According to healthcare specialists, a robust immune system guarantees your body’s protection against infectious diseases. Take, for instance, COVID-19. Research has shown that most people who transmit this disease have frail immune systems. However, the immune system varies depending on your type of immunity.
Broadly, immunity fits into two groups, innate and adaptive. People born with natural immunity have innate immunity, while those that require interventions, such as vaccinations, fall into the latter category. Adaptive immunity can also develop biologically when the body is exposed to microorganisms harboring infections. Boosting your immune system will have a massive impact on your overall health.
How to Boost Your Immune System
Essentially, humans are born with innate immunity, but it varies in strength across the board. Despite that, it’s possible to boost your immune system with many medically proven methods. This article outlines seven ways of enhancing your innate immune health.
1. Create and stick to an Exercise Routine
Granted that immune function improves with regular physical activity, creating time to exercise can help lower the chances of contracting infections. Besides, this study showed that COVID-19 patients who met physical activity guidelines experienced a reduction in the virus’s strength.
We highly recommend activities like aerobics, stretching, and muscle and bone strengthening. Studies have shown that exercise helps your body avoid developing symptoms of COVID-19, such as fever, tiredness, and dry cough. In fact, physical activity keeps pathogens out of your lungs and airways.
2. Maintain a Healthy Diet
Good nutrition practices are critical for a healthy body. Food, mainly plant-based, consists of essential nutrients that nourish the body’s organs. For instance, clove, oregano, and thyme contain antimicrobial and antiviral properties that help us fight off infection. Prioritizing healthy over unhealthy diets also introduces nonmetallic elements such as Copper, Zinc, Vitamins C, B6, and B12 to the body. These elements are vital for improving your body’s immune health.
Unfortunately, the body does not produce most of the essential elements required for strengthening immune systems like Vitamin C. Therefore, eating healthy foods which contain these elements introduces them and helps the body fight off diseases.
3. Practice Stress Management
Stress is inevitable. However, how you handle it will have an impact on your immune system. Hormones, such as cortisol, control many of the body’s processes. This hormone has several functions, including helping the body manage flight or fight situations. When you are frightened, the body releases cortisol, which signals several other processes to address the situation. Cortisol levels ultimately fall when you calm down.
However, constant secretion and activation of this response system can eventually disrupt some of the body’s systems, like sugar levels and heart rate. In return, this weakens the body and the immune system. This can be reversed by practicing stress management with certain techniques. These include music, meditation, exercise, and so on.
4. Get Adequate Quality Sleep Consistently
According to the NHS, not allowing yourself enough quality sleep will harm your health. Case in point, medical conditions such as hypertension, obesity, and high blood pressure have been linked to sleep deprivation. But why is sleep important?
Sleep is vital for a healthy immune response since your body heals and regenerates while you sleep. The body does not “sleep” when we are asleep. Conversely, it uses this time to get rid of toxins, repair cells, facilitate nerve cell communication, and regulate cortisol, all of which positively impact the immune system.
Getting sleep is one thing, but the quality of this sleep determines its impact on the body. Sleep satisfaction or quantity can come from prolonged hours of sleep. However, for the rest to be of high quality, evidence-based practices should be followed. In summary, sleep specialists recommend at least eight hours of sleep a night, sticking to a bedtime, keeping off devices slightly before bedtime, and more. Follow this link for the CDC’s tips for better sleep.
5. Wash Your Hands Regularly with Running Water and Soap
Do not just wash your hands, do it regularly with soap and under running water. Most of the surfaces your hands touch are contaminated with germs. Whenever these germs get into your respiratory or gastrointestinal tract, they deposit bacteria that cause infection. This is why health experts warn against touching your face, ears, and mouth during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Washing your hands removes these germs from your hands and prevents you from catching infections. Whereas avoiding touching your face is relatively difficult, touching unsanitary surfaces should not be. Handwashing is a good practice to reduce the infection probability significantly.
6. Drink Plenty of Water
Toxin build-up has a negative impact on your immunity. This can be prevented by drinking enough water. The water flushes these toxins out of the body through sweating and excretion. Water also carries oxygen to your body cells, thus facilitating smooth functions of the body’s internal processes.
Moreover, there’s a fluid in the body known as lymph, largely made up of water. Lymph’s primary function is to transport white blood cells that fight infection-causing microorganisms. When we are dehydrated, the transportation of these cells slows down. Eventually, this affects the flow of white blood cells, resulting in impaired immune health.
7. Increase Your Vitamin D Levels
Vitamin D is similarly vital for better immune function. In medical terms, Vitamin D has both immunoregulatory and anti-inflammatory properties, which activate immune system defense. Put simply; vitamin D has unique nutrients that facilitate your immune system’s infection-fighting capabilities.
Your immune system needs all the help it can get to become stronger. This is why introducing compounds such as vitamin D is paramount. There are numerous vitamin D sources, including oily fish, liver, and some fortified foods. This means you don’t have to wait for summer to get vitamin D from sunlight.
The Bottom Line
Immune health is a great concern for the human body. More so, at a time when health threats are escalating, efforts to boost the immune system are compulsory. Evidently, most of these methods of boosting immunity require personal interventions. The government and health bodies are doing their part in their capacity, leaving the rest to you. Therefore, what remains is your responsibility to improve your immune health.
Coachella Valley Direct Primary Care Physicians
Coachella Valley Direct Primary Care Physicians, located in Rancho Mirage California, and serving the entire Coachella Valley, for all their primary healthcare needs. Offering in office, and virtual appointments. The membership program allows you to have full access, without long waiting, high unexpected healthcare costs, and doctors who work with you to help you live the best optimum life possible.
For one low monthly fee, you avoid waiting, office visit fees, and a referral network to all specialists necessary to meet your needs.
Our website – https://coachellavalleydpc.com/
Call us direct 760-642-5549
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