5 Natural Ways to Boost Your Immune System Against Infections
Maintaining a strong and healthy immune system is essential for overall well-being. By incorporating these five habits into your daily routine, you can boost your immune health and quickly combat infections.
The true avenger of your body against infecting micro-organisms is your immune system. In fact, it is considered one of the most studied systems of the human body. There is still much to be learned about how the body works, why it sometimes fails, and when harmful germs take over.
One of the best initiatives you can take to lead a healthy life is focusing on your immune health. You can boost your immune system in lots of natural and synthetic ways.
How to Boost Immune System Naturally?
What if the immune system can perform its remarkable job of fighting off deadly germs, more energetically by simply changing your lifestyle patterns? Eager to learn how? We’ve got a solution for your query.
Studies have proved functional foods are directly correlated with increasing one’s immunocompetency. Aside from intaking such foods, we’ve listed below some natural ways that are scientifically supported to boost the immune system. Furthermore, they can assist you in achieving your goal of leading a healthy lifestyle.
Without further ado, let’s just dive straight into the details.
1. Consume a Balanced Diet
Since micronutrients and dietary proteins are crucial in protracting the homeostasis of your immune system, their deficiencies can lead to disastrous immune dysfunctions. Therefore, to boost the immune system, it is necessary to obtain these nutrients from natural food sources i.e., lean proteins, healthy fats, whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits.
A balanced diet can miraculously rejuvenate your impaired immune functions. Experts believe the body absorbs vitamins more quickly and effectively from natural foods than from ingesting them through supplements.
While making a habit of consuming a healthy diet, be mindful that you are equally distancing yourself from even minute quantities of processed foods. Their deleterious impacts are known to not only disrupt our natural gut microbiome but can also be encoded into our genes. Their tendency to initiate inflammatory and allergic immune responses is another thing that cannot be brushed aside!
2. Keep Yourself Hydrated
Your body becomes more prone to infections when its metabolic toxins and other debris are not properly removed from the body. It normally happens when you are dehydrated. Water constitutes about 60% of our body mass, and is an important medium for mobilizing lymph and blood into our body therefore, it is a significant factor in boosting immune health.
The circulating immune cells in the blood are then taken up by body tissues more effectively. Also, water provides hydration, which is vital for the physical well-being of mucous membranes. They are prime barriers against infecting microbes.
Thus drinking 7–8 glasses of water on a daily basis can help in preventing weakened immune health due to microbial buildup in the body.
3. Get Enough Sleep
Getting a good night's sleep is just as important for a healthy immune system as oxygen is for staying alive. When you are not awake, numerous constructive events occur in your body.
Different parts of the immune system are negatively impacted by sleep loss. So, a variety of disorders can arise if you don’t get enough sleep.
When you don’t get adequate sleep, your immune cells go down, and your inflammatory cells go up. As a result, immune system suppression occurs and can lead to potential infections.
It is generally recommended that adults should get 7–8 hours of peaceful sleep. While for kids and teens, this duration can exceed even 10 and 14 hours, respectively.
4. Make Exercise Your Daily Habit
Your body is meant to move. Regular physical activity is essential for optimal health. If you keep yourself physically active through exercise, you are giving favor to your immune health as blood circulation improves if you exercise daily.
Engaging in moderate exercise and movement at least five days a week can effectively boost the immune system, reduce inflammation, regulate blood sugar, maintain a healthy weight, and ultimately promote longevity.
Moderate-intensity exercise is beneficial in not only keeping yourself de-stressed but also supporting the mobilization of immune cells from bones into the bloodstream.
5. Learn to Manage Your Stress
Stress if not get adequately treated can take its chronic form known as “depression”. It can easily shave years off from your life. Its indication varies from person to person, and so is its treatment.
So, keeping your immune health robust demands you to know, how anxiety/stress damages your immune surveillance.
Stress hormones can bind with receptors on immune cells, stimulating them to release cytokines. These chemical modulators signal the brain to produce behavioral abnormalities and other sickness symptoms, like fatigue, loss of appetite, anxiety, and perturbed sleeping patterns, etc.
So, if you want to reduce your vulnerability to infections, and boost your immune health naturally learn to manage your stress.
To boost your immune health, you can naturally ward off stress by:
- Spending time with people you love
- Meditation
- Connecting with nature
- Spending time on and by beaches
- Exercising
- Deep breathing
- Reading your favorite books
- Getting enough sleep
- Avoiding caffeinated drinks
- Taking warm baths
Final Words
A sound immune system is your strongest weapon against microbial invaders. If you want your immune system to take care of you, you will have to take care of it through modifications in your lifestyle patterns and keeping stress a thousand miles away from you!
The above-mentioned practical tips are easy to follow and can bring profound and miraculous improvement in the general well-being of your immunity. So, it's time to boost your immune health naturally.
So, stop thinking — start prioritizing your immune health over all other things. You’ll eventually realize, this is the highest form of self-care and feels nothing short of a luxury. Good luck!
