Editor’s Note: From breakthrough cases, waning, variants, to instances of total vaccine failure (1/3 of the surge in cases in Seychelles are FULLY  VACCINATED), not to mention the well-documented reduced immune responses in the elderly, obese and immunocompromised–it’s important you know that these vaccines are no silver bullet. They’re not even an “approved” prophylaxis. Manage your expectations for an injection, and set some higher standards for yourself.

Guest post by C. Haislip.

There’s a lot of hoopla on the internet these days about ‘miracle cures’ and ‘the number one thing’ to stay healthy.

Drink this shake and grab this one special oil and you’ll never be sick again in your life! Great right?

Except those of us who have been on a healing journey, or have watched our children spiral into sickness, know that climbing out of the hole isn’t as easy to do. And keeping our other kids and family members from the same kind of illness? Also not black and white.

I’m not going to dispute those miracle cures (I’ll leave them to your common sense), what we will do in this article is look at 4 proven things to keep your immune system running at top speed, and 3 things you need to lose. I mean–if it was as easy to do as one simple thing, we’d all be healthy forever!

Instead, each of us will have our own unique journey with wellness, and the more tools we have in our toolbox, the better!

But we also have to talk about the elephant in the room. The immune system is not a one and done thing, but instead a complex and constantly moving solution.

And where there’s a solution, there’s also a problem, so we’ll again look at three things that have been proven to lower your immune response and could contribute to illness.

1. Exercise Offers Natural Protection Against COVID-19

• Problem: Sedentary lifestyle is associated with all kinds of health issues, and it’s easily correctable.
• Solution: Shake some tail feathers and get moving!

 

The CDC found that 60% of people don’t live a very active lifestyle, and 25% of people are not active at all.

That’s 1 in 4 adults that have no activity whatsoever in their life, and that is NOT good news.

A study titled “Physical inactivity is associated with a higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes: a study in 48 440 adult patients” found that:

“patients with COVID-19 who were consistently inactive had a greater risk of hospitalisation (OR 2.26; 95% CI 1.81 to 2.83), admission to the ICU (OR 1.73; 95% CI 1.18 to 2.55) and death (OR 2.49; 95% CI 1.33 to 4.67) due to COVID-19 than patients who were consistently meeting physical activity guidelines.”

Let’s break down the numbers here.

Those who are consistently inactive are over 100% more likely to be hospitalized than those who meet physical activity guidelines. Those who are inactive are also 75% more like to be admitted to the ICU, and 150% more likely to die from Covid.

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2. Get Your Bloodwork Done

• Problem: You may have vitamin deficiencies: malnourishment increases risk for all sorts of issues, or is a sign of pre-existing problems.
• Solution: Check yourself (literally, blood work could save your life)

 

Not the most favorite thing in the world to do, and still full of flaws (scientists still can’t measure everything in your blood). But it’s true–blood work can possibly point to issues that you are facing.

One instance in particular is Vitamin D!

Vitamin D is used in so many ways, and it is so helpful to your body. It also has cofactors (as everything in your body works in tandem together). So just identifying a vitamin d deficiency isn’t enough to correct any lack of vitamins you might have.

Diet, sunshine, other vitamins, absorption and supplements can all play into how well you absorb and use vitamin D.

A study found that:

“in patients aged ≥65 years revealed that vitamin D sufficiency (25[OH]D ≥30 ng/mL) was statistically significantly associated with decreased odds of death (adjusted OR 0.33, 95% CI, 0.12-0.94), acute respiratory distress syndrome (adjusted OR 0.22, 95% CI, 0.05-0.96), and severe sepsis/septic shock (adjusted OR 0.26, 95% CI, 0.08-0.88), after adjustment for potential confounders.”

These numbers are nowhere as significant as the activity numbers in the study above- but it still proves a point. Those that have vitamin D deficiencies and are over 65 are more likely to suffer complications from Covid 19, than those that have proper serum levels.

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3. Lose Excess Weight

• Problem: Extra pounds increase your risk of hospitalization and death when it comes to COVID.
• Solution: Evaluate your optimal body weight, make a plan and follow through.

 

It’s gotten to the point where, if the media glorifies something, I start to dig deeper.

So when the media started to say that excessively obese people were healthy and beautiful, I looked for some case studies to back up that ‘healthy part’ (beauty is inside–so not my concern).

The sad thing is that, the media is wrong again, and telling people that they are healthy will only contribute to their early deaths.

Those that have a body weight higher than what their skeletal frame calls for, are more likely to die early, die from complications and comorbidities, and suffer from depression and anxiety at higher levels.

A study found:

“Overweight and obesity were risk factors for invasive mechanical ventilation, and obesity was a risk factor for hospitalization and death, especially among adults < 65 years of age.4 Risks for hospitalization, ICU admission, and death were lowest among patients with BMIs of 24.2 kg/m2, 25.9 kg/m2, and 23.7 kg/m2, respectively, and then increased dramatically with higher BMIs.”

WOAH friends, woah.

This isn’t fat shaming – this is telling you that no matter what the reason is- seek help so that you can be the right weight for you to stay healthy and live a long life!

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4. Help Your Body To Remove The Toxins

• Problem: A sluggish detox pathway may be one explanation for symptoms you may confuse as viral infection or just “getting old.” 
• Solution: Open up your drainage pathways

 

Random weird fact: your brain literally drains at night while you sleep. In a nut shell, your brain has a system in place to remove toxins, and it does this through a combination of pressure, blood volume and shifting spinal fluid. Fascinating right?

Even more importantly, your body has other systems in place to drain toxins. We can go as simple as saying your kidneys and livers and skin and blood, or we can dive deeper into the lymphatic, respiratory, circulatory and excretory systems.

The problem is that if one of these pathways is blocked, it could cause a backup in toxins. For example, if you have a blood disorder, your body will have to work harder to remove toxins from the blood. Or if you are constipated, you could be storing excess toxins inside your gut.

There is a lot to research on this topic if you have the time, but if not, you can work with a functional doctor, or alternative medicine to find out where you are storing toxins that cause your body to have a lower immune response.

 

Last but not least: Let’s do a quick chat about those things that will lower your immune system response. These are also known as immunosuppressants and can be a real pain come cold and flu time!

These 3 things will wreck your immune system

We want to do everything we can to prevent severe illness (like cancer, which relies on your immune system) and help make the cold and flu season easy to manage.

So what sets us up for failure when it comes to a good immune response?

1. Sugar

And we’re not talking about having a piece of chocolate here and there. We are talking about sugar found both naturally and artificially that is wreaking havoc on our bodies. The average American consumes 152 pounds a year! That equals 6 cups a week! Almost a cup of sugar a day.

Let’s break this down realistically. Let’s say we can eat 10 sugar cubes a day.

• That’s one banana and one mango. Period.
• Or three servings of dairy.
• Or a serving of grapes and a glass of orange juice.

Now, I’m no sugar saint! Far from it, but I know that I’d rather have three glasses of orange juice and two servings of fruit instead of one mountain dew.

The problem with sugar is that we are simply having too much of a good thing. Birthday cake is fine… but once a month is more than enough! Same with liquor, carbonated sugary drinks, and candy.

Sugar temporarily lowers your immune system, and leads to a host of other problems that reduce your body from functioning at full capacity!

A study found that just drinking 1 Liter bottle of soda or by eating 100 gram sugar, the reactivity of white blood cells was reduced by 40%. This can make our immune system disable for 4 or 5 hours. 

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2. Stress

Both the kind you feel and the kind you don’t: In a very simple nut shell, when we feel stress, it lowers our bodies ability to fight the bad guys. You know those white blood cells you need to defend your body? Well, stress actually lowers the ability to produce them!

Ok great- so stress is bad.

But the problem is we all experience stress everyday, both good and bad kinds!

Stress can look like:

• A temporary challenge at work
• Getting into a minor car accident
• Giving or being around birth
• Watching an action/thriller video

And Stress can also look like:

• Living in an abusive relationship
• Death of a loved one (animal or human)
• Not having enough money for bills or medical conditions
• Constant work stress

 

Stress was designed to be a temporary part of your life–something that helped to keep you alert and alive. This temporary stress will slightly lower your immune system.

The real kicker is when stress is a constant in your life. The challenge at work turned into an uncomfortable relationship with a friend, that turned into financial issues, that have manifested as a long term health issue. Now the stress is long term, and it’s causing a constant depression of the immune system.

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3. Not Getting Enough Sleep

Lastly, and *maybe* the most important one for children and adults = good sleep.

There’s this fixation in our culture with infants that don’t sleep perfectly, and then glorify adults that never get any sleep. It’s totally backwards.

Instead we should be supporting parents with normal expectations, cleaning and childcare help, and giving them the emotional tools to realize that infants and toddlers wake up during the night.

Then discussing how adults need to set schedules and get full restful night sleeps to help them with brain drainage and cell recovery to assist their immune system.

Bad sleep in children (not infants) and adults leads to a number of documented problems like poor focus, bad memory, depression, heart and organ failure, higher risk of accidents and more.

This study found that people who sleep less than six hours per night were over 4 times more likely to catch a cold.

Sleep is an incredibly natural tool that is needed for everything our body does.