How do you strengthen your immune system? Your immune system is designed to protect you from microorganisms that cause disease. Unfortunately, there are times when your system isn’t strong enough to fight germs. Is there anything you can do to make your immune system fight better? Something you can eat? What should you start or stop doing?
What Can You Do to Strengthen Your Immune System?
The immune system is complex, and there are still many unknowns. You can start by adopting healthy lifestyle habits. This entails a good balance of diet, exercise, and stress management.
There are a few general good-health guidelines that can help keep your immune system strong naturally. Your body, including your immune system, works better when it’s protected from environmental assaults.
Your Immune System and What You Consume
Don’t smoke. Smoking affects adaptive immune cells including T helper cells (Th1/Th2/Th17), CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells, CD8+ T cells, B cells, and memory T/B lymphocytes. It also impacts innate immune cells like DCs, macrophages, and NK cells. Cigarette smoke generally weakens immunity against infections.
Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables. Eating specific fruits and vegetables may strengthen your immune response. When your immune system responds, it releases antibodies that kill antigens on the pathogens. Multivitamins that specifically contain Zinc and Vitamin D have been proven to help fight against severe infections from COVID.
Reduce Alcohol Consumption. Consuming too much alcohol can lead to immune deficiency, which makes you more susceptible to certain diseases. Alcohol abusers are more susceptible to illnesses such as pneumonia and septicemia.
Your Immune System and How You Treat Your Body
Exercise regularly. By exercising, you can help flush bacteria out of your lungs and airways to reduce your risk of catching the cold, flu, or other illness. Exercise allows antibodies and white blood cells (WBC) to circulate faster and fight off disease. Additionally, your increased body temperature as you exercise may prevent bacteria from growing. Like a fever, this temperature rise may help the body fight infection better.
Get adequate sleep. A lack of sleep can affect your immune system and make you prone to viruses. It can also slow down your recovery from illnesses. When you sleep, your immune system releases proteins, called cytokines, that fight infections. Missing sleep may reduce the amount of cytokines and infection-fighting antibodies in your system.
Minimize stress. Managing stress better helps prevent the immune system from weakening. When we are stressed, corticosteroids are released. These stress hormones can lower the number of lymphocytes in our body and suppress the effectiveness of the immune system.
