Boosting Your Immune System for a Healthy Winter Season

By Barb W.

Winter brings sparkling snowflakes, cozy cups of cocoa, and snuggly sweaters. But along with these charming notions comes the reality of sniffles, colds, and aching flu bugs. It's worth it to take pains to improve your immunity by stocking your body up on nutrients and dealing with other issues that compromise your health.

The immune system is compromised by poor diet, losing sleep, and stress. Start now to improve your diet by adding more deeply colored fresh vegetables and fruits, and reducing the amount of sugary or fatty junk food you eat. Include garlic, onion, and ginger in your diet often, as these foods are natural immunity enhancers. Take a high potency natural multi-vitamin and an extra 1000 milligrams of vitamin C every day.

Learning How to Manage Your Stress

Mental and emotional stresses weaken the immune system, too. If insomnia, anxiety, or depression are problems for you, design a system of stress management. To improve your sleeping habits, try a cup of chamomile tea at bedtime. Melatonin and valerian are other natural options for overcoming insomnia. For depression, try St. John's wort. Two or three capsules a day might brighten your outlook more than you'd expect, but you may need to take it for several weeks before you start noticing the difference. Another good all around nerve herb is skullcap. This herb is effective for anxiety and safe enough to use during pregnancy.

Concerning stress management, take an inventory of your responsibilities as well as your resources. Are you overbooked? Overworked and underequipped? If you are, consider doing the following:

• Cutting down on some of the projects you are involved in so that you have more time to nurture yourself.
• Make an effort to get organized, but don't be hard on yourself for slow progress.
• Start from where you are. *Brainstorm to figure out some ways to get help tolighten your load.

Having the home organized and planning some time for yourself go a long way toward reducing the effects of stress on your physical health. Exercise helps, too. Approach it gradually but consistently. Exercise will make you healthier if incorporated as a sensible discipline, but it can also undermine your immune system if overdone or done inconsistently.

Getting Help from Mother Nature

Hopefully, these measures will keep those winter illnesses away. Even so, it's a good idea to be armed with natural remedies and the knowledge of how to use them. That way, you can fight the first tickle in your throat and ward off that flu.

Salt Water

One of the simplest first measures you can take is to gargle with salt water. To a cup of warm water (not hot, but not lukewarm either) add 1 teaspoon of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Gargle with as much of the liquid as you can stand. For fun, you can try gargling aloud in different pitches - high and low. Doing this gets the solution into different regions of your throat. Are you thinking, "Cayenne pepper? Ouch!"? Think again. Cayenne surprisingly works like a natural anesthetic and soothes a sore throat.

If you find yourself procrastinating about that first gargling session, think of it like this. That tickle in your throat is probably a family of microbes that just moved in. They are getting ready to really get with it in the reproduction department. That is, your little family of 10 might be a family of 100 in an hour and 1000 in two hours. Doesn't it make sense to "nip them in the bud?" Salt water is antiseptic enough to kill a small infestation of these beasties, but probably won't be enough when they really get entrenched. So do yourself a favor and gargle at the first tickle. If you just can't face salt water, try gargling with a natural mouthwash that contains tea tree oil.

Herbal Supplements

Herbs that help drive old man flu away at first sign include golden seal and echinacea. Echinacea, which is the familiar purple coneflowers we see blooming along our roadsides in the summer, is a powerful healer, but will lose effectiveness if used continuously. For this reason, if you are boosting your immunity with it, you should alternate it with other immunity herbs, like astragalus, ginger, or elder flower. Golden seal is nature's antibiotic. This rare woodland plant has a yellow root that packs a punch against illness. It's expensive, but a potent healer. Elder flower is particularly helpful for the sniffles.

Cold weather is often accompanied by flu bugs and cold germs. However, by applying these tips, you should experience a happy and healthy winter.

© DoItyourself.com 2006