10 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR IMMUNITY FOR HEALTHIER LIVING

Busy schedules and exposure to harsh environmental factors can result in stress that takes a significant toll on your immunity. Thus making you more susceptible to various illnesses. But there are things you can do to boost your immunity.

It is not always easy to boost your immunity. But fortunately, several dietary and lifestyle modifications can help strengthen your body’s ability to fight disease-causing organisms.

Below are some tips that can help strengthen your immunity naturally without much hassle.

Get Enough Sleep Every Day

Over the past few decades, research has delved deeper into the links between sleep and physical health. And it has become more evident that sleep and the immune system are closely related. In fact, insufficient or poor-quality sleep increases the susceptibility to illnesses. For instance, a study has shown that adults who get less than 6 hours of sleep every night are more likely to come down with a cold than those who sleep for at least 6 hours each night. Therefore, getting enough regular and high-quality sleep supports a balanced immune system. 

A balanced immune system includes strong natural and adaptive immunity, efficient response to vaccines, and less severe allergic reactions. You may sleep more when you’re sick. This is normal as it gives your immune system a better chance to fight the illness. 

As an adult, the recommendation is to aim for at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Teenagers need between 8 and 10 hours, while younger children and infants need up to 14 hours.

Sleep does not always come easy. If you find it difficult to sleep, you can focus on your sleep hygiene. That is your habits, routines, and sleeping environment. The following tips can help improve your sleep hygiene.

• Limiting screen time at least an hour before bed because your phone, TV, and computer emit blue light that may interfere with your circadian rhythm.
• Have a regular sleep schedule by going to bed at the same time every night.
• Engage in moderate exercise regularly.
• Use a sleep mask or sleep in a dark room.

Eat More Healthy Fats.

Mild inflammation is a normal body response to stress. However, chronic inflammation can suppress your immune system’s ability to fight harmful pathogens. On the bright side, recent studies have shown that consuming healthy fats provides your body with the essential fatty acids it needs to boost your immunity. One way these fatty acids improve your immunity is by reducing this unfavorable inflammation. 

Some foods rich in these beneficial fatty acids include salmon, olive oil, avocados, nuts, and seeds. 

With its high anti-inflammatory effect, olive oil has been linked to a lower risk of chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart diseases, and type 2 diabetes. Its anti-inflammatory effect may also help your body fight off harmful viruses and bacteria. 

Eat Fermented Foods or Take a Probiotic Supplement.

There is a good bacteria community, known as probiotics, in your gut. Having a good population of these probiotics may help boost your immunity by inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria in your gut. There is evidence that some probiotics promote the production of natural antibodies in your body.

Fermented foods such as yogurt, natto, kimchi, and sauerkraut are rich in these probiotics, which keep your digestive tract healthy. This helps you prevent as well as reduce the severity of stomach infections. 

Research has shown that a thriving population of gut bacteria can improve your immune system's ability to differentiate between healthy cells and harmful invader organisms. A 3-month study conducted in 126 children showed that those who drank 2.4 ounces (70 mL) of fermented milk daily had 20% fewer childhood infectious diseases than the control group.

If you cannot consume fermented foods regularly, you can incorporate probiotic supplements into your diet. In a 28-day study, 152 people infected with rhinovirus and supplemented with probiotic Bifidobacterium animalis had a more substantial immune response and lower levels of the virus in their nasal mucus than the control group.

Increase Your Consumption of Whole Plant Foods

Daily exposure to harsh environmental elements can cause free radicals to form and accumulate at high levels within your body. This accumulation can result in unfavorable inflammation that puts you at risk for various diseases.

Chronic inflammation has been linked to many health conditions, such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and certain cancers. But whole plants are rich in nutrients and antioxidants. These antioxidants help decrease inflammation by fighting free radicals, which ultimately improves your body’s ability to fight against harmful pathogens. 

Whole plant foods also contain fiber that nourishes your gut probiotics to help strengthen your body’s defense.

Furthermore, whole fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients – including vitamin c – that may reduce the severity and duration of cold/flu.

Examples include fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes.

Limit Consumption of Refined Sugars 

Some new research suggests that refined carbohydrates/sugars may contribute disproportionately to overweight and obesity. And obesity may increase your risk of falling ill or coming down with a chronic disease such as hypertension, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. In addition, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease can weaken your immune system.

Reducing your sugar intake can decrease unfavorable inflammation, improve weight loss, reduce your risk of chronic diseases, and significantly boost your immunity.

In an observational study conducted on about 1,000 people, obese people who received the flu vaccine were twice as likely to get the flu as individuals without obesity who received the same vaccine.

Your aim should be to limit your sugar intake to less than 5% of your daily caloric intake. For example, someone on a 2000-calorie diet should only take about 2 tablespoons of sugar per day.

Regular Moderate Exercise

Exercise is good for your health, but not when you overdo it. Because while moderate exercise can enhance your immunity against harmful pathogens, excessive and prolonged high-intensity exercise can impair your immune system.

Several studies have shown that as little as a single session of moderate exercise can improve vaccine effectiveness in people with compromised immune systems. That’s not all. Regular, moderate exercise may reduce inflammation and enhance the regeneration of your immune cells.

The moderate-intensity exercise consists of activities that increase your heart rate to 50-60% higher than your resting heart rate. Some moderate exercises you can include in your routine include brisk walking, steady bicycling, jogging, swimming, and light hiking. 

The general recommendation is to do at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week.

Find Ways to Reduce your Stress Levels

Research has shown that high stress levels promote inflammation and suppress your immune response. This is why stress and anxiety relief are crucial to the state of your immunity.

Some activities that can help you to better manage stress include regular exercise, meditation, journaling, yoga, and other mindfulness practices. Seeing a licensed therapist or counselor can also do you a world of good. It does not matter whether you see the therapist in person or virtually. 

Take Appropriate Supplements

There have been a lot of claims about supplements being able to prevent or even treat COVID19. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that there is currently no evidence to support these claims. But this does not make taking supplements pointless. 

Some studies have shown that some supplements can strengthen your body’s general immunity.

• Vitamin C. In a review of over 11,000 people, daily intake of 1000–2000 mg of vitamin C reduced the duration of colds by 8% in adults and 14% in children. However, supplementing did not prevent people from getting cold in the first place.
• Vitamin D. Having insufficient Vitamin D may increase your chances of getting sick. Supplementing may help prevent this effect. But note that taking vitamin D supplements when your body already has enough doesn’t seem to provide extra benefits.
•   A review of people with the common cold, supplementing with more than 75 mg of zinc per day, showed a reduced duration of the cold by 33%.
•   Though more research is needed, a small review did find that elderberry can reduce the severity of viral upper respiratory infections.
•   A study found that echinacea helped people recover from colds a little quicker than those who received a placebo or no treatment.
•   A high-quality study in 146 people found that supplementing with garlic reduced the common cold incidence by about 30%. However, more research is needed to further understand the effect of garlic on immunity.

Though the above supplements demonstrated immune-boosting potential, this is enough to say that they are effective in COVID-19 prevention or treatment. 

You should exercise caution when choosing supplements, as some can interact with prescription or over-the-counter medications. Some may not even be suitable for people with certain health conditions. So, you should talk to a healthcare professional before starting any supplement.

Stay well hydrated

Many people understand that proper hydration is essential for overall health. But the roles of hydration in immunity are not as widespread. Though hydration does not necessarily protect you from harmful bacteria and viruses, optimal hydration does support a healthy immune function. Here are some ways hydration can help your immunity:

• Nutrient Your immune system depends on nutrients in the blood, and the blood is made of mostly water. Without optimal hydration, your body cannot transport nutrients to the immune system efficiently.
• Detoxification. Proper hydration plays a significant role in clearing out toxins and foreign invaders from your body.
• Lymphatic System works alongside the immune system to keep you healthy. It relies heavily on a fluid (lymph) which consists of 90% water. A well-functioning lymphatic system helps remove toxins, pathogens, and waste from your system. It also helps transport infection-fighting white blood cells throughout the body.
• Histamine Balance helps you prevent allergies and ease the symptoms.

A study in adult subjects after a workout session showed that dehydration resulted in immunosuppression.

Perhaps you are wondering what daily quantity of water is enough to prevent dehydration. Ideally, you should drink enough fluid to make your urine pale yellow. You may need to take more liquids if you exercise intensely, work outside or live in a hot climate. The best fluid is water because it is free of calories, additives, and sugar. It is recommended that you cut back on caffeine and alcohol intake.

A general recommendation is to drink when you’re thirsty and stop when you’re no longer thirsty. But this rule may not apply to older adults because their bodies do not signal thirst adequately. So, they begin to lose the urge to drink as they age. Hence, older adults need to regularly drink water even if they do not feel thirsty.

Get Vaccinated

Vaccination against diseases such as flu works with your body’s natural defenses to offer you better protection against those diseases. 

Vaccines protect you by enabling your immune system to respond more rapidly to specific harmful pathogens and destroy them before they can make you sick. There are currently vaccines to prevent more than 20 life-threatening diseases.

Summary

You can strengthen your immunity by making healthy lifestyle and diet changes. Some of these changes include getting adequate sleep, staying hydrated, reducing your sugar intake, exercising regularly, taking supplements, and managing your stress levels.

Although these changes can reinforce your body’s immunity against harmful pathogens, they cannot prevent or treat COVID-19.

 

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to the camera, with focused talking points. ]

Hello and welcome to this week's podcast.

So tonight, I am going to talk to you about some ways you can boost your immunity through healthy living.

You know with the covid pandemic going on, lots of people are really interested in what can they do to help their immune system or other things we can do related to our diet and how we live that can affect our immune system?

For the positive, we all are pretty aware of, things we can do or behaviors that are negative for the immune system.

But let us talk about some of the positive things we can do. That can really have a positive impact on how your immune system functions.

The first thing that can really help boost your immune system is really getting enough sleep.

Now, I know I've kind of preached that before. But the more and more we learn about sleep, the more we learn how important it is. Unfortunately, in today's world, you know, kind of sleep deprivation is kind of born as a badge of honor.

You hear people say all the time, that I function on four hours of sleep, and the unfortunate thing is that that is going to be problematic for those individuals because we are learning how important sleep is to a variety of things related to your health.

But one of those big areas is how it affects your immune system. So, sleep is essential for your immune system. And when I talk about sleep, I am talking about high-quality sleep.

And so, if you have taken medications or things like that, we are learning that those are more kinds of sedatives. And they do not really enter that deep sleep.

The sleep we need.

Natural sleep is really, really important.

One thing you need to consider is, first of all, am I getting enough sleep? So, if you are an adult, typically, you should try to get at least seven hours of sleep.

Obviously, as you go to different age groups, the younger you are, the more sleep that they need.

So, you know, infants need up to 14 hours of sleep, but generally speaking, an adult needs at least seven hours of sleep at night, so you should really strive to get that.

Well, there are some things you can do to help that, and we call sleep hygiene. It is kind of related to habits and routines, and the environment you are sleeping in. So a couple of tips to help improve your sleep hygiene.

The first one is to limit screen time. We are learning more and more the kind of blue light that emitted from technology, your TV, your phone, your computer. That blue light wavelength really interferes with your circadian rhythm.

So, if you can basically try to stop using those electronic devices, at least an hour before your bedtime, that will help.

The next thing that is going to help is if you have a regular sleep schedule, a lot of times, people think I will catch up on the weekend.

And it really does not work that way. You need to really go to bed, create a habit of going to bed and getting up at the same time, every night.

That is going to kind of let your body understand that this is a time I sleep.

Another thing that is going to help you use is moderate exercise. And I do not mean right before, going to bed. But it has been found that if you do some daily moderate exercise, it actually improves your sleep, then other things you can do is a sleep mask, or a dark room, kind of controlling the environment. And then, obviously, limited noise, things like that.

Interestingly, a cool room has been found to be very beneficial to helping you sleep. So, cooling off your bedroom at night. It has been found to improve your sleep.

So, that's kind of about sleep we will talk about right now.

Another thing you can do to really help improve your immune system is eating healthier fat.

The normal response to the body to illness, or infections, is an inflammatory response. So, that mild inflammatory response is good, and actually beneficial to help the body beat different types of pathogens.

But the problem is, is, we are kind of living in the world now. Where we just have chronic inflammation, and this is bad. We are learning the Chronic Inflammation is kind of the root of numerous illnesses, so we need to really figure out how we can prevent chronic inflammation.

Well, the good news is that there are lots of studies that are now showing that healthy fats have really helped provide your body with the essential fatty acids needed to boost your immune system.

These will improve your immunity. And basically, it reduces this on an unfavorable inflammation.

Certain healthy fats can really help you fight the inflammation product of chronic illness.

So, some of the food’s rich in these beneficial fatty acids, salmon, olive oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds, and are really high in anti-inflammatories.

The nice thing is that if we reduce that chronic inflammation, it helps improve your immune system, but it also helps lower the risk of all these other chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes.

Healthy fats are something you really should try to be incorporating your diet.

The next thing that can help your immune system is eating fermented foods or taking a probiotic supplement. We are learning that there are good bacteria, that's kind of community within your gut. Hopefully, it is composed of good bacteria.

And those communities called a probiotic and basically, having a population of these nice probiotics may help boost your immunity inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria in your gut. Then there's evidence that some probiotics caused the production of natural anti-bodies in your body.

So, we want to maintain this gut health by doing things we can do to really promote the development of good bacteria.

And that can be found in fermented foods. Like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut. These are things rich in probiotics. And they help really keep your digestive system healthy.

Now, obviously, these are things that often you hear people would not say they are the most palatable things. And you do not hear a lot of people raving about the taste of these things.

So, there are some things you can do, and that's where kind of probiotic supplements can come in. But important thing is, you are really trying to promote a good, thriving population of gut bacteria.

And this can really help improve your, your immune system.

There have been studies on this related to taking probiotic supplements and it is really found that good gut health or a good amount of any of the bacteria in your gut really has a positive impact on your immune system.

Now the opposite is the reverse. If you do not have a healthy gut then you really are jeopardizing your immune system.

And the more and more we learn about them, the gut, and how it works is we are learning much, much more about how it has an impact, it’s not just a tube to pass the waste product through us. But it actually has a lot of functions. One of those functions is helping your immune system.

So good gut health is essential for your immunity and promoting good health gives us the ability to fight infections and things like that.

Another thing you can do to boost your immunity increases your consumption of whole plant foods.

Every day, you know, our body in normal metabolism is where we expose to bulk-free radicals and we also form these free radicals are kind of a byproduct of metabolism.

So, you can have kind of this formation or accumulation of inflammatory or unfavorable inflammatory processes are resolving these free radicals and I already said inflammation, chronically is a bad thing, you know, like, heart disease, Alzheimer's, certain cancers.

All these things are being stimulated and driven by chronic inflammation.

So, whole plants that are rich in nutrients and antioxidants, are going to help decrease this inflammation by fighting these free radicals. And ultimately, it is going to improve your body's ability to fight against harmful pathogens.

So, the whole plant foods, grape antioxidants, I really encourage you to eat them. Also whole foods, they contain fiber which also nourishes that, kind of that gut probiotics that I already talked about.

So, it improves gut health.

Then also, you know, fruits and vegetables that are rich in vitamin C and these may also reduce the severity and duration of cold, or flu.

So, examples of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds are all, good things to be eating for these reasons.

The next thing you can do is really limit your consumption of refined sugars.

So, we are learning more and more every day about refined sugars and what they mean. There's kind of artificial carbohydrates are not natural, highly processed sugars.

And what we are learning is, there is a big belief that this is contributing to the obesity epidemic.

But another problem is as you increase these things, then it also weakens your immune system.

So again, it is related to inflammation.

So, as you are consuming the highly refined products, which are sugars, it is going to actually cause an inflammatory response. Like we have already talked about inflammation and how it impacts your immunity. And this is a bad thing, obviously. So, I am not saying sugars that are found in fresh fruits and things like that, but I am talking about refined sugars.

And so, you know, there are all these health consequences, related to this, diabetes, things like that. But, there is a big risk to your immune system, too.

So important thing is to really limit your sugar intake, try to limit to less than 5% of your daily calories.

For example, if you are on a 2000 calorie diet, that really means, you know, a total of two tablespoons of sugar per day.

So, you know, we probably get too much sugar in our diet, that is something we need to pay more attention to.

Another thing we can do to help really improve our immune system is regular exercise, So I already talked a little bit about exercise's impact on sleep and how that is going to help your immune system.

Exercise itself directly helps your immune system now. The important thing to note here is moderate exercise.

If you are someone who is at risk of overtraining there is a point, that exercise becomes detrimental to your health.

And so, overtraining can actually be a negative consequence on your, your immune system, as well as a lot of other problems.

But the reality is, are we really want regular moderate exercise. And what I mean by that is basically, our general recommendations are about 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week.

The important thing is to understand it, there are several studies that are showing that moderate exercise does improve the effectiveness of vaccines or improves the immune response.

And it is really important to understand it. Water, exercise may actually reduce inflammation.

But again, if you are over-exerciser or overdo it, then that will actually kind of shifts that pendulum the other way.

So, you want to exercise, you want a moderate exercise in your routine, but it is important really to remember that you do not want to overdo it either so that kind of 150 minutes, moderate exercise per week is essential.

Another thing you can do to help boost your immune system is finding ways to reduce your stress levels.

What is important is as we are learning that stress, while there is this huge emotional component, there is also if there is a logic component, one of the things that stress does is really again, it promotes that inflammation response.

And again, that suppresses your immune system and obviously has a lot of other negative consequences when it directly impacts your immune system.

So, how you manage stress, you are not going to avoid stress. You have to really learn how to manage stress. And that is the key, here, there is no avoiding it, so, then it becomes how do you manage it.

Well, some of the things you can do it, again. Regular exercise, very helpful for stress management. There's meditation. Or mindfulness journaling. Yoga, those types of things.

And obviously, you are really having difficulty managing your stress, you may want to seek the help of a licensed therapist or counselor to help. It is really important that you manage your stress.

But another thing that can help boost your immune system is some supplements.

And so, I want to talk a little bit, there are some helpful supplements. This has really got a lot of media.

What is common, because there has been lots of different things, that have been advocated are creating some confusion on its impact on the immune system.

So, I want to talk to you about supplements related to strengthen your body's general immunity.

This is not specific decoder.

It is really, is there things you can do to help improve your immune system as a whole?

And, yes, there are some of those things are like, Vitamin C This is very helpful in helping us kind of fight the common cold.

Again, it does not prevent, it helps kind of reduce the duration of illness.

Another supplement is vitamin D. Obviously, your level of vitamin D can be very seasonal dependent on where you live and how much sun exposure you get.

Ideally, the best form of vitamin D is through the sun exposure. But if you reduce the climate or if it is winter, you are unable to really get adequate light exposure vitamin D supplement, maybe benificail in helping you boost your immunity.

Another supplement is zinc.

Zinc is really one of those things that we are learning more and more about it should show some benefit and reducing the cold how that impacts other illnesses is unknown.

Zinc Supplement is one of those things that may have a positive effect on your system.

Another supplement is garlic. It has actually been found that it really helps kind of reduce the common cold by about 30%, but obviously there needs to be more research on there.

So, when we are talking about the supplements, the challenges is finding good scientific data, that really helps decide if it works or not. A lot of the information with supplements is kind of anecdotal. So, it is really difficult to decide, if it is a supplement helpful for are not helpful.

But, in general, the ones I mentioned, there is a fair amount of evidence to show that does help boost your immune system.

So, again, all the supplements can be found in whole food plant-based foods. And so, that is the best way to get these types of supplements in your body. Obviously, if you are unable to do that, there's commercially available supplements.

Another thing that can really help boost your immune system is staying well hydrated.

But one of the challenges is, yin today's world, we are busy handling things can be really difficult to stay hydrated. Not only are we distracted way kind of doing a bunch of stuff, but often we are not drinking water, we will find something else to drink.

The important thing to understand is, you want to be operating hydrated because that is going to help moving nutrients around the body to areas that need it. That has been at that level of blood, which is a volume. And so, you want to stay out of hydrated. So, the highways are open for the nutrients in the body.

For saying the opposite direction. Getting bad things out of the body is also driven through that way.

So, hydration is very important to make sure your kidneys or are working well. And highways are able to move those toxic things, so they can be removed the body.

So that is important for your emphatic system also.

Emphatic System is essential for your immune system, that is really a fuller dependent system.

So, it has got to be well hydrated, so that is functioning. It is essentially a superhighway of your immune system, that is where a lot of things happen in your immunity.

And so, you want to make sure that you are well hydrated so that system is working to the best of its ability.

So, hydration is really important.

Now, you get asked all the time, you know, how much, how much water should I drink?

There's formulas and things like that that you can use.

The important thing is, is you really just want your urine to be pail yellow.

Now, younger people, I tell them, you know, drink when you are thirsty and as we get older, we kind of lose that drive, so we actually have to be more cost conscious of drinking.

So, really consider how much you’re urinating and what is the color. A pale yellow to a dark yellow?

Color is an indication of how well you are drinking water.

Another thing, to boosts your immune system getting vaccinated.

This is not specifically related to Covid vaccine, there are others, more than 20 life threatening diseases, we got vaccines for.

And, really, a vaccine, all it does is stimulate the immune system, to prepare it. So, it is exposed to whatever that pathogen here is, the body already is ready to go, to fight.

So, you know, it is important. Vaccinations are known to help.

So, maintain your current, vaccinations, will really help prevent or decrease any illness in the future for yourself.

So, these are just some, some things you can do, in the world we live in right now.

There is a lot of interest in kind of boosting your immune system naturally. Here is something you can do yourself.

You don’t need a prescription for this.

You do not need a doctor to tell you to do it.

It is things you can take ownership and do, to improve your system.

So again, if there is any other health and wellness things, you think we could maybe help you with this. Let us know.

Remember, you are on your ear health journey, I just really want you to remember that.

You have got it.

So, thank you.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine