Michael Levy's Pt 2 Interview with Dr Jon Lieff -The Secret Language of Cells

In The Secret Language of Cells, physician and neuroscientist Jon Lieff lets us listen in on these conversations and reveals their significance for everything from mental health to cancer. He explains the surprising science of how very different cells—bacteria and brain cells, blood cells and viruses—all speak the same language. This overarching principle has been long overlooked because scientific journals use impenetrable jargon that is difficult to understand across disciplines, much less by the general public.

During infections, immune T cells tell brain cells that we should “feel sick” and lie down. Cancer cells warn their community about immune and microbe attacks. Gut cells talk with microbes to determine which are friends and which are enemies, and microbes talk with each other and with much more complicated human cells in ways that determine which medicines work and which will fail.