No matter how much effort you put in, it is impossible to hide from all germs. While measures like washing your hands and avoiding contact with a person who is sick go a long way to keep yourself healthy, efforts should also be made to boost your immune system. This way, when you do inevitably get some germs in your body, you can naturally fight them off with ease. It’s what your immune system was made to do!
Does this mean buying additional supplements? No! All of the things you can do to give your immune system a boost are activities you can and should be doing anyway. It’s all a part of a healthy lifestyle!
#1 Sleep Sure, at the end of a long day we all want to sleep. It’s more than that though; our body needs to sleep. Sleep allows your body to rest, repair, and refresh. When you’re tired, so is your immune system. A tired immune system puts you at a greater risk for falling ill after you come into contact with germs.
Remember, this isn’t just “some” sleep. You need a full eight hours of sleep that involves going through your entire sleep cycle multiple times. It’s been proven by several scientific studies, including one by the Archives of Internal Medicine that showed a link between adequate sleep and immune function. Researchers identified the eight-hour mark as very important, as less than this threshold was associated with a 300% increase in the likelihood of catching the common cold.
#2 Daily exercise Did you wonder why recent “safer at home” regulations excluded going outside for a jog or bike ride? It may seem counterintuitive if you’re supposed to be in your house to go outside to get a workout. This exception was made across the board because science has shown us that regular exercise is incredibly important for our health, including our immune health. Scientists say it “seems to exert a protective effect.”
To put it plainly, a daily exercise routine means being in better shape which helps with overall health, so your immune system benefits. As well, the movement aids blood flow and helps immune cells migrate throughout your body.
#3 Meditating, journaling, or other stress relief Your mental health and your physical health are intricately linked. If you become too burned out, stressed, worried, depressed, or anxious, your body begins to show physical affects well beyond your mood. This is because stress hormones negatively impact many parts of your body, including your immune system. These hormones hamper the production of antibodies, which are proteins that mark invaders, and other immune cells. Stress has even been shown to give latent viral infections new life!
You can’t totally avoid stress, so you must learn to manage it in a way that works well for you. Some people prefer meditating or journaling in the evening before bed. Others like a 30-minute yoga routine. Maybe for you, it’s an aromatherapy bubble bath. Your stress is probably different than other people’s, so your perfect stress relief technique will be too.
#4 Eating healthy Even with 30 minutes of yoga and journaling every night, your body will only be as healthy as the food you put into it. Foods to boost your immune system include citrus fruits, yogurt, almonds, turmeric, green tea, papaya, and kiwi. As an added benefit, almonds and kiwi help your body sleep better at night. Yogurt is full of the protein your body needs for your exercise. You see, all your healthy habits are connected!
Your body can protect itself, if you give it the right tools to do so. Thankfully, simple immune boosting habits easily blend with the type of healthy lifestyle you should be leading anyway. Getting high-quality sleep on a premium mattress, exercising, eating well, and partaking in daily stress-relieving activities will allow your body’s defense to do what they were made to do. Beyond this, you’ll enjoy positive mental health, be more well-rested, have improved cognitive function, and weigh less. You’ll be all around happier and healthier!
If you’re ready to lead a healthier lifestyle and see your current sleep situation as a stumbling block, make today the day you order a premium mattress online from Pranasleep. Once delivered, you can give your body the eight hours of deep, rejuvenating sleep it needs to wake up healthy, refreshed, and able to fight off any germs you come across that day.
