Having a cold or flu is one of the most irritating things.
Cold slows you down and makes your life harder.
These are the small changes that you can make in your daily life to prevent catching it.
Here are some effective ways to prevent cold and flu.
1. Give up junk food this
Junk food has a deleterious effect on your gastrointestinal tract and that is where your immune system begins.
So stop eating sugar, packaged food, and chips because that stuff creates an imbalance in the gastrointestinal tract which in turn has a negative impact on your immune function.
Instead, adopt a Whole Foods diet. Start eating foods as they exist in nature.
You get a whole bunch of antioxidants vitamins minerals that work together to help boost your immune function and help strengthen your immunity.
2. Get quality sleep
7 or 8 hours a night is really ideal. The reason for that is because when you rest you restore your immune system.
It also helps to support a healthy stress response so you help to modulate your stress levels when you’re adequately rested.
If you don’t sleep well your stress level really never ends. It’s an opportunity to kind of disengage.
You’re carrying one day’s stress into your next day, so you’re not really getting quality sleep.
Quality sleep is important because when you’re stressed out your immune system starts to get a little bit skewed and it’s going to leave you more vulnerable to bacterial and viral infections and you might find you’re getting sick more often.
3. Exercise
This is something that many people have a hard time engaging during the winter months because it’s cold it’s dark and people don’t like it out that once they know they’re home.
They don’t want to get out again but really it’s one of the most important things that you can do to help strengthen your immune system because exercise helps to modulate immune function and helps to regulate it.
Exercise also helps you sweat and when you sweat you release toxins from your body which they don’t have an opportunity to weaken your immunity.
It also is really good to help manage your stress levels. If you’re stressed out you’re also weakening immune function.
So having regular exercise, 3 to 4 times a week about 30 minutes at a time would be ideal to strengthen your immune function and help you fight off colds.
4. Find out what your vitamin D levels are
Studies have shown is that people who are vulnerable to colds and flu have an underlying vitamin D deficiency because they do have an amino protective effect.
So, find out your vitamin C levels, and if you need to supplement it do so.
Go to your doctor and do have that number checked out so that you know how much you need to supplement before you just go out there and randomly take supplements of vitamin D.
5. Too much coffee can be an issue
Coffee is a way to keep people engaged in their day. It affects their sleep and it weakens their immune function and exacerbates their stress levels.
So you need to look at how much coffee you’re having.
If you have one cup a day that is certainly not an issue but if you’re relying on multiple cups of coffee a day to help you get through your day you should take a look at that and then start to notice what impact is it having on your sleep.
Because if you’re not getting the quality sleep you’re going to really have a weakened immune response.
All these things are really important.
If you have a cup of coffee at noon it’s not going to exit your body fully until 10 o’clock that night. So if you’re drinking coffee throughout the day take a look at that and curtail it because if you’re getting colds and flu that might be the reason.
6. Consider reducing or eliminating dairy foods from your diet completely
The reason for this is that dairy is mucus-producing food. it creates a lot of that NICUs that get trapped in your nasal passages and can lead to sinus infections and other problems.
This is particularly true for people who have sinus congestion like chronic congestion.
If you eliminate dairy or do reduce dairy from your diet you will likely see an improvement there and that will also help to boost your immune function.
7. Supplement with vitamin C
Consider taking some vitamin C prophylactically every day to help ward off any sort of infection.
Of course, always discuss it with your doctor or pharmacist to make sure that vitamin C is appropriate for you.
What vitamin C does helps to boost white blood cell production and in that way, it helps protect you against developing a bacterial infection or a viral infection.
It’s also a very strong antioxidant so it’s a great thing to include in your diet. People try to get it from food and that is one way.
So there you have seven suggestions to help keep you from missing days at work although you might want to do that anyway.
Eliminating junk foods and introducing whole foods into your diet might be sufficient to give you everything you need to help support healthy immunity.
Whole foods have lots of vitamins minerals antioxidants nutrients that help protect your immune system and help keep you strong and healthy.
