Strengthen Your Immune System for Cold Season

This article was originally written for and posted in my column, The Fitness Corner, in The Macon Telegraph

As the weather becomes more consistently chilly, many of us will be reaching for cough syrup and nasal spray — as well as for antibiotics — because we know that with the chill comes the season for colds.

Your body’s main line of defense against viral infections such as colds is your immune system. When any such virus manages to get past your skin barrier, it encounters your immune system, which is filled with white blood cells that search for and destroy such invaders.

This is what happens with a healthy immune system, and it is important that we practice lifestyle habits to ensure that our immune systems are healthy and strong.

So where does medicine come in?

Here’s the deal: Cough syrups, nasal sprays, seltzers, lozenges and so on make you feel better, but they don’t do any more than that. They serve as symptom relievers, meaning that they will do nothing to help you recover faster, and they also will do nothing to make you less susceptible to colds.

The same goes for antibiotics, which do absolutely nothing for colds and flu because of the fact that antibiotics fight bacteria, not viruses.

The appropriate lifestyle habits, however, can go a long way toward building our immune systems, helping us fight colds, and even helping us to avoid catching so many colds. What’s more, they cost very little to implement.

I’d like to discuss three habits that you can adopt this season that will help your immune system to be healthy, strong and resistant to colds.

EAT ONIONS AND GARLIC

Both garlic and onions are part of the allium family and contain substances such as allicin and other sulfur compounds that have antiviral, antifungal and antibacterial properties. This makes them great for fighting cold infections, and both add great flavor to almost any dish.

I enjoy adding onions and garlic to meats, beans, cooked leafy greens and eggs, to name a few.

TAKE SLEEP SERIOUSLY

A person who is sleep deprived is also very likely a person who is more susceptible to colds and other viral infections. Sleep deprivation depresses the immune system by lowering the amount of white blood cells that circulate through your blood, leaving you more vulnerable to infection.

Most of us need about seven hours of sleep every night, so if you find yourself either consistently getting less than this or always nodding off at work, you need to make adequate sleep your top priority.

SHUN THE SUGAR

Your sweet tooth could be disrupting your body’s defenses against colds and flu. Consuming large amounts of sugar can significantly limit the ability of your white blood cells to consume harmful microbes that have entered the body. This effect starts as soon as 30 minutes after you’ve consumed the sugar, and can last for several hours.

However, if the sugar that you consume comes from whole foods (vegetables, fruits, etc), immune suppression is not an issue. So be sure to limit your intake of processed, sugary snacks in favor of whole foods.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the natural lifestyle-related things that you can do to bolster your immune system during this cold and flu season, but it is indeed a start.  Eating more immune-boosting onions and garlic, getting adequate sleep and lowering sugar intake are actions that we all can easily implement and benefit from, and they’ll likely do us more good than stocking up on over-the-counter medicines.