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— Albert Einstein
Strengthening Your Immune System For This Winter Season

Strengthening Your Immune System For This Winter Season

Taya Bregant
Lifestyle

The winter season is a time when many of us catch a cough or a cold, which makes it that much more important that we make sure to support our immune system in the best way during these times, ensuring that it will properly function.

It is important to realize that our immune system is a complex system in itself, where today's scientists are still looking into the ways of how your lifestyle impacts immunity levels. Although the link is not yet completely understood and is not easy to discern, there definitely is a link between the two, since your immune system's optimal functioning depends on plenty of different factors and health practices, some of which you can control and undoubtedly have a positive role in supporting your immune function.

WHAT CAUSES YOUR IMMUNITY TO DECLINE?


Overall, there are many different reasons for why our immunity can decline. Some of these include:

  • Old age: As we age, it is natural for our immune response capability to become reduced, which in turn contributes to more infections and more cancer. This is proven since the average life expectancy in developed countries has greatly increased, so has the incidence of age-related conditions.

  • High-stress levels: Being stressed can compromise the immune system, making the body more susceptible to illness due to the release of stress hormones that can suppress immune function.

  • Unhealthy and highly processed diets: Consuming a highly processed diet can weaken the immune system and compromise overall health, increasing susceptibility to illness by depriving the body of essential nutrients and promoting inflammation.

  • Sedentary lifestyle: A sedentary lifestyle can weaken the immune system and contribute to poor health by reducing physical activity, impairing circulation, and promoting conditions that increase susceptibility to illness.

  • Smoking: Smoking damages the respiratory system, weakens the immune response, and increases inflammation, making individuals more susceptible to illness by compromising the body's ability to defend against infections and diseases.

  • Excessive alcohol consumption: Excessive alcohol consumption can weaken the immune system, disrupt the balance of gut bacteria, and impair organ function, making individuals more susceptible to illness by compromising their body's defense mechanisms and overall health.

  • Poor sleep quality: Poor sleep quality disrupts the body's immune function and increases inflammation, making individuals more susceptible to illness by compromising the body's ability to effectively respond to and fight off infections and diseases.

However, why do so many more of us get sick during winter?

Well, it has to primarily do with two reasons:

  • The first reason is that with cold weather, people tend to spend more time inside in enclosed spaces, which increases the chance of infection and the transmission of viruses between people.

  • Secondly, winter temperatures are not only colder but also the air is less humid, which enables the viruses that can make us sick to stay alive for longer and, in this way, remain longer in the air during which they can infect us and we become sick.

INCREASING IMMUNITY IN THE RIGHT SENSE


Nowadays, in stores and specifically in health food supplement-type shops, you can come across many different types of products and supplements that claim to boost or support immunity. While this may sound almost like magic, the concept of boosting your immunity is actually quite scientifically conflicting. For example, if we aim to increase the number of immune-related cells in our body, that will not necessarily be a good thing, as too much of anything can lead to adverse effects.

An additional perspective that challenges this belief is that our immune system is, in reality, a system composed of many different types of cells, all of which work in different ways and interact with different chemicals or other cells. Therefore, if we aim to “boost immunity,” which immune cells are we even aiming to target and boost, and how would we selectively target them in the first place? This is a very complex topic and one that we are still looking for the answer to.

Overall, our body is constantly producing white blood cells, also known as lymphocytes; however, no one fully knows or understands how many immune cells and what mix of immune cells we need to function optimally.

WHAT ABOUT MULTI VITAMINS AND OTHER SUPPLEMENTS?

The supplement industry was estimated to amount to a staggering 164 billion US dollars in 2022 and is only projected to further grow in upcoming years at fast rates.

Because of this, there are now many different types of supplements and multivitamins that are available; however, the science behind using multivitamins is not fully united and convincing either.

So far, the scientific field has failed to establish any great positive effect between multivitamin use and a boost in immunity or other health markers, where in a lot of studies there was neither a positive nor a negative effect.

It is generally advised against taking any sort of megadose of any particular vitamin at once, since more of a vitamin does not mean you will be healthier but can actually cause your body genuine harm.

My approach is to always source all of your micronutrients from whole food sources which are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals and also contain them in the most optimal proportions for your body to make use of. However, if you personally find that, for example, supplementing with vitamin D in the winter or Vitamin C has a positive effect on your immune system, then that's great, but don’t go out of your way to overdo it with anything.

10 WAYS TO MAINTAIN STRONG IMMUNITY

Eating A Balanced And Nutritious Diet

  • Our immune system works best when we supply it with a predominantly whole foods diet, which is unprocessed and full of different colors. This includes a variety of different proteins, colorful fruits and vegetables, starches, grains, nuts, seeds, and oils.

  • By eating a variety of whole foods, we not only make sure that all of our nutritional needs are met in terms of macro and micronutrients, but also that we are getting a good supply of antioxidants to fight free radicals and cell-related aging and diseases. If you are further interested in the topic of antioxidants and how they work, you can read about it here.

  • An additional benefit of eating a varied predominantly whole foods diet is that it positively impacts your gut microbiome by supplying the bacteria in your gut with a variety of fibers which the bacteria feed on and produce beneficial byproducts that can positively impact our immune system. Additionally, you can read more about how your gut microbiome impacts your health here.

  • Below are some additional food-related suggestions which further support your immune function:

    • Increasing your consumption of healthy fats such as those found in olive oil, fatty fish, nuts, seeds.

    • Eating plenty of fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, or kefir or taking a probiotic supplement.

    • Limiting your consumption of added sugars such as those found in highly processed sugary snacks, sweet fried foods, or highly processed syrups and artificial sweeteners.

Staying Physically Active

  • Staying physically active and moving your body is not only beneficial for your muscular and skeletal system as well as your mental health but is also highly involved in proper immune function.

  • Regular movement raises energy levels, improves sleep quality, as well as being able to reduce stress and anxiety, all of which are effects that further positively contribute to good immunity.

  • Additionally, regular movement also helps to reduce levels of inflammation in your body which further allows your body's immune cells to function and be regulated regularly.

  • I have written about the various benefits of regular exercise here.

Drinking Enough Water

  • Drinking water or staying hydrated does not directly protect you from germs and viruses, however, preventing dehydration is a big part of staying healthy overall.

  • By being dehydrated, your body is generally less equipped to protect itself against different viruses, as dehydration hinders your physical performance, causes headaches, and hinders heart and kidney function.

  • Aim to mainly hydrate by drinking water instead of opting for sugary fruit juices or sodas as a way of intaking liquids. Additionally, drinking too much water can also be harmful, so as a rule of thumb, drink when you are thirsty and stop when you are no longer thirsty.

Keeping Consistent With Vaccinations

  • If we avoid getting vaccinations, it can take our immune system anywhere up to 2 weeks to recognize the pathogen at play and launch an appropriate attack for the virus. Whether we are a young healthy individual or an older person who has a weaker immune response, at the end of those 2 weeks is when it can result in you getting infected or staying healthy depending on how your immune system deals with the pathogen. In the case that you get sick, your immune system will then properly kick into action and try to remove the effects of the pathogen.

  • By getting vaccinated, we can shorten that 2-week waiting period by allowing our immune system to engage with a small piece of that virus or bacteria that can otherwise cause us to be sick, and in this way encourage our body to develop the appropriate antibodies in a more controllable way as opposed to our immune system having to handle a full virus for the first time all in one go.

Maintaining A Healthy Weight

  • Being overweight or obese can also significantly impair your body's natural immune response, where people who are obese are less responsive to vaccines for a variety of diseases such as influenza virus, hepatitis, and tetanus.

Getting Adequate Sleep

  • Sleep is a crucial time for when our body takes the time to properly repair and also synthesize new white blood cells as well as attend to any sites of inflammation.

  • Adults should generally aim to get at least 7 hours of good-quality sleep per night, with teenagers needing 8-10 and younger children even more.

  • If you are having issues with sleeping, I have previously written about how to improve your sleep quality here.

Minimizing Stress Where Possible

  • You might not realize it, but there is a crucial link between stress, anxiety, and your body's immune system. Your immune function is greatly impaired when you live in a constant state of chronic stress, since long-term stress promotes keeping your immune system permanently activated that can directly cause inflammation within our body and also an imbalance of immune cell function.

  • I have written about some of the ways for how to better handle stress here but overall some suggestions for how to better handle stress in your life include meditating, exercising, socializing, journaling, spending time in nature, or consulting with a therapist if needed.

Quit Smoking

  • There are many issues that are concerned with smoking cigarettes; however, it is undeniably true that smoking makes your body less successful and effective at fighting off any type of disease.

  • The chemicals which are found in cigarette smoke like carbon monoxide, nicotine, nitrogen oxides, and cadmium have been shown to negatively interfere with the growth and function of immune cells such as T cells, B cells, and cytokines.

  • Additionally, smoking also worsens viral and bacterial infections, especially those located within the lungs like pneumonia, flu, or tuberculosis, as well as increases the chances of post-surgical infections and developed or rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease of the joints.

Prevent Excessive Alcohol Consumption

  • Just like with cigarettes, persistent and excessive alcohol consumption can weaken the immune system by lowering levels of B and T immune cells as well as overwhelming your body with detoxifying the alcohol first before trying to bother with up-keeping normal immune function.

  • This is why people who drink more face a greater chance of developing pneumonia, alcoholic liver disease as well as certain cancers, all of which combine to worsen immune function overall.

  • If you are further interested into how alcohol impacts your body, you can read about it here.

Take Care To Prevent Infections

  • Of course, it is also important to mention that we should take care of the basics too when it comes to hygiene, such as washing our hands and also washing the food we eat before we prepare it.

KEY IDEAS

Today we talked about the topic of how to take proper care of your immune system this winter where we explored why our immune system tends to decline in the winter months, discussed wether multivitamins have a genuine protective role in our health and what are some practical ways of how we can stay healthy this winter season.

REFERENCES

Learning How To Truly Relax

Learning How To Truly Relax
Fighting Procrastination Effectively

Fighting Procrastination Effectively

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