Eight simple strategies that you can start doing today to boost your immune health include: stopping smoking, limiting your alcohol intake, avoiding infection, transforming your stress, increasing your exercise and movement, ensuring you have healthy nutrition and adequate hydration, taking key vitamins and supplements, and making sure that you are getting adequate sleep and rest.
1. Stopping smoking
Tars and toxins found in cigarette smoke destroy the body’s antibodies, making it harder to fight off infection and illness. By stopping smoking, you can immediately make a boost to your immune system.
2. Limiting alcohol intake
Excessive alcohol consumption impacts the gut bacteria and weakens the liver’s ability to filter out toxins and bacteria. As 70% of the body's immune system starts in the gut, it is key to help our gut be as healthy as possible. To boost your immunity, it is essential to not smoke, and to limit the amount of alcohol you take in.
3. Avoiding infection
We have all heard a lot about avoiding infection, but the key points to remember here are to wash your hands with soap and water frequently, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, avoid those people that are sick, stay home if you are sick, and cover your coughing and sneezing with a tissue.
4. Transforming stress
I recognize that it is impossible to eliminate stress, so I encourage ways to transform your stress. This can include things like meditation, training the mind to be calm and quiet, observing and honoring thoughts with focus and direction. Mindfulness is another important practice that helps one to connect to the present moment, while accepting one’s thoughts and feelings. Deep breathing exercises can help to shift the body from a fight or flight state, by moving into a more parasympathetic state. Though it has been challenging these past few months, another way to transform stress is through social connections. Having positive physical contact, like hugging, can release oxytocin (the “feel good” hormone) while lowering your blood pressure and heart rate.
5. Having adequate exercise and movement
Getting the body up and moving throughout the day helps to move bacteria out of the lungs and airways, while getting the body’s lymphatic fluid and helper blood cells moving throughout the body. Increased movement improves mood, increases energy, and decreases fatigue. It also helps to improve body composition and muscle mass, while decreasing fat. Try not to sit for more than 30 minutes at a time and get your body up and going throughout the day.
6. Ensuring you have healthy nutrition and adequate hydration
Having a diet that is high in fruits and vegetables while avoiding highly processed foods and high sugars will help to boost your immune system. Eating a variety of colors of fruits and vegetables, known as “eating the rainbow,” will provide a multitude of important phytonutrients to your body. It is important also to ensure that your body is getting adequate hydration to help flush out the toxins in the body. Work to drink half your body weight in ounces per day. So, if you weigh 160 pounds, you would want to drink 80 ounces of water per day.
7. Taking key vitamins and supplements
For the seventh strategy I emphasize taking additional vitamins and supplements to boost your immunity. Green tea has been shown to boost your immunity, as have vitamins A, B, C, D, Selenium and Zinc. I believe that it is important to get your supplement recommendations from trusted care providers, while purchasing them from trusted suppliers. I am here to help guide and direct you with personal supplement recommendations and are aligned with many trusted suppliers.
8. Getting appropriate sleep and rest
The body needs sleep and rest to repair and recharge. Having adequate sleep can help the body to reduce stress, improve memory, improve mood, lower blood pressure, and help you to maintain a healthy weight.
By implementing these quick and 8 strategies, you will immediately enhance your immune system and be well on your way to optimal health.
I would love to connect with you to optimize your immunity and boost your health and healing. I believe in optimal wellness and vitality and are dedicated to helping you look and feel your best. I believe that it is never too early, or too late, to work towards being the healthiest you.
