Surviving Cold And Flu Season: Natural Ways To Boost Your Immune System

With kids back in school and summer vacations a not-so-distant memory, it’s time to start thinking about sweater weather, pumpkin spice mania, and cold and flus. While cold and flu season officially starts in October, I’ve already had some patients and friends catching colds and having to miss work or school.

It may be hard to believe after an unusually wet and gloomy summer but cold and flu season is approaching fast. This makes now a great time to start boosting your immune system so you can make it through the Fall and Winter illness-free.

I’m sure you’ve been told to “boost” your immune system before but what does that actually mean? Does a boost to your immune system mean something you can buy over the counter? A booster shot? A booster seat?

Ok, while that last suggestion is just me being silly, there is confusion about how to effectively support your immune system during cold and flu season.  And yes, there are tons of immune supportive products you can buy over the counter, but who wants to take 20 capsules every day? If you’ve worked with me in any capacity, you know I’m not a big on taking tons of supplements and don’t even practice this for my own health care regimen.

In this article, I’ll discuss some of my top supplements for boosting your immune system as well as some lifestyle changes you can make that won’t cost a penny, except the time and willpower it takes to do them.

Take Bugs To Fight Bugs

It may be hard to believe but around 80% of your immune system resides in your gut. When you stop and think about it, your gut and the what you expose it to is one of the few ways that your body integrates something from the outside world into part of you.

Eat some undercooked meat that’s been sitting out for a few hours? Your body needs a strong defense system in place to prevent the bacteria that’s started inhabiting that meat, from making it into your blood stream.

One way to support this inherent immune system is by promoting a population of healthy gut bacteria (otherwise known as health gut flora). While it may seem strange to want bacteria to prevent colds and illness, certain strains of bacteria in high enough amounts provide us with lots of benefits. In fact, bacteria outnumber our own cells by a factor of 10 so it is reasonable to say, without our healthy bacteria, we would not be us.

Maintaining healthy gut flora prevents any unwanted bacteria from taking over. In addition to keeping your immune system functioning, a population of healthy gut bacteria help us make some much needed vitamins, breakdown components of food and extract calories, metabolize hormones, and even improve certain mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.

So how do you keep this balance of healthy bacteria in your gut? Our gut flora is influenced by many factors including what we eat, where we live, our stress, and more. But the easiest way to support your gut health is to take a probiotic. Yes, fermented foods can also help but I’ve found that they lack a strong enough bacterial punch to make a significant different is your gut flora is seriously out of whack.

The key is finding a great quality probiotic. Probiotics should be refrigerated since they are living things so be suspicious of any probiotics that have just been sitting on the store shelf. They should have a variety of strains of bacteria, not just one or two. And they should have a lot of bacteria. I usually start people with a minimum of 25 billion CFU (colony forming units or the way we measure bacteria in probiotics) but have heard more and more reports of people taking as much as 400 billion without any adverse effects. Compare this with the general store brands that seem to have 5 billion CFU on average.

I recommend taking your probiotic with food as it helps to dilute your stomach acid so the bacteria have a better chance of surviving the long, windy, and acidic road to your colon. And while probiotics are safe for the vast majority of people, anyone with a severely compromised immune system or suffering from a condition called SIBO, should consult a healthcare professional before supplementing.

Food As Medicine

In addition to the bacteria that occupy our gut, it is equally important what we put into that tube. As with almost every health condition, what we eat directly impacts our health, positively and negatively, and the same is true for boosting your immune system.

Study after study has shown that sugar will actually lower your immune system’s ability to fight infection. So while sugar might seem like just the sort of comfort food you need during the cold and flu season, laying off the sugar may help your body fight off any infectious agents you could be exposed to.

If you need more support to avoid sugar, herbs can provide wonderful support. Placing a few drops of Gymnema sylvestre on your tongue and swishing the liquid around in your mouth for 30 seconds will selectively inactivate sweet taste buds for a few hours.  This means eating anything sugary will taste terrible and allows you to let any sugar cravings pass.

Another food remedy that I frequently recommend is making my Cold and Flu Kicker. It only has four ingredients of common items you can easily find at the grocery store, takes a few minutes to prepare, and lasts you throughout the entire cold and flu season.

Sleep It Off

I’m sure we all inherently know that sleep is good for us. I mean, just forgo sleep for one night and tell me how amazing you feel.  That’s because sleep is important for numerous processes in your body. Sleep is prime healing time so setting aside the time to ensure you get an extra few hours of shut-eye can make a huge difference when it comes to proper immune function.

In America, we are notorious for not sleeping enough and part of our culture has transformed to bragging about how little sleep we get. While that may win you points at the office, not getting the 7-9 hours a night that your body requires, won’t help your immune system function.

With the laxity of summer behind us, managing your kids school schedules and extracurricular activities, and just trying to get through the day-to-day grind of being an adult, it may not feel like we have time to spare for sleep.

Think of sleep as adding to your health bank. We withdraw from it multiple times throughout the day but we have to deposit sleep back in so we’re not chronically over-drafted. If sleep is really a struggle for you, even scheduling a 15-minute nap during the day can provide your immune system with the extra support it needs.

Hydration

Drinking more water is easily the most common thing I recommend to patients with any health concerns. Your body is approximately 70% water and is used throughout all the different systems of your body. Not getting half your body weight in ounce each day of just water can have a major impact on your energy, weight, digestion, and yep, you guessed it, even your immune system.

Take a moment throughout the day to check-in and, not only acknowledge your thirst, but do something about it. And we discussed earlier, perhaps quench your thirst with a liquid other than sugary drinks. If plain water doesn’t appeal to you, adding lemon, mint, cucumber, strawberries, or even rosemary, can greatly change the flavor without adding extra sugar.

If, like me, you find you struggle with even remembering to drink water, installing a simple app on your smartphone can make a huge difference, especially if, like me, you check your smartphone way more than you’d like to admit. I personally love the free app My Water. It not only keeps track of what you drink but sends you encouraging reminders to help you make it towards your water goal.

Manage the Stress

While bouts of acute stress can actually help your immune system, long-term chronic stress can depress your immune system, leading to more infections.

Janelle and I created an entire series about stress since stress is pervasive in our culture and has such a strong connection to so many health conditions. Read more about stress and stress-management tools here, here, here, and here.

While this list is not exhaustive, your naturopathic doctor can offer more tailored suggestions to boost your immune system or come up with a plan to help you implement these tips. When it comes to healthy immune function, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…or rather, a pound of snot from having a cold.

What have you found effective to boost your immune system? What are your favorite go-tos?