The Under-Appreciated Thymus Gland

Discover why the thymus plays a central role in T-cell development and why Dr. John believes its importance has historically been underestimated in adult health.
Understand how nutrients such as zinc, selenium, and healthy fats may support thymic function and immune resilience as we age.
Learn how Traditional Chinese Medicine approaches thymus support through Qi-tonifying herbs, acupuncture points, and Qigong practices designed to support circulation, vitality, and immune function.

About the Expert

John Nieters, LAc, DAOM, CFMP

Dr John Nieters

Dr John Nieters has been teaching and practicing the combination of Functional Medicine paired with Traditional Chinese Medicine for several decades. He has been practicing Tai Qi, Qi Gong and meditation for 50 years.He has hosted over 500 call-in talk radio shows on "The Balancing Point." He currently lives in Alameda, CA with his wife, Jenny and son, Johnny. His wife, Jenny, is the acupuncturist for the 49ers football and St Mary's Rugby team.He has authored the book "The Sweet Spot," on how to read your blood work and plans to have two additional books published this year.Dr John's patients, staff and listeners call me the "Story-teller".

Thymus Health and Mortality Statistics

In one study that was quite compelling, there were two groups that had similar chest surgeries for other causes. In 1 group, they took out the thymus because, you know, it's useless in their minds.

And the other group they kept their thimus after 5 years. five years, 8.1% of the group with no thymus died, while only 2.8% percent of functional medicine and integrative health simple, practical and fun so you can restore balance, boost vitality and enjoy a healthier life every single day.

Hi, this is Dr. John. Thank you again for joining me. I just love doing these podcasts and I wouldn't do them if you weren't listening. So thank you. Today will be a little different.

by the public at least, the least understood gland of importance in the human body. And this was prompted by a newsletter that I got from Dr. Al Sears.

So Dr Seares is a physician, longevity specialist in Florida. He's traveled all over the world, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, He's been with the shamans down in Brazil and South America, etc.

And he's always looking for breakthroughs in herbal and plant medicine. Now, he is a medical doctor. He does a lot of other things, a general medical things for longevity.

But he really is pretty fascinating with research that he does. So anyway, that's what prompted this podcast. And I have been guilty of something that the rest of the medical world is generally guilty out too.

That's overlooking the importance and the power of thymus gland.

Why the Thymus Matters

So not the thyroid, but the thimus. I've taught thyroid classes and adrenal classes for decades now. Very, very important, obviously. But I've actually never taught a class on the thymus or really pointed at the Thymis.

And probably that's because when I first started studying anatomy, physiology, medicine, the Thomas wasn't considered very important after puberty. The thimus is what creates our T cells, T for thimas, which are the differentiated cells that attack invaders to our bodies.

The information that was gleaned at that time had mostly come from cadavers. And so by the time someone passed away in their 40s or 50s, usually they had a very shriveled up, almost useless thymus gland.

We knew that after puberty, it started to shrink. But the mistake that was made is that they assumed that the thymus was failing or had failed because of the medical conditions of people that were being autopsied.

You know, it's most likely just the other way around. That they died, they became sick, that couldn't defend themselves from infection and from other causes because their thimus had become so inefficient.

huge misunderstanding. And today I'm going to do some, I usually just wing these podcasts, talk off the cuff. Today I am actually going look at some notes because Dr.

Sears published some really fascinating statistics or I could say frightening statistics actually about the lack of thymus. So some of the statistics that Dr Sear pointed out that when you compare people in good thymic health and with those compared to those that have weak thymic health or even worse have had their thimus gland removed, the statistics are quite shocking.

So in the people with healthy thymus, they had a 50 percent lower death rate from any cause, a 36 percent low risk of having lung cancer, nearly a fifty percent reduced risk dying from lung cancers, and a 63 to 92 percent risk cardiovascular death.

Now the discrepancy is there were two different groups that were studied and they used slightly different endpoints. to determine and so one came up with 63 percent, the other one with 92 percent.

Now you could swallow all the statin drugs on the planet, take all of the drugs for the heart on planet and you're not going to reduce cardiovascular death by 92%. The body knows what it's doing.

There's some very, very good sayings about that, that the physician treats and the body heals, right? No physician heals you. They can cut things out that are going to be problematic, they can set your leg, give you some herbs to help your immune system, but ultimately it's up to your body to heal.

And in one study that was quite compelling, there were two groups that had similar chest surgeries for other causes. In one group, they took out the thymus because, you know, it's useless in their minds.

And the other group they kept their thimus. After five years, five years, 8.1% of the group with no thymus died, while only 2.8% percent of other group died.

That's an astonishing, astonishing characteristic.

Nutrients for Thymus Support

So less than 50% the death rate if they kept their thynus. Now, there are some studies going on currently in the Western medical world on how to reverse what they call thymic decline.

The thimus gradually gets replaced with fat and becomes highly ineffective. Now Dr. Sears promotes three different substances to take to help with thymic health.

I support all of those, I think he's absolutely correct, but I'm going to add some traditional Chinese medical wisdom to this and show you how to really have a very, very healthy thimus, which again reduces your death rate for most causes by about 50% over a given time period.

Dr. Sears pointed out three things to do dietarily and supplement-wise to support your thymus. First, he says get enough zinc. Zinc is essential for thimus regulation as it's essential from many other processes in the body.

But it really, zinc deficiency disrupts thima's repair and so they don't produce as many new T-cells, they do not develop. And it's actually been shown that adequate zinc will help repair a damaged thymus.

So that's pretty amazing. He recommends 30 milligrams a day of zinc picolinate. I like zinc pickolinate a lot. And about 30 grams, I think, is a good amount.

Now, there's some really good zinc gummies out there these days, so it is not going to be a struggle to take this. Now, during COVID, I was recommending higher doses because essentially everybody was exposed to COVID.

I think the estimate is 97%, but it's very high. And so zinc is one of the primary things to avoid getting COVID and to shorten the infection time. If you have enough zinc inside your cells, the virus just doesn't replicate.

So in that case, I was recommending more like 55 to 60 milligrams a day. Now you had to be a little careful because you do need to balance that with a you little bit of copper, a ratio of about 10 to 1 zinc to copper.

You know, between 8 and 12 to one. And so if you're going to do We do a 54 milligram zinc dose, and with that, we give four milligrams of copper just to keep that in balance.

He also said add selenium. Now, selennium does a lot of amazing things in the body. It's critical for proper thyroid hormone development or breakdown.

One of the things that helps it convert from T4 to T3, T 3 is the active energizer bunny form of thyroid. And so he says to do 100 to 200 micrograms a day.

200 is the absolute top that's generally recommended because you can't actually get a particular type of selenium overdose or poisoning. What I like to for selinium is have people eat one or two Brazil nuts, which are very high in selanium.

I think it's a little easier for the body to deal with in that form. So one or two Brazil nuts. And he mentions eat more healthy fat. Now that's important for everything.

But he points out that they maintain cell membrane integrity. That's absolutely true in the thymus and everywhere else in your body, in you brain, your heart, etc.

Maintains cell-membrane integrity And he points to a 2026 study that the higher ratio of monounsaturated fats changes the internal composition of the fat inside the thymus gland, which is critical.

And so the T cells are more resilient. They're less likely to die prematurely. So he point out the good sources are olives and avocados and their oils, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and pumpkin seeds.

At some point in the near future, I'm going to talk about problems with olive and avocado oils. They're not problems of the oils themselves.

Chinese Herbs for Immune and Thymus Support

It's just there are so many fakes out there. The last study I saw on avocado oil pointed to a huge, huge number of other fats that are being sold as avocado, because they're cheaper, so they just mix it with the avocado.

So you want to be a little careful. You want olive oil and avocado oil from really, really trustworthy operations. So now I'm going to talk about what we do in Chinese medicine for this.

It's a few, probably a year and a half ago, vagus nerve got very popular. Everybody was doing podcasts on the vaguss nerve. And I would have people coming in and saying, hey, can you treat my vagous nerve?

And essentially what I'd say is, I don't know how to not treat your vagus nerve. Chinese medicine is rooted in vaguss nerve treatments. I mean, there's so many points that stimulate a vagous nerve balance.

But it's kind of the same thing with a few other systems like with thymus. Can you help my thynus gland with herbs and acupuncture? It's hard for me not to help your thimus, okay?

it is more like that. So I'm going to talk about some single herbs that you can get that are very good. Pretty much most herbs, that say Qi tonifying, or making Qi righteous, anything statement like that, those herbs generally are good for the thymus.

And a couple of the ones that are very well known, you've got ginseng or ren shen. Now that's not American genseng, that has different properties. But ginseng has been known for centuries to have immunomodulatory effects.

Now, they wouldn't have called it that a couple thousand years ago, but that's what it is. And it actually affects T cell activity. So the ginceng polysaccharides have been studied very extensively.

I mean, thousands of studies have done on ginteng showing how it modulates the immune system. Another one is astragalus. Huangqi and it's one of the better studied TCM immune support herbs.

It's in a lot of formulas and there's a lots of research describing its effects on lymphocyte, T cell function and immune regulation. So again, it is usually included in Qi tonifying formulas.

A couple more herbs, one is Dongshen, D-A-N-G-S-H-E-M or Cotinopsis, and that's often used as a cheaper substitute for ginseng, which is quite expensive if you get really good quality gbinseng.

So often they'll use Dongshen which also tonifies the qi and it does have T-cell related immune function benefits. Another herb is Baiju. Again, you see this in almost all Qi rectifying or Qi tonifying formulas.

That's Attractilotus. Um, again, same qualities, T-cell proliferation and immune regulation. And then I'm going to mention a couple of formulas, and these are ready-made formulas that you can find.

One is Bujong Yi Qi Tong. which was a formula created by my favorite all-time Chinese doctor. In 1249, he created a book called The Treatise of the Spleen and Stomach, wherein he explained that if you don't treat the spleen, which is really the digestive function of pancreas and small intestine in this case, and you don't fix the stomach, well nothing else you do is going to help, especially herbally.

If you can't digest the herbs, if you cannot assimilate these polysaccharides, then there's no point. So he focused his work on the spleen and stomach aspects.

And Bujong Ichitong is his kind of foremost formula, what he's really known for. He actually had a lot of other good formulas, but this is the one, I would guess this, is a number one selling formula in China.

Again, a classic chi-tonifying formula. It increases the thymus and spleen indices and it changes CD4 to CD8 T cell populations. Now that's really important because those populations, the ratio of them and the absolute amount tell you how much immune function is actually occurring.

Another one formula is Yunzhi, Y-U-N-Z-H-I-Danshen, D-A-S-E-M decoction. Now, this is not a very commonly used formula. This is a newer formula, but they were looking at post breast cancer patients and they found that this formula tremendously increased the number of CD4 T cells.

That's really critical. So this a formula that's used in China. post cancer surgeries or post-cancer treatments, sometimes at the same time as the treatments.

Acupuncture and Qigong for Thymus Health

So there's another study done in 2024 on Ruyong formula and this again was on, this one was mice, and they found that T cell subsets in mouse breast cancer stress models really, really were improved.

So that's a little bit on some herbal formulas. Now I'm going to talk a bit about acupuncture points that can stimulate the thymus and T-cell production.

Probably the classic point, probably the most utilized point in Chinese medicine is Zhu Sanli, the three mile point stomach 36. And that's located about three chun, those are body inches below the knee and just to the outside of the tibia, The big bone in the front of your leg.

And that point has been studied like crazy. Again, thousands of studies using stomach 36 for immune function. Very, very effective. A point that's often combined with that is a point called San Yin Zhao, spleen 6. That's on the inside of the legs down near the ankles.

It's actually a points that we use for bladder treatments. Its very, very effective Studies show that huge increases in ability for women to not have as much urgency, I guess I said that kind of weird, but so they don't have incontinence or urgency.

And we've treated so many women with these points and it's extremely effective. Another point that's often used is called hugu, large intestine four, and that is a point located right here.

And very powerful point. That was my mentor's number one point that he used. He would call me up to the front of the room. I was the teacher's pet because his love was Tai Chi.

And while I still in school, I teaching his Tai chi class. He invited me over and had me do a few things, but he would say, Pongsa, come up here. You never knew my name.

It called me round face, probably the literal translation of that fat face. So he called up and he'd stimulate that point, hugu, for 30 minutes while he lectured.

It completely changed my idea, my concept, and my reality of what was possible to do with acupuncture. There were things that occurred while he was stimulating that that I couldn't even explain it.

It's so almost magical. Li11 or Qiuchi, which is in the outer crease near the elbow, and those two are often used together. They have huge immunomodulatory effect.

they also have a huge effects on pain, especially with electroacupuncture. It will just immediately erase pain in many patients. Now another point is called the Shanzhong.

That's Ren 17 or Conception Vessel 17 and that is in the middle of the chest over the sternum between the nipples. One of my all-time favorite points.

It does so many things. Now That's right over the thymus. Now we don't needle into the thymos, we needle along this tissue of the chest, very very shallow, but it's a very relaxing point and it is also a powerful point.

And I think the fact that it's near the thymus is what gives it a lot of that effect. And then there are a few other points that are on that conception vessel.

That's the vessel that runs up the front of the body that we use. In fact, we do a technique called celestial tuning fork, which is actually using acupuncture needles in a particular pattern.

It's at the same time relaxing and tonifying. So that's pretty amazing combination. And so there's tons and tons of research. We have to remember that in China, this is their national treasure.

And the same people that are doing research on western drugs, because most of those studies are done in china, are the people who are studying the herbs and the acupuncture.

So the effectiveness is tremendous. I knew fairly early on in my medical quest that the thymus had to have more benefit than it was being given credit for.

And I based that on the fact that my first Qigong teacher was adamant about tapping the sternum. I'm going to turn my camera a little bit here. So this is like a bird's beak.

It's not a gentle tap like you would do if you're tapping exercises. This should reverberate in your chest. And so it's sending waves through your chests and it is increasing blood flow and sheaf flow to the thymus.

Now, he wouldn't have been so adamant about that if he didn't some reason to do so. And I've found that most Qigong warm-ups or QIGONG sets will have you pounding now.

When I say pounding, you don't want to hurt anybody, including yourself, but it should vibrate through your chest. That's a very, very powerful exercise and a great way to start your day.

Closing Thoughts and Show Outro

In the afternoon, when you start getting a little fatigued, So that's the end of my presentation on the thymus. I just have one more thing to say, pay attention to your thimus, it's critical.

It's absolutely critical, It can reduce your chance of dying over the next five years by almost 50%. So thank you for joining me, I look forward to being back here again so that I can share some information with you.

Thank you! Thank you for joining me on The Balancing Point. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review.

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Ancient medicine for our modern world

The Under-Appreciated Thymus Gland

About the Expert

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Interested in knowing if we are the right fit for you and your condition?

Alameda Acupuncture

Ancient medicine for our modern world

The Under-Appreciated Thymus Gland

About the Expert

Recent Posts

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Interested in knowing if we are the right fit for you and your condition?