How to Boost Your Immune System

how to boost your immune system
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How’s Your Immune System Health?

Straight up: being sick sucks! So obviously we all want our immune system health to be impenetrable to those nasty little bugs. Help your immune system healthy out with these simple lifestyle tips.

How To Strengthen Immune System

Washing your hands is not the only thing you can do to avoid getting sick…

Taking care of your immune system is one of the key ways to stay healthy and avoid illness. You probably know to use hand sanitizer and are a professional at picking up spills with your sanitized wipes, but did you know that staying healthy and keeping up with your immune system is as easy as eating right and exercising?

Staying healthy is often just a matter of common sense. Below is a list of tips for caring for your immune system and some ideas for how you can incorporate more healthy habits into your life.

Use these to keep you and your family healthy and prepared before the next cold season comes around.

Strengthen Your Gut

Is Your Immune System Health at 100 Percent-

A healthy gut is central to an overall healthy immune system. You can support stomach health by taking in more probiotics to help with digestion and immune system health. These are good bacteria that help reduce inflammation in the digestive system. Not only can probiotics help prevent you from developing an infection, but they can also reduce the severity of one.

Probiotics are found in yogurt, kefir, and things like sauerkraut. There have also been studies done to confirm that probiotics can boost the immune system. In fact, one study showed that athletes who took a probiotic had 40 percent fewer colds.

Limit Your Intake of Processed Foods

Processed foods and sugar drastically decrease your immune system functioning. It is better to fill your diet with leafy greens, salmon, chia seeds, flaxseeds, sweet potatoes, and berries. These types of foods have anti-inflammatory properties and will give your body a lot more nutrition than a package of chips can.

If you feel yourself lagging or out of energy more, it might be due to your diet as well. Make sure you eat healthily and try to cut out unnecessary fats and sugars. When you fuel your body with the nutrients and vitamins it needs, it will function better and have the strength to fight off more illnesses.

To help get in the habit of eating healthy, try making a schedule and doing your grocery shopping by it just once a week. If you limit the foods you buy and what kinds you buy, you’ll be able to stick to a better diet in the long run.

Get More Vitamin D

Anyone who has gone through an online master of science in nursing program knows that vitamin D is a very important nutrient for our bodies and many doctors recommend and prescribe it for patients who fall sick more often. Many of us are vitamin D deficient and a lack of vitamin D can weaken the immune system.

Vitamin D is essential because it helps create antibodies, which help the body fight disease. This vitamin is found in salmon and fortified foods. It can also be obtained by exposing your skin to the sun for 15 minutes per day.

Additionally, you can ask your doctor if a vitamin D supplement is right for you (check out our article on gummy vitamins).

Exercising

Working out can help boost your immune system. In fact, studies have shown that people who work out regularly have fewer colds. Researchers have also found that the rise in temperature that occurs during exercise can prevent bacteria from growing in the body.

Just getting a regular thirty minutes a day of exercise is enough to help your body get stronger. When you put your muscles and body through tough things like harder workouts, it will be more adaptable to stress and can fight off illness much better.

Sleep

Getting the proper amount of sleep is just as important as exercise. A lack of sleep can weaken the immune system which is why you should strive to sleep for seven to eight hours per night. If you are unable to get at least seven hours, then taking a 20-minute power nap during the day can help.

If you can, get into the habit of going to bed at a certain time and waking up on a regular schedule as well in order to sleep better.

Wrap-Up

A healthy immune system can help you avoid illness.

Sleeping, exercising, and getting more vitamin D can help strengthen your system and get you on the right track.

You should also limit your intake of processed foods and get more probiotics.

Use these healthy habits and more to increase your body’s functioning and give yourself a head start over sicknesses.

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most her time hiking, biking and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.
Brooke Chaplan