How To Prepare Our Bodies and Minds for The NEXT Pandemic | This episode is brought to you by BLUblox. Chronic diseases are the top risk factors for death and disability today. They’re also among the top risk factors for having worse outcomes from COVID-19. This implies that much of our risk for worse outcomes from this virus is a reflection of the choices we’ve made in the years and months leading up to the pandemic. In many ways, the stage was set for this pandemic long ago, because it’s not just about the virus—it’s also about the host, and we were already compromised from an immune perspective before COVID-19 existed. This means that we have an opportunity to start making the necessary changes to our physiology, so that we’re better prepared for the next pandemic. On today’s episode of The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Austin Perlmutter, a board-certified internal medicine physician and New York Times bestselling author. He received his medical degree from the University of Miami and completed his internal medicine residency at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland Oregon. His focus is on helping identify and resolve the biological basis for "stuckness" in the body and brain, especially around decision-making.  He hosts the Get The STUCK OUT podcast and is a co-producer of the Alzheimer's - The Science of Prevention Docu-series. His writing is featured online on MedPage Today, Doximity, KevinMD, Medium, Psychology Today, MindBodyGreen, and DrPerlmutter.com. He is the author of a recent review paper on the interfaces between immune function, depression, and COVID-19. In this episode, we dive into: -How our epidemic of chronic diseases have predisposed us to worse outcomes from COVID-19 (4:34) -The importance of moving away from reactivity to solve our problems (12:03) -The intersection of COVID-19 and depression (16:02)  -What’s underlying depression (20:27)  -Dr. Perlmutter’s personal experience with anxiety and depression (25:52) -The connection between immune health and mental health (36:18)  -How to support and enhance our immune system (45:50)  -The importance of cutting out unnecessary stress (50:16) -The power of psilocybin and other psychedelic medicines for getting your brain unstuck (1:06:49) For more on Dr. Austin Perlmutter you can follow him on Instagram @austinperlmutter, on Facebook @austinperlmuttermd, on Twitter @austinperlmd, on YouTube @austinperlmuttermd, and through his website https://www.austinperlmutter.com/. Check out his podcast Get The STUCK Out at https://www.austinperlmutter.com/podcast. Also mentioned in this episode: -The Coronavirus Took Advantage of Our Weaknesses - https://elemental.medium.com/the-coronavirus-took-advantage-of-our-weaknesses-e7966ea48b75 -Immunological Interfaces: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Depression - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.657004/full#B40 For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at (302) 200-5643 or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter - https://dhrupurohit.com/newsletter. Interested in joining The Dhru Purohit Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/. This episode is brought to you by BLUblox. As someone who is on the computer a lot, I realized all that screen time was negatively affecting how well I slept. I started learning about blue light and how it disrupts the body’s natural melatonin production, so I decided to try blue-light blocking glasses throughout the day to see if they helped—and they totally did. I love the blue-light blocking glasses made by BLUblox. BLUblox glasses reduced my digital eye strain and dramatical