Your immune system is your best friend, it’s your body’s natural first line defense against illness and infection. Whilst there are many pharmaceutical options to help with keeping you healthy one must question if taking artificial medicines is the only way to go.
With the right lifestyle choices, you can strengthen your immune system naturally. This well help you fight off bacteria, viruses and other pathogens. Here we cover some natural ways to give your immune system the boost it needs to help you keep feeling at your best!
9 Natural Ways to Boost your Immune System
1. Eat a Balanced Diet Full of Nutrient-Rich Foods
This will be of no surprise but the food you consume plays a vital role in your immune health. With more and more processed options which are cheap and quick, incorporating nutrient-dense foods can help your body fight off infection more effectively.
Nutrient-Rich foods:
- Fruits and Vegetables: You want to load up on citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruits, lemons), berries, spinach, and bell peppers. These are all rich in vitamin C, a major nutrient for boosting immunity.
- Healthy Fats: Avocados, olive oil, and fatty fish like salmon contain healthy fats, including omega-3 fatty acids, these reduce inflammation and help to enhance the body’s immune response.
- Probiotic-Rich Foods: Include fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir, as they are packed with probiotics. This is the good bacteria that helps maintain a healthy gut, where 70% of the immune system resides.
2. Get Enough Sleep
Another obvious suggestion on the list but one that is often overlooked. Sleep is regularly underrated but its critical for immune function. When you are sleeping your body will produce cytokines. Cytokines are a type of protein your body needs that helps fight against infection and also inflammation.
- Adults should aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night.
- Creating a consistent bedtime routine, avoiding screen time before bed, and creating a relaxing environment will help to improve your quality of sleep.
3. Stay Active with Regular Exercise
Everything is better with exercise! Moderate exercise boosts circulation, this helps immune cells travel more efficiently throughout your body. This will aid with reducing inflammation and regenerate immune cells.
Engage in activities like walking, jogging, yoga, or cycling for 30 minutes a day. This is the optimal amount of exercise to keep you in tip top shape.
However, it is worth noting that intense or prolonged exercise can temporarily weaken your immune system. Don’t worry you wont suddenly get ill, athletes or those with certain goals can still train hard and push limits.
4. Manage Stress Levels
Stress is a secret killer. Whilst it wasn’t always known its now becoming more accepted how big an impact stress has to your body. Chronis stress can weaken your immune response, when stress becomes long-term and frequent it promotes inflammation and an imbalance to immune cell function. Quickly undoing all your hard work and putting you at risk. Its well known the mental impact stress can have, in moderation it can be useful but an overload will never had a good outcome.
Research into stress reducing techniques like deep breathing exercises, meditation or even journaling. These activities will help reduce stress hormones like cortisol which can suppress your immune system over time.
5. Stay Hydrated
As we all know the body is made up of 60-70% of water. So, making sure you stay hydrated make absolute sense. Water plays an essential role in all bodily functions, including… you guessed it, your immune system. Lymph, which carries immune cells around the body is made up mostly of water.
It’s recommended to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day and increasing that if you are particularly active or live in a hotter climate. Its not just water that can keep you hydrated, water-rich foods like cucumbers and watermelon will also help in maintaining hydration.
6. Supplement Smartly
Whilst a balanced diet is the best way to cram in all those nutrients some supplements can give you an extra boost. Certainly during cold and flu season that added nutrients from supplements will go a long way to keeping your immune system operating at full power.
Some of the most essential supplements you can have are:
- Vitamin D: Essential for immune function, especially during the winter months when sunlight is scarce.
- Zinc: Plays a key role in the production of immune cells and has been shown to reduce the duration of colds.
- Elderberry: An herbal remedy believed to shorten the duration of viral infections like the flu.
Before starting any new supplement regime, especially if it’s something you’ve never taken before its always wise to consult a health professional.
7. Limit Alcohol and Tobacco
This one is an obvious one. We all know both of these are not good for your health but yet many of us still enjoy them. Smoking and excessive alcohol consumption will lead to your immune system being impaired and increase any risk to infections.
Smoking contains chemicals that affect your lungs and airways, this makes it much easier for viruses to enter your body. Alcohol in excess can disrupt your gut flora which weakens your immune response, as we know this is where most of our immune system resides.
Smoking is a simple answer, consider seeking support or means to quit. That is the only solution to removing that risk.
Alcohol is one which doesn’t need removing entirely, keeping your intake to moderate levels will reduce risk and depending on what you read can be beneficial. Ideally you want to limit to one drink per day for women and two for men. However it will be different for everyone.
8. Sunlight and Vitamin D
Who doesn’t like the sun? We get it so rarely here in Manchester when we do its an immediate holiday day. Exposure to natural sunlight helps your body produce something called vitamin D. This is a critical nutrient for immune health. Those with low levels of vitamin D have shown to have direct links to an increased risk of infection.
You want to aim for 10-30 minutes of sun exposure a few times a week. However if you are like me and seeing the sun is a rare occurrence you will want to look into taking a vitamin D supplement to help your body when it cant produce its own.
9. Laugh and Socialize
Believe it or not, laughter and social interaction can boost your immune system. Laughter increases the production of antibodies and T-cells (immune cells that help destroy infected cells). Its also been noted that social interactions has been linked to a healthier immune response. A happy mind = a happy body.
Spend time with your loved ones, immerse yourself in fun activities or pick up a new hobby. Most importantly laugh and enjoy yourself! It’s a sure fire way to naturally enhance your immune defence.
In Summary
Keeping tabs on your immune system is a must, doing it naturally is a great way to do it. Doing it naturally is all about living a balanced healthy lifestyle. You can still do the fun or ‘naughty’ things but just do it in moderation and give your body a chance to recover. By focusing in on your diet, sleep, stress levels and daily habits you can strengthen your immune defence and improve your overall health.
There is a lot you can do, and it can seem daunting when faced with lots of changes. So, take it one step at a time, pick one from the list and add it to your life. Implementing these suggestions will give your body the best chance to fight off infection and stay healthy.
