immunologist Max Crummel discusses the emerging evidence that our memories and emotions can recreate our immune status. He explains that recalling past events with strong emotions can trigger a corresponding immune response, highlighting the powerful link between the brain and body.

### Key Points

- **Introduction of Expert** [00:01] — Max Crummel, a top immunologist, discusses how memories and emotions impact immune function.
- **Memories Recreate Immune Status** [00:16] — Emerging evidence shows that recalling a past event with a strong emotion recreates the immune status from that time.
- **Positive and Negative Recall Effects** [00:31] — Recalling positive events makes the body feel good, while negative events can recreate negative feelings.
- **Immune State Recreation** [00:45] — The immune state associated with trauma or positive events gets recreated through recall.
- **Brain-Body Connection** [00:58] — Brain state, memories, and emotions powerfully impact the immune system, not just current interactions.
- **Emerging Science** [01:25] — The brain-body connection is emerging, with bodily states associated with one another.
- **Actionable Implications** [01:51] — The immune system status can be recreated through thoughts and memories, with implications for health.

## Transcript

Max Crummel, one of the world's top immunologists, and we talk about how it function better. One of the more incredible things he shares is that there's emerging evidence that when we have a memory of a prior
event in our life that is associated with a big emotion, either positive or negative emotion, we recreate the immune status in our happened. Now, we all know that the brain and body are linked. We all know
that if we remember a dreadful event that we can feel sometimes very potently the negative feelings in our body and mind of that event. The reverse is also true. When we recall positive events, our body and mind tend
to feel good. This is not surprising, right? But what's incredible is that the immune state that was associated with either a trauma or a positive event or even things in between get recreated. So,
indeed, as many people have been saying for a long time, your brain state, your memories, your emotions, these powerfully impact your immune system, but it's not just about the immune system responding to what you're
interacting with now, today, in your current environment. There's also a recall of prior immune status when you think about prior events. This is powerful. This is actionable. And this has huge implications for how the immune
interacting. In many ways, they're creating bodily states that are associated with one another, and the pieces of this whole brain-body connection thing are really starting to emerge. You know, long ago, we knew,
a certain way. Not surprising. Recall a certain thought, your body feels a certain way. But the fact that the particular constellation of immune cells, your immune system status, as I'm sort of abbreviating it to be here, can
be recreated through your thoughts, your memories, that, what it means, what you can do about it, and much more. If you want to hear the full episode, simply comment immune in the comment section below. You
It's linked out there to all the standard podcast platforms. The episode, like most of our Monday episodes, are pretty long, but it's time-stamped. You can navigate quickly to the topics most of interest to you. Meanwhile,
immune system, about this particular topic or episode, or you want to share you'd like me to host on the podcast, please put those in the comment section below as well. Finally, wishing you all a great week.
And finally, finally, thank you for your interest in science.