Strengthen Your Immune System
It’s that time of year again… Cold and flu season!
Cold and flu season happens because we spend more time indoors, in closer contact with other people who can pass on their germs. And the influenza virus stays airborne longer because the air is cold and less humid.
This doesn’t mean you have to get a cold or the flu. You can cruise through the season without so much as a sniffle by keeping your immune system strong.
How do you do that? …We’re glad you asked!
About Your Immune System
Your immune system is precisely that — a system — not a single part. To function well, it requires balance and harmony.
There is still a lot that researchers don’t know about the intricacies and inter-connectedness of the immune response.
But that doesn’t mean that general healthy-living strategies don’t help. A good strategy is likely to boost your immune system function, and it comes with other benefits.
Every part of your body, including your immune system, functions better when protected from environmental assaults and when boosted by healthy-living strategies that include:
- Eating healthy and maintaining a healthy weight
- Exercising regularly
- Getting plenty of sleep
- Taking steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently and cooking meats thoroughly
- Minimizing Stress
For many people, much of this is going to be difficult to do regularly. (Late nights, little sleep, changing diets, and a lot of stress take their toll on even the strongest plans.)
Plus, as we age, our immune response capability becomes reduced, which in turn contributes to more infections.
Don’t despair. There are a few things you can do.
Eat Well
This is a common challenge for college students, especially their first year away from home. It also impacts a lot of adults.
Emotional eating, an abundance of carbs, and peer pressure can lead to the “Freshman 15” just like stress at work, running around with your family, and juggling your finances can make you reach for cookies and caffeine.
But it doesn’t have to.
Remember to find your balance. Eat too much Pizza? Be sure to focus on your veggies the following day. Too much wine? More water will help. Eat every cookie in the house? Maybe skip anything with sugar for a day or two.
Balance.
Eating well also means getting plenty of the foods that deliver the nutrition your body needs to function at its best. Vegetables and fruits help this effort. You’ve probably heard that eating things with rich colors is key, and it definitely makes it easier. These foods often contain the minerals and vitamins that your body uses to fuel energy and fight off the results of stress. They may also help you reduce your sugar cravings!
Exercise
Regular exercise is key to healthy living. It improves your heart health, lowers blood pressure, helps control your weight, reduces stress, and protects against a variety of diseases. Just like a healthy diet, exercise can contribute to your general health and a healthy immune system.
Exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous or boring. A morning walk with a friend, dancing to your favorite music, gardening, riding a bike, swimming, golf, pickleball… just pick something you love that gets your body moving.
Control Your Stress
You may not be able to control your stress, but you can create a plan to minimize its impact on your body.
Modern medicine is starting to appreciate the closely linked relationship between your mind and body. A wide variety of illness, including an upset stomach, hives, and even heart disease, are linked to the effects of emotional stress.
So if you’ve worked your way into a stress corner, take a deep breath and know that you can turn it around.
This can be a challenge when you’re in the middle of a tight deadline, you have too many things to juggle, and the weight of the world (work, your family, school, whatever) is resting on your shoulders.
Go for a quiet walk in nature. Take a nap. Try a yoga class. Get a massage. Call your best friend. Do something – anything – that brings you joy.
And don’t forget to breathe. (Deep breathing may, in fact, be all that you need to reset your inner peace.)
Stress doesn’t own you.
Do supplements help?
Science is somewhat divided on supplements. Not because they do not work, but because there’s such a variety of things that are labeled ‘supplements’ and an even wider range of what that label means.
At Gematria, we strive to create immune support formulas that enhance the native functions of your immune system.
When your body is under stress, your cells get depleted of the nutrients that make them work well.
Deficient cells don’t do what they’re supposed to do at the levels they need to perform. By boosting depleted nutrients, you’re boosting the cell’s ability to work.
Our AIR Immune Rebalancing Caps, for example, effectively deliver nutrients that boost your immune function. The ingredients we include in this formula, like selenium, magnesium, zinc, and copper, are critical to your body functions.
Selenium, magnesium, zinc, and copper all have powerful antioxidant properties.
Antioxidants prevent cell damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are formed in your body daily, as byproducts of your metabolism. They get a bad rap, but they are essential for your health. They perform important functions, including protecting your body from disease. But they do this by taking an electron or a hydrogen atom away from another cell. This leaves the cell that lost the electron or atom damaged.
Antioxidants donate their electrons or atoms to stabilize free radicals, preventing damage to other cells.
Things like smoking, pollution, alcohol, and stress can cause an excess of free radicals, which leads to the oxidative stress that damages healthy cells. It’s important to have a supply of antioxidants to keep the free radicals in check.
Patrolling free radicals is not the only benefit of these ingredients.
- Selenium plays a critical role in your metabolism and thyroid function, it may also improve cardiovascular health, prevent mental decline caused by oxidative stress and may help with reduce the symptoms of asthma.
- Magnesium plays a role in more than 300 enzyme reactions in your body. Its many functions include helping with muscle and nerve function, regulating blood pressure, and supporting your immune system. It may also improve exercise performance, reduce insulin resistance, and prevent migraines.
- Zinc plays critical roles in collagen synthesis, immune function and inflammatory response. Zinc is largely stored in your skin where it helps decrease inflammation, accelerate wound healing, and may help treat acne.
- Copper supports brain health, improves cardiovascular health, and its anti-inflammatory properties may help delay or reduce arthritis. Cooper deficiency has been shown to reduce the number of white blood cells in the body, causing a condition called neutropenia. A low white blood cell count can make you more vulnerable to infection. Maintaining copper levels in the body may help with the production and support of white blood cells.
You can get these benefits by eating foods that contain selenium, magnesium, zinc, and copper but that would likely amount to A LOT of food every day. We’ve made it easy to ensure that you get what your cells need by formulating a capsule that has it all.
So, stay healthy! Eat well, get plenty of rest, move about, smile more, and help your immune system out. You’ll get through cold and flu season with an extra spring in your step!
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This article mentions Gematria’s AIR Multi-Immune Caps. You can discover more about this product by clicking the button below.