How to Survive Sickness Season?
Now that it is officially holiday season it also marks the beginning of the start of what I refer to as sickness season. There have already been numerous cases of pneumonia, flu, RSV, and many others going around schools and places of work. At times it feels like it is impossible to avoid the inevitable sickness that looms during this time, especially if you have children. There are a variety of conventional options such as flu shots and different treatment medications. However, that is not what we are focusing on today as those are completely personal choices that come with risk and rewards that everybody should educate themselves on and make the best decision possible for their family. What we are going to focus on is small changes at home and in daily lives that can help to strengthen your body to boost your immune system to be able to combat sickness and shorten the length of time of sickness if it does occur.
The biggest change you can make to boost your immune system is to focus on gut health. This tends to be an area that we fail to prioritize during the holidays as we started with candy at Halloween followed by overeating during Thanksgiving and a cascade of holiday treats leading up to Christmas. This time doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach! There are ways to strengthen the lining of your gut and optimize health while enjoying the holidays and all of the food related events. The first step toward better gut health is to take a probiotic daily! I personally believe everybody should take a probiotic year round based on the research that it can reduce inflammation, boost hormone health, and reduce risk of certain cancers. I take my probiotic every night before bed and this was a great place to start, and is an easy addition in to any routine. Recent studies suggest that the microbiota composition in the gut has an impact on the susceptibility to immune disorders such as autoimmunity and allergy. Therefore, it can be especially helpful for those with allergies during this time to increase the attention given to gut health. The second way to better support your gut is to reduce processed foods and seed oils. Seed oils include vegetable oil, soybean oil, sunflower, and peanut oil. These are highly inflammatory oils that are included in a vast variety of processed food products. In addition, these are the main cooking oils used in fast food restaurants as well. The problem with seed oils is the omega 6 concentration instead of omega 3 which is found in olive oil as such these oils trigger the body to start an inflammatory responses and requires the immune and nervous system to respond and work harder than necessary. If your body is working in overdrive to protect the gut daily, how is it supposed to fight off germs during flu season? These two changes can have major impacts on your gut health and as such your immune system. However, I fully believe these are changes that can and should follow you after winter is over and be used year around to better support your body.
The second change you can do is to to pay special attention to food and water intake. While this sounds simple a lot of the population in the United States is walking around in a perpetual state of dehydration as such weakening their body’s response. While I think most of us realize drinking more water is important we often fail to realize what foods can directly impact our vitamin levels other than oranges (vitamin c). However, red bell peppers naturally have 3 times the vitamin c concentration of an orange and can easily be added into almost any weekly meal lineup. In addition, broccoli, spinach, ginger, garlic, raw honey, fermented foods, liver (I eat liverwurst twice a week lately), whole milk yogurt, and bone broth can be great ways to get necessary vitamins and almost boost your gut health and support your immune system. Too often we focus on the foods and fueling the body properly when we feel ill and not necessarily to prevent illness from occurring, but that seems counterintuitive as I know very few people who enjoy being sick.
It can at times feel like a hopeless task to avoid sickness and sometimes it is, but there are easy steps that you can take to support your body to the best of your ability to minimize this sickness and enjoy your holiday season. In addition, your body will overall become more resilient as you become intentional about these choices in which one or two events is not going to disrupt your progress and you can feel better about indulging in those joyful holiday events.
Product Links:
Ancestral Beef Liver Supplement
Research links:
https://intermountaincenterforwellbeing.com/are-seed-oils-bad/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/gmic.29330
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12986-022-00690-4
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2008/639803