We have al­ways heard the phrase from our el­ders that “Our health is in our hands” and it holds true, now more than ever. But does it come down to “How strong is our im­mu­ni­ty?” When we talk of im­mu­ni­ty, we gen­er­al­ly talk of cer­tain foods or drinks that can “boost” our im­mu­ni­ty, or reg­u­lar ex­er­cis­es or eat a healthy di­et that in­cludes foods high in an­tiox­i­dants, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als.

HEALTH PLUS de­cid­ed to take a deep dive in­to this dis­cus­sion, ex­plor­ing the truths and myths about OUR IM­MU­NI­TY.

Our im­mune sys­tem is pre­cise­ly that — a sys­tem, not a sin­gle en­ti­ty. To func­tion well, it re­quires bal­ance and har­mo­ny. Our im­mune sys­tem does a re­mark­able job at fight­ing off mi­croor­gan­isms to pro­tect us against dis­ease. There is still much that re­searchers don't know about the in­tri­ca­cies and in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of the im­mune re­sponse. But what we do know for cer­tain is the vary­ing fac­tors that are at play, our co­mor­bidi­ties, age, healthy be­hav­iours; all de­ter­mine how re­silient this de­fense sys­tem will be.

To func­tion well, it re­quires bal­ance and sus­tain­ing, not boost­ing.

Dr Suzanne Cas­sel, an im­mu­nol­o­gist at Cedars-Sinai, a lead­ing health­care or­gan­i­sa­tion, known for pi­o­neer­ing re­search achieve­ments, says “The con­cept of boost­ing your im­mune sys­tem is in­ac­cu­rate. You ac­tu­al­ly don't want your im­mune sys­tem to be boost­ed, you want it to be bal­anced."

Har­vard Health Ex­pert shared, “the con­cept of boost­ing im­mu­ni­ty ac­tu­al­ly makes lit­tle sense sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly. In fact, boost­ing the num­ber of cells in your body, im­mune cells or oth­ers, is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing. For ex­am­ple, ath­letes who en­gage in ‘blood dop­ing’, pump­ing blood in­to their sys­tems to boost their num­ber of blood cells and en­hance their per­for­mance, run the risk of strokes.”

Har­vard Health con­tin­ues, “The on­go­ing re­search ex­plor­ing the ef­fects of SARS-CoV-2 virus on the im­mune re­sponse is ex­ten­sive. But for now, we rec­om­mend VAC­CI­NA­TION as your ma­jor line of de­fense and bal­anc­ing your healthy-liv­ing strate­gies as a good way to start giv­ing your im­mune sys­tem the up­per hand. Bal­ance be­ing key and ‘sus­tain­ing’ or ‘sup­port­ing’ be­ing a more ac­cu­rate way of putting it.”

What can you do to SUS­TAIN your im­mune sys­tem?

Healthy liv­ing strate­gies are al­ways rec­om­mend­ed as your first line of de­fense in giv­ing your im­mune sys­tem the up­per hand in the fight against in­vad­ing germs. Every part of your body, not just your im­mune sys­tem, func­tions bet­ter when it is bol­stered by healthy liv­ing strate­gies such as these tried and true ba­sics:

Re­duce your risk of ex­po­sure and spread of COVID-19

- En­sure you and your loved ones are op­ti­mal­ly vac­ci­nat­ed

- Main­tain ef­fec­tive hand and mask hy­giene

- Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in pub­lic spaces

Eat Healthy

Give your­self re­al food.

The idea of “eat­ing the rain­bow” that many chil­dren learn about in school is a good rule at any age. Con­sum­ing a wide va­ri­ety of fruits and veg­eta­bles should pro­vide the im­por­tant min­er­als and vi­t­a­mins to sup­port a healthy im­mune sys­tem. If you sus­pect your di­et is not pro­vid­ing you with all your mi­cronu­tri­ent needs — maybe, for in­stance, you don't like veg­eta­bles — tak­ing a dai­ly mul­ti­vi­t­a­min and min­er­al sup­ple­ment may bring oth­er health ben­e­fits, be­yond any pos­si­bly ben­e­fi­cial ef­fects on the im­mune sys­tem. Tak­ing mega­dos­es of a sin­gle vi­t­a­min does not. More is not nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter. Min­imise con­sump­tion of red and processed meats. Re­strict sat­u­rat­ed fats and sug­ars to 10% of to­tal calo­ries.

One habit to curb is eat­ing or drink­ing more than 100 grams (8 tb­sp) of sug­ar a day. That much sug­ar re­duces your white blood cells’ abil­i­ty to kill germs by 40%!

Keep phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive.

Reg­u­lar ex­er­cise pro­motes car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, low­ers blood pres­sure, helps con­trol body weight, and of­fers pro­tec­tion against dis­eases. Ex­er­cise al­so im­proves blood cir­cu­la­tion, al­low­ing im­mune sys­tem cells to move through the body more freely and do their job more ef­fec­tive­ly. Ex­er­cise dis­si­pates stress, keep­ing anx­i­eties in check. Try to get a min­i­mum of 15-30 min­utes of mod­er­ate ac­tiv­i­ty for five days/week. So, take a walk, run, or even tune in to one of the thou­sands of free on­line yo­ga, med­i­ta­tion or work­out videos. You don't have to go to the gym every day; you just need to move your body dai­ly. If you can take the stairs up to work, do so, and do it again when you come back from lunch. Those small ac­tiv­i­ties add up!

Get ad­e­quate qual­i­ty sleep.

Stud­ies show that peo­ple who don’t get qual­i­ty sleep or enough sleep are more like­ly to get sick af­ter be­ing ex­posed to a virus. When we sleep, the body re­leas­es pro­teins called cy­tokines while sleep de­pri­va­tion de­creas­es their pro­duc­tion. What’s more, the pro­duc­tion of an­ti­bod­ies and im­mune cells is re­duced when you don’t get enough sleep. Let’s not un­der­es­ti­mate the ill-ef­fects of in­suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty shut­eye!

Min­imise Stress; Man­age the Fears

Train your mind to re­main calm de­spite the chaos. The un­known can be scary and can over­whelm us. Fear can in­flate neg­a­tive thoughts, which leads to un­healthy stress. On­go­ing stress re­leas­es hor­mones that get us ready for emer­gen­cies, but al­so se­vere­ly de­press­es our im­mune sys­tem. Com­bat this fear by act­ing on facts, not mis­in­for­ma­tion. En­gage in any healthy de­stress­ing ac­tiv­i­ty that brings calm to your en­er­gy and al­lows you to breathe deep­er.

Stop tak­ing chances with your health

Health is one of those things we tend to take for grant­ed un­til some­thing threat­ens it. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is no mag­ic pill or one food that’s guar­an­teed to boost your im­mune sys­tem and pro­tect you from get­ting sick. Tak­ing care of our­selves al­lows our im­mune sys­tem the best fight­ing chance. The best any of us can do to sur­vive this pan­dem­ic is to be op­ti­mal­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and be mind­ful of dai­ly ac­tions, our hands and points of con­tact.

Our health is in our hands!

For more in­for­ma­tion :

https://www.hsph.har­vard.edu/nu­tri­tion­source/nu­tri­tion-and-im­mu­ni­ty/