Seven Simple Ways to Boost Your Immune System

Whether you’re the one who always get’s “the bug” or not, these seven simple tips will help you naturally boost your immune system.

It’s important, while also easy and inexpensive. How much water you should drink? It depends on your size, your activity level, the climate you’re in, and other variables. A good starting point is to drink about eight 8-ounce glasses per day. Of course, that can vary person to person.

More important than tracking the ounces of water you drink is being aware of the signs of dehydration. If you feel thirsty or your urine is dark yellow, you need to hydrate. Don’t try to hydrate with beverages like coffee or juice. Consume clean water – and electrolytes when necessary.

Staying hydrated requires not only consuming enough clean water, but also maintaining the right balance of electrolytes in your body. Electrolytes are minerals that dissolve in your body fluids and are electrically charged compounds. The most common electrolytes are sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphate. These electrolytes have many functions, but one of them is to help keep you hydrated.

It’s too easy to get stuck in fight-or-flight mode, a physiological state that relates to your hormones and your nervous system. Your body can become stuck in a stress cycle that just won’t stop – constant worry, not sleeping, problems, financial pressures, relationship worries. Shutting it all off can be a major challenge. (Hint: Do not do it with booze or drugs.) But you need to find some way to manage the situation because stress like that will lower your immune function and overall health.

A great way to manage stress is a stay away from negative people. That’s really where all the bad stress originates. People who are always telling you bad news, the negative people, the complainers, those who tell you that you can’t, those who think you’ll never make it, and so on. Just stay away from those people. 

That includes getting them off your social media.

I’m not saying you should live an unexciting life in a completely safe environment with no challenges, no danger, and no possibility of failure. Of course you need some degree of all those things if you hope to maintain your health. In fact, having a low-stress life is not only unhealthy, it’s probably super boring. I’d be willing to bet that most sick people are sick partly because they don’t have enough to do, as opposed to having too much to do. So don’t contract, don’t back away from life.

It’s also one of the best ways to manage stress. Most people don’t move enough. Exercise, even just going for a walk, can help to break the stress cycle and get your immune system back on track.

Vitamin D is vital for boosting immune function. Assuming that you exercise outside and not on a treadmill, you’ll get vitamin D from sun exposure. Otherwise, use a top quality supplement.

The most refreshing way to boost your immune system is to get at least seven hours of quality sleep each night. Sleep is when your body heals and regenerates. When you sleep, your body produces illness fighting antibodies and proteins.

When you’re sleep-deprived, your immune system is weakened.

Most adults need about seven hours of quality sleep per night. Children need more, sometimes up to 10 hours or so.

Simply washing your hands is the single most effective way to reduce the spread of germs, which will assist your immune system. But… you’ve got to do it right. Did you know that 95 percent of people in a hand-washing study did not wash their hands long enough to effectively kill germs after using the bathroom? Yuck, right? So, when you wash your hands, do it for at least 20 seconds, in warm running water, with mild soap. Don’t use antibacterial soap. In fact, that stuff may cause more harm than good in the long run. Use disposable towels to dry your hands or an air dryer.

There you have it. Your ability to fight disease has everything to do with how you live your life.

The good news is… you are in control!