With the ongoing health crisis and with the weather about to make a drastic change, building immunity has been on my mind.

A lot of people will say things like “it’s flu season”, almost expecting to get taken out by a virus sooner or later. My strategy is to take as many preventative measures as I can so I’m not playing catch-up when it’s too late. It is possible to fight these things off before they turn into a real problem if your immune system is strong and prepared.

More to the point, I always think about what I can do to best take care of myself rather than worrying about the outside environment around me. It’s best to focus on what you can control versus what is not in your control.

I think there’s a lot we can do to better equip ourselves for times like this and that’s why I threw this little guide together. The results can be genuinely amazing if you’ve never focused on getting enough of these things before.

Vitamin C

Try to get your Vitamin C intake from a natural food source. This means instead of taking a Vitamin C supplement, eat an orange instead.

On top of that, be wary of overly processed food products such as juices. When you eat an orange, you get the Vitamin C and fiber in it’s natural, unprocessed structure. When you drink orange juice however, you are losing out on much of the Vitamin C that should’ve been there because the juice was likely pasteurized, killing off much of the nutritional content.

On top of this, the fiber has been lost which means that you are just drinking a tall glass of sugar which is only going to negatively affect your immune system’s capability. Juices are also notorious for artificially adding in nutritional replacements like ascorbic acid to fill in for the Vitamin C that was lost, but this is not nearly the same as consuming it in it’s natural form. 

Zinc

I’ve come to realize how important of a mineral zinc is to overall health, especially in the context of boosting your immune system and fighting off illness.

When you are deficient in zinc, some of the effects that have been noted are a decreased recovery rate from infection, an increase in the duration of the infection, an increased inflammatory response, an increase in oxidative stress, a decreased capability to fight off infections, and a higher susceptibility to virus and bacteria.

It is in your very best interest to increase the amount of zinc you get into your diet and avoid deficiency.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is an under-appreciated building block of immunity. Although there are foods that contain Vitamin D in them (mainly seafood), it’s difficult to get a sufficient amount of the vitamin that you need.

The easiest way to do so is to get direct sunlight. Around 20 minutes in the sun each day is enough to give you the dosage of Vitamin D that you need.

Garlic

An antibacterial and antifungal agent, garlic is a long-standing tool used for fighting off viruses.

Garlic is something to incorporate into your diet, especially when you’re getting sick. You may even want to consider eating it raw as well because it is supposed to carry the most benefits that way when it comes to fighting against a cold or the flu.

Fasting

A controversial topic to some, but fasting is one of the oldest healing practices there are.

There is a reason that you tend to lose your appetite as you start to get sick, that’s because the body is telling you it wants to enter into it’s repair mode. Fasting, when done for long enough, can stimulate autophagy which basically allows for damaged cells in the body to be cleaned up and recycled.

This also helps sort out inflammation, which is the cause of a ton of health problems in the modern world. Although we have to eat, it does create a slight inflammatory response and the body has to shift it’s focus from healing to digesting.

While fasting, you can still take in supplements, drink electrolyte solutions, drink salted water, etc. 

Stress

You must lower your stress level. We live in an “always-on” world today and it creates a lot of stress.

When it comes to getting sick, there is often a stressful event that was tied to you getting sick. Looking back, I can tell exactly what pushed me over the edge to getting sick and now it even seems predictable. 

Sleep

Sleep is the body’s number one repair mechanism.

Limiting the amount of sleep you get or getting low quality sleep for long periods of time is only putting you at further risk of getting sick and will make it very hard for your body to treat itself when you do come down with something.