6 Steps to Supercharge Your Immune System this Season
My friends at Nutri-Health.com (thank you!!) offered to send me a guest post on ways to boost your immune health. Read on for these helpful tips!
This time of year you probably have a thousand things to do. Between the cooking and cleaning for incoming guests, to the shopping for your loved ones, the last thing you need is a runny nose and cold to slow you down. Here are six ways to help keep your immune system in tip-top shape so you can fight off the bugs and stay healthy this season.
1. Get a Good Night’s Sleep. Restful sleep, especially during busy times, allows you to recharge your batteries so you have the energy to tackle all there is to do. But when you don’t get enough sleep, your levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, increase. And, elevated cortisol levels can suppress your immune function.
2. Try Probiotics. Did you know that 70% of your immune system lives in your digestive tract? When you take a daily probiotic, the “good bugs” trigger the immune cells in your gut to tell the immune cells in your nose to fight off pathogens that can suppress your immune system.
3. Laugh Your Stress Away. Research has found that during stressful times, one’s immunity can go way down. To help combat stress, try checking out a funny movie or television show. Or, get together with some friends that can lift your spirits. Laughing lowers levels of the stress hormone, cortisol and boosts “feel good” endorphins.
4. Chomp on Some Garlic. When I was a kid, my mother would always hand me glove of garlic to chew on whenever I started to feel under the weather. My teenage self would yell “gross!”, but maybe my mom had it right. Garlic has an active ingredient called allicin, which supports your immune system and helps your body fight infections. In one British study, researchers gave 146 people either a garlic extract or placebo for 12 weeks. Those that received the garlic were two-thirds less likely to catch a cold.
5. Slurp Chicken Soup. When you’re feeling like you’re getting sick, nothing provides more soothing comfort than a warm bowl of chicken soup. Now research has shown that Grandma’s soup can support your immune system, too. One study out of the University of Nebraska found that chicken soup contains a number of substances that ease the symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections. If you don’t want to make soup from scratch, the researchers tested 13 commercial brands and found that many may even work better than homemade. Among those brands that were shown to benefit the immune system were: Knorr’s Chicken Noodle, Campbell’s Home Cookin’ Chicken Vegetable, Campbell’s Healthy Request Chicken Noodle, Lipton Cup-o-Soup Chicken Noodle and Progresso Chicken Noodle.
6. Get Intimate. Sex with your partner not only lowers levels of cortisol, it also can rev up your immune system. Making love with your partner once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of immunoglobulin A, (IgA). IgA is a protein that helps your immune system fight colds and flu.
This article is written by Lauren Kent the writer for Nutri-Health.com, an online High Quality Probiotics and Health Store. Assisting people and helping them find quality natural probiotic supplements enzymes and health products online. Nutri-Health.com carries Heart Health Supplements to Probiotics to Joint Health.
