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How to Boost Your Immunity…

This time of year we can all do with optimising our immune systems to fend off the neverending round of colds and flu that fly around. Here’s a few tips how you can make some simple changes to help you stay cold free.

1. Vitamin D is needed to regulate your immune system. At this time of year we can get rather deficient in it, particularly up here in Scotland as we don’t see a lot of sun. You can boost it naturally by eating fish with bones in like sardines and tinned wild salmon or you can opt for a supplement. If you go for the supplement option you should only take it from October to March at which time the strength of the sun will be fine to take over. Please note, vitamin D should not be taken if you are on certain medications so check with a pharmacist or nutritional therapist first before you take it.
2. Take a probiotic or eat foods which contain probiotics like kefir or sauerkraut. Good bacteria in our guts actually form 70% of our immune system so taking a good probiotic will help to boost their numbers up so they can more easily crowd out the bad ones. If you’ve ever had antibiotics you’ve killed them all off, for every week of antibiotics that you’ve had to take you need one month of probiotics to replace the good bugs.
3. Get enough Vitamin C, it’s clinically proven that virus’s cannot replicate in a vitamin C rich environment. Take 1000mg a day and if someone close to you starts sneezing take it at night too. Don’t worry about taking too much as vitamin C is water soluble so you just excrete what you don’t need. You could also eat kiwi’s as they’re full of it.
4. Get a good nights sleep. Every inch of your body works better after a full nights sleep. When you sleep your body has time to fight off infection because it’s not working on digesting food and turning it into energy, it’s when it does all of your housekeeping. So, if you think you’re coming down with something get to bed early.
5. Drink less alcohol as it impairs how well the immune system works which makes you more vulnerable to viral or bacterial attack.
6. Shitake mushrooms boost the body’s ability to fight off infection by increasing the number of cells that fight. They can also decrease inflammation so are great to eat regularly.
7. Garlic can kill off bad bacteria in the gut, especially raw garlic. So, get plenty of this in your diet over winter to help you fight off the bugs.
8. Eat a wide variety of fruit and vegetables to ensure you get all of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs to work well.
9. Green tea is packed full of antioxidants which are needed to help fight off infection, add 2-3 cups a day to gain it’s benefits.

 If you’re constantly getting colds or have had the misfortune of catching the flu then maybe you need some help boosting up your immunity. Try these tips above but if they don’t work for you give us a call and book a session to see what else you can do.