What you need to know about immune boosting

With the holiday season officially upon us and everyone’s health-related anxiety increased due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19), we wanted to provide you some tips to boost your immune system.  While there is currently no silver bullet yet (vaccines effectiveness pending) to prevent contracting this virus, there are certainly precautionary tenets you can implement to strengthen your immune system. Here are some powerful, research-backed tips.

Exercise.  Your first line of defense is to choose a healthy lifestyle and regular exercise is one of the pillars of healthy living. When you workout, you energize the cells in your body that are responsible for fighting off illness causing bacteria.  Walking, bouncing and even vibration modalities have all been shown to increase immune function and lymphatic drainage.  

Diet.  Just like exercise can contribute to general good health and a healthy immune system, so can a healthy diet.  Making sure that you are sufficiently hydrated and getting the proper nutrition from the foods you eat is a key component of keeping your immune system strong.  Eliminate refined sugar and increase your intake of fruits and vegetables to increase your body’s production of antibodies. Some of the immune boosters that are backed by science include, cinnamon (one of ten ingredients in our premium plant-based protein), green tea, ginger, Vitamin C, Vitamin D and probiotics. Also, including quality plant-based proteins and essential fats are also critical.

Recovery. Sleep affects our overall health, including our hormones and immune system. Making sure that you get at least seven to eight hours of sleep per day can have a profound impact on brain health, which influences mood, energy level and cognitive fitness. Our bodies produce increased amount of proteins called cytokines during sleep, which is the terminal step in the cell cycle when barriers in the form of new membranes (and cell walls in some cases) are generated.

In addition to hand washing and being properly hydrated, you can bolster your immune system by exercising, engaging in an immune booster diet and recovering properly by sleeping at least 7 hours per day. This global pandemic will pass, but in the interim it's important to instill a healthy lifestyle that will lead to a robust immune system.