Achieve Better Health Naturally: Strengthen Your Immune System

Are you looking for ways to improve the health of you and your family? Take a look at these expert tips on strengthening your immune system to achieve better health naturally.

The film, “The Boy in the Platic Bubble,” shows a fictitious account of life without an immune system. The boy is forced to live in a completely sterile environment. Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) or “bubble boy disease” is very real and occurs in approximately 1 out of every 58,000 births in the U.S.

Achieve Better Health Naturally: Strengthen Your Immune System

Our immune system protects us from external pathogens like cold or flu viruses. It also battles cells that have mutated from illnesses like cancer. Having a strong immune system is an essential part of obtaining better health naturally.

Science has uncovered the facts about our immune systems since it was discovered in the late 19th century. Read this article to learn how you can boost your immune system and achieve better health naturally.

Catch Some ZZZ’s

One way to build your immune system naturally is to get enough sleep. Inadequate or poor sleep quality makes you susceptible to sickness. When you are sleep deprived, your body cranks up its production of stress hormones.

These hormones suppress your immune system. People who get a full eight hours of sleep have higher levels of T cells. A recent study showed adults who got less than 6 hours of sleep a night were more likely to catch a cold than those who slept six hours or more.

When you are sick, getting extra sleep can help you strengthen your immune system to better fight your illness.

Adults should try to get seven or more hours of sleep each night. Teenagers should sleep for eight to ten hours a day, and young children benefit most from fourteen hours of sleep.

If you find it difficult to fall asleep, try sleeping in a completely dark room. A sleeping mask or blackout curtains can also help.

Get in the habit of going to bed at the same time every night. Turn off electronic devices like your computer, phone, or TV an hour before bed. These devices emit blue light, which disrupts your body’s natural circadian rhythm.

Exercise Regularly

If you’re trying to learn how to boost the immune system naturally look no further than a good workout. Working out is one way to build up immunity.

Your body’s antibodies and white blood cells circulate more rapidly while you exercise. This helps them detect viruses more easily. Increasing your body’s temperature may help kill germs.

Working out also helps decrease stress hormones like cortisol. The lower your stress hormones, the less likely it is for you to get sick.

Exercise also plays a role in fighting viruses. People who are active regularly have less of a chance of getting sick compared to people who are sedentary. Active people also report less severe symptoms than sedentary people when they are sick.

If you are looking to add regular exercise into your routine, start small. Moderation is the key to sticking with your exercise program. If you do too much exercise, it could have an adverse effect and put stress on your body.

Try 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week. Go for a walk on your lunch break or after dinner. Join in playing with the kids on the weekends. Or try a new activity like kayaking or hula hooping – whatever it takes you to get active.

Eat a Healthy Diet

Boosting your immune system can be as easy as eating a healthy diet. Your immune system starts with a healthy gut. When our stomachs are healthy, we can fight off infections faster.

People who focus on eating a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats. Foods that are high in vitamins and nutrients like vitamin C, zinc, and other oxidants help our bodies fight infection.

Limiting meat, fried, processed foods, and sugar also decrease inflammation in your gut. Sugar and immune system health are directly related, and spikes in sugar intake can suppress your immune system.

If you eat a lot of foods or beverages high in sugar or refined carbs, it reduces your body’s ability to fight off infections. Eating a whole food diet will boost your immune system.

Add fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, miso, and kefir to help build good bacteria in your gut. This will help build up your body’s immune system.

If you don’t eat fermented foods, you can add probiotic supplements to your diet. In a study of people infected with rhinovirus, those who took probiotics had a more robust immune system and lower levels of the virus.

Eating a diet in healthy fats like olive oil and salmon also helps to boost your immune system. These foods help reduce inflammation in your gut. When your body is stressed, it can create chronic inflammation and suppress your immune system.

These foods may also help decrease your risk of chronic diseases with heart disease and diabetes. Try adding chia seeds to a smoothie or a bowl of oatmeal in the morning to get an extra boost of healthy fats.

Limit Stress

Mental health plays a huge role in immune health. When you are always stressed out and full of anxiety, your body produces hormones that suppress and weaken your immune system.

In a recent study, 276 adults were exposed to the cold virus. These people were quarantined and monitored for five days. The people who were stressed were twice as likely to get sick.

Stressed people are also less likely to pay attention to other healthy habits such as eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep. All of these things are directly related to immune health.

You can’t avoid stress, but you can adopt coping strategies to help you manage your stress. Meditation, journaling, or taking a walk are all good things to do when you feel stressed.

If your stress is terrible, you may need to seek help from a professional counselor or therapist. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can help change the narrative of negative thoughts in your head. Doing this can be a very effective method for stress reduction.

Achieve Better Health Naturally

It takes work to achieve better health naturally—boost meaning and your immune health by following these tips. Get regular sleep, eat a healthy diet, exercise, and limit your stress to keep yourself healthy.

A healthy immune system fights off infections and viruses and battles mutated cells from diseases like cancer. People with a strong immune system are less likely to get sick. For more great tips, check out our health section.