5 Fast Tips To Boost Your Immune System
Optimal gut health is essential to overall health, especially where the immune system is concerned.
The human digestive system is home to around 70 percent of our immune system and trillions of good and bad bacteria that determine our gut health. You may think you have good gut health because you don’t suffer from any digestive problems like IBS, acid reflux, or excessive gas, but it’s possible for poor gut health to manifest itself in other ways. Gut health is thought to affect the mucosal portion of the immune system, with intestinal flora directing operations in our immune systems. The digestive tract is also the place where many harmful microorganisms and pathogens are introduced to the body.
People with poor gut health often find that they suffer from other ailments like headaches, chronic fatigue, back pain, depression, mood swings, and allergies if they are lucky enough not to also have bloating, gas, weight problems, and constipation. While you might think there is little you can do to improve your gut health, there are many simple changes you can in your diet to promote healthy gut flora and thereby boost your immune system. Here are five quick tips for boosting your gut health and immune system.
1. Take a Probiotic Supplement
Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that already live in your gut that help you digest properly. A good probiotic supplement introduces billions of beneficial microorganisms directly into your digestive tract in a small capsule. However, not all probiotic supplements are created equal. Many supplements contain potentially harmful fillers or inactive microorganisms. A high-quality probiotic should be composed of whole food ingredients and stored in the refrigerator to ensure the organisms stay live. Probiotic supplements are particularly useful during or after a course of antibiotics.
2. Eat Probiotic and Prebiotic Foods
Fermented foods are a great way to include natural live probiotics in your diet. Delicious foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kefir, tempeh, yogurt, or apple cider vinegar are abundant sources of beneficial live bacteria strains. People have used fermented foods like these to improve their gut health for millennia, and incorporating them into your diet couldn’t be easier.
Prebiotic foods, which contain non-digestible carbohydrates, like artichokes, asparagus, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and whole grain foods can also help boost the immune system. Prebiotics feed the good bacteria in your digestive tract, causing them to multiply and flourish in your intestines, improving your gut health and therefore your immune system.
Ginger is another great food that helps improve gut health and reduce inflammation in the body. It has been used for thousands of years as an anti-inflammatory and has antimicrobial properties that can help fight infections in the gut such as viruses, parasites, and other infectious agents.
3. Cut Out Sugar
While we all love sugar, in order to improve our gut health, we must reduce or eliminate our sugar intake entirely. Much like prebiotic foods feed the good bacteria in our digestive systems, sugar feeds the bad bacteria that promotes poor gut health. Experts agree that we should consume no more than 26 grams of sugar per day, and less if we can manage it. Bad gut bacteria thrive on the sugars and fats found in junk food, and eating too much of them can cause a significant imbalance in our good and bad gut bacteria, negatively impacting our immune response. Try eating fresh, unprocessed foods and including lots of vegetables in your diet to get the fiber, nutrients, and complex carbohydrates our bodies need to function at optimum health and keep inflammation at a minimum.
Our bodies crave sugar because the bad gut bacteria is telling the brain to feed it. By nourishing our good gut bacteria, we can override the signals from the bad bacteria telling us to eat sugary junk food instead of what we know is good for us.
4. Improve Your Sleep Hygiene
While it is not fully understood, there is an undeniable link between sleep and gut health, and therefore sleep and proper immune system function. Most adults don’t get enough sleep on a nightly basis, which can negatively impact gut health by disturbing the delicate balance of intestinal flora. In turn, this can cause inflammation disorders and further disrupt your gut biome. A proliferation of bad gut bacteria can also negatively affect sleep, causing interruptions in circadian rhythms and affecting our sleeping and waking hormone levels.
Improving your sleep hygiene can improve your gut bacteria and immune system by allowing you to get better sleep. Some simple ways to improve your sleep hygiene are to limit screen time, especially two hours before bed, start a calming bedtime routine, drink herbal teas, use essential oils or meditate to relax, the list goes on. Make preparing for bed a daily ritual that you look forward to, and improve your gut’s immune response in kind.
5. Get Some Fresh Air
It’s estimated that we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors, which may be damaging to our gut health. Breathing fresh air from open windows or outdoors increases our exposure to different microbes, which in turn improves the diversity of microbes in our bodies. This can improve our immune response by creating a tolerance to unfavorable stimuli and increase the number of favorable ones. Fresh air is essential to a diverse gut microbiome, and therefore a healthy immune system.
Gardening is a wonderful outdoor activity that can boost your immune system and gut health. Digging in the dirt introduces many symbiotic microorganisms into your system, also improving the diversity of your body’s microorganism pool. You will also have the ability to grow your own fresh produce that can also improve your gut health.
As you can see, there are several quick and easy ways to improve your immune system by improving your gut health. While medical science still isn’t certain what causes such a strong link between proper digestive health and optimal immune system function, they are sure the link exists. Try one of these simple tricks to improve your gut and immune health, and watch your overall health improve.
Resources:
http://naturalsociety.com/5-ways-to-boost-your-gut-health-for-optimum-immunity/
http://www.naturallivingideas.com/13-ways-to-improve-gut-health/
https://draxe.com/how-to-boost-your-immune-system/
https://breakingmuscle.com/learn/5-quick-tips-for-healthy-guts-and-a-healthier-immune-system