You Can Strengthen Your Immune System against Viral Infections…Here’s How

DISCLAIMER: The information on this website is based on personal opinion and personal research, and is not meant to be a substitute for advice from a doctor, medical professional, registered dietitian or nutritionist. Nothing on this website is claimed to cure any condition or disease. You are advised to consult your doctor or physician before beginning any changes in diet or any exercise program.

Be empowered.

In the midst of this Coronavirus pandemic that has been sweeping across the world, saturating news and social media, and disrupting our lives in unprecedented ways, I personally have found it totally unproductive to follow the moment-by-moment COVID-19 updates.

How edifying is it to follow the latest infection and mortality stats?  How encouraging is it to tune in to partisan bickering which has somehow yet again reared its ugly head while regular folks’ lives are being severely impacted?  Exactly.

And all the while, most of us are staying put at home.

Here’s my point.  I know that it doesn’t really help me to focus on all of the negativity that has emerged around Coronavirus, and I’m sure it doesn’t help many of you, either.  That said, I prefer to focus these days on things that are going to empower me and uplift my spirits.

[My wife and I talked about this in our most recent podcast episodes.  Check out this one and this one.]

Among the things I have been shifting my mind toward are my personal health, especially in regard to immunity.  This recent pandemic has made me really think about the fact that, not only do we have immune systems which protect us from microbial (viral, bacterial, fungal) threats, but that there is a lot that we can do to enhance and strengthen our immune systems.

I had an urge yesterday to put some information together for those I love, and I decided to put it into a blog post.  I want to encourage you to use some of this home time to turn off the news and enhance your immune system to be the absolute best that it can be.  Let’s go ahead and get into this.

For Starters…Prevention

Before I get into the details of immune strengthening that I wanted to share, we gotta remember the basics of preventing illness altogether.  This is what the CDC put out there regarding Coronavirus, but most of this applies to any viral illness:

1. Know how it spreads (person-to-person)
2. Wash your hands often
3. Avoid close contact (practice social distancing)
4. Stay home if you are sick
5. Cover coughs and sneezes
6. Wear a face mask if you are sick
7. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces often

I gotta say this:  Wash your hands, folks.  A good brother I know from my church said something recently that I thought was hilarious but unfortunately too true…

Folks out here acting like this “wash your hands” stuff is new!

It’s not new, guys!  Washing your hands well is and has always been something good to do, and this is especially true now.

Start Strengthening Your Immune System Right Now

While there are truly a ton of things you can do for your immune health, I have chosen to focus on the handful of strategies that I and my family are using, namely engaging in moderate exercise, getting Vitamin D from the sun, consuming garlic, and getting good sleep. I sourced my information from medical journals to back up what I am saying so that I am not merely speaking from what I think.

Engage in Moderate Exercise

Moderate exercise is good for a lot of things, and you can add immune system strengthening and prevention of respiratory illnesses to the list, too. It reduces inflammation and improves the body’s immune response to respiratory infections like colds and flu.

A reason that moderate exercise helps in this manner is that the immune response is shifted towards what is called a Th2 response, therefore creating a balance between Th1 and Th2 responses of the immune system (you can check out the sources below for more info if you’re a science nerd).

Now here’s why the word “moderate” is important. Engaging in “prolonged, intense” exercise also shifts the immune response towards Th2, but it can actually do this too much and create an atmosphere in which the virus is benefited and enabled to do more harm. You don’t want that.

How You Can Apply This Now: On most days of the week, engage in some sort of sustained exercise that makes you slightly winded. That includes walking, jogging, gardening/yardwork, exercise classes or anything else you might enjoy. If it’s an activity during which you can still talk in full sentences, you will probably be fine with sustaining it for 15-30 minutes or more at a time.

If the activity leaves you unable to talk without taking several breaths between words, do it for less time and/or take frequent rest breaks. In other words, now might not be the time to train for that marathon or that Ironman

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803113/]

Get Adequate Vitamin D through Sunlight

With the warm weather returning to our part of the world, it’s a great time to start getting your Vitamin D levels up.

I’ve written about this before. Vitamin D is highly protective against many, many kinds of illnesses, and is one of the most important nutrients for strengthening our immune systems. The hands-down best source of Vitamin D is not food, not supplements, but the sun. Vitamin D acquired by sunlight apparently lasts longer in the blood than it would if it were ingested.

It just so happens that viral illnesses such as colds and flu are more prevalent during the winter time, when the sun hits the earth at a shallow angle, reducing the UVB rays from the sun that allow our bodies to synthesize Vitamin D when they hit our skin. Winter time also happens to be the time that Vitamin D deficiency is highest. For the record, many, if not most Americans, are Vitamin D deficient. Matter of fact, last time I was tested a few years ago, I was deficient as well.

How You Can Apply This Now: Get off of your electronics and get outside! Find some way to engage in activities outside. When you exercise, do it outside. Do yardwork. Wash your car. Find a comfortable chair and sit in the sun.

The darker-skinned you are, the more sunlight exposure you need to produce adequate Vitamin D. To put this in perspective, if a lighter-skinned person gets adequate Vitamin D from about 10 minutes of sun exposure, a darker-skinned person could need at least 3 to 5 times that exposure, or 30 to 50 minutes.

The optimal time to get sun during the day is midday, between 10 AM and 3 PM. It’s also worth noting that if your state is not in the tropical or subtropical latitudes (approximately north of Atlanta, GA), you cannot get adequate Vitamin D from the sun during the fall and winter seasons and will probably need to supplement during those times.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759054/]

[https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/128762-overview]

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3356951/]

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946282/]

Consume Garlic

Although we already love to cook with garlic at my home because of how great it makes foods taste, my wife and I have specifically made a practice of swallowing one raw clove of garlic every evening.

Why? Because garlic contains a lot of immune-boosting propeties. In a particular study in which subjects took daily doses of dried, aged garlic extract (2.56 grams/day), after 45 days, the function of certain immune cells was improved, and after 90 days, when any of the subjects came down with colds or flu, the extract appeared to reduce the severity (in symptoms and number of days) of illness.

How You Can Apply This Now: As I stated before, my wife and I choose to swallow one clove each of raw garlic every evening, chopped up into pieces that are easy to swallow (NOTE: Don’t swallow whole cloves…choking hazard). We may consider two cloves each, but we’ll see.

Cook with plenty of minced garlic and garlic powder. These won’t be nearly as potent as the raw form, but there is some benefit to both, and they make food taste great.

You can chew the garlic, but if you choose to do so, get ready for some serious bite. Raw garlic is incredibly spicy, so it will burn. On top of that, you can guarantee that your garlic is gonna be crucial. That might not be a problem right now, though, since you’re socially distancing, right?

Garlic is quite cheap and easy to purchase at the grocery store, but make sure that you are not sensitive to garlic. Too much raw garlic can apparently disturb the gastrointestinal tract.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22280901]

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25961060]

Sleep!

If I could label any of these as most important for the immune system based on my own personal research, getting adequate Vitamin D through sunlight would be number two, and sleep would be number one. Sleep – good sleep -is one of the most beneficial and crucial to life activities that we take part in, and it’s one of the things we’re most deficient in because of our busy lifestyles.

According to one study, acute sleep deprivation has the same effect on the immune system as when the body is exposed to stress. In another study, people who slept 5 hours or less per night over a period of 30 days were more likely to report a head or chest cold or infection than those who got between 6 and 9 hours of sleep per night.

How You Can Apply This Now: See, this is one of the “good” things about the current pandemic situation disrupting our lives. Most likely, it gives you more time to get the sleep that you need. Skip the alarm clock and get all the sleep that your body really needs. For most, that’s 7 to 9 hours.

Keep in mind that there is a such thing as too much sleep, too. Apparently, getting over 9 hours of sleep is associated with greater mortality. I won’t get into all the details of that here, but in a nutshell, it might not be wise to make a consistent practice of getting over 9 hours of sleep.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22754039]

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899278/]

Avoid the Things that Suppress Your Immune System

While I won’t go into details with these, it is worth noting a couple of things that can suppress (inhibit, negatively affect) your immune system: Chronic stress and sugar.

While this time when pandemic news saturates the airwaves, it’s easy to find ourselves experiencing high levels of stress (not to mention whatever we were already dealing with before Coronavirus). This is precisely why I mentioned earlier in this post how it is important for us to focus on things that empower and uplift us. We can’t control the news, per se, but we can control ourselves, and if we choose to set our minds on positive things, it will make a difference. We will feel much, much better mentally, and our health and immunity will benefit as well.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Philippians 4:8

The extra time that we are spending at home also makes it extremely tempting to stock up on and indulge in copious amounts of sugary ‘quarantine’ snacks…not wise. We already know that excess sugar is bad for us, but it is important to know that sugar specifically depresses our immune systems. In the natural forms that it comes in (i.e. fruits and vegetables), it isn’t bad, but in processed junk foods, it’s harmful. Not what we want or need right now.

I said at the beginning of this post that there are a lot of other things that you can do to strengthen your immune system. We didn’t go into the immune-boosting properties of ginger, onions, echinacea, oregano oil, Vitamin C or elderberries, only because I chose to focus on the strategies we personally are using right now in our home. I encourage you to do your own research on these and other things you can do, but keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity. Mastering a few things is most likely a lot more beneficial than inconsistently doing a lot of stuff.

On top of that, to be honest, if you’re not mastering the absolute basics of exercise, sleep and getting in the sun, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle regardless of whatever you do. Remember, there is no such thing as a magic pill. Do the basic things for your health, then add on the other beneficial practices.

I hope and pray that something in this post is a blessing to you and helps you to be healthier, stronger, and more empowered during this time.

DISCLAIMER: The information on this website is based on personal opinion and personal research, and is not meant to be a substitute for advice from a doctor, medical professional, registered dietitian or nutritionist. Nothing on this website is claimed to cure any condition or disease. You are advised to consult your doctor or physician before beginning any changes in diet or any exercise program.

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