How to strengthen immunity: sleep, nutrition, vaccinations

With the onset of cold weath­er, virus­es become more active, but immu­ni­ty fails, because of which health suf­fers, plans change and work is missed due to ill­ness. Although many peo­ple buy packs of use­less med­i­cines that have not been proven effec­tive for pre­ven­tion, you can pay atten­tion to your lifestyle and change it, while help­ing your defens­es fight colds. So, flu vac­ci­na­tion is extreme­ly impor­tant, but if vac­ci­na­tions are not done, you can help the body through some changes in nutri­tion, as well as adjust­ing the dai­ly rou­tine with the allo­ca­tion of time for prop­er sleep and healthy activ­i­ties. What are the points to pay close atten­tion to?

Healthy diet

In order to help the immune sys­tem fight colds and flu, it is impor­tant to pay atten­tion to your diet by chang­ing some points in it. If you fol­low sim­ple tips that have been known to many since child­hood, this will help you get sick less or tol­er­ate infec­tions more eas­i­ly. So, first of all, food should be enriched with vit­a­min C, and not from time to time, but on an ongo­ing basis. At the same time, one should not strive to con­sume ascor­bic acid in tablet form, it is best absorbed from nat­ur­al prod­ucts in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er vit­a­mins con­tained in food. Adding foods such as gar­lic and onions, lemon and oth­er cit­rus fruits to the diet helps in the pre­ven­tion of infec­tions by acti­vat­ing nat­ur­al defense mech­a­nisms. The thing is that ascor­bic acid helps in the for­ma­tion and acti­va­tion of phago­cytes, cells that active­ly fight path­o­gen­ic pathogens. It is use­ful to diver­si­fy the diet with rose­hip tinc­ture, kiwi or black­cur­rant.

But from prod­ucts such as sug­ar and dish­es in which there is too much of it, it is worth giv­ing up, accord­ing to numer­ous stud­ies from dif­fer­ent coun­tries, excess sug­ar can weak­en immune defens­es. There­fore, experts sug­gest giv­ing up sweets, cakes and pas­tries, and replac­ing sug­ar in drinks with hon­ey. Dried fruits and dark choco­late will be use­ful as treats.

How to help the immune system?

The effect on immu­ni­ty of such a sim­ple and well-known pro­ce­dure as hard­en­ing has long been proven. It helps to pro­tect against stress, makes the body resis­tant to sud­den changes in tem­per­a­ture and stim­u­lates immune forces. Hard­ened peo­ple get sick with colds and flu much less often, and this is due to the fact that their immu­ni­ty is con­stant­ly train­ing and quick­ly acti­vat­ed to fight virus­es and microbes. It is impor­tant to start hard­en­ing grad­u­al­ly so that it does not become a shock to the body, espe­cial­ly when it comes to dous­ing. You can start with con­trast show­ers, grad­u­al­ly chang­ing the tem­per­a­ture of the water and the dura­tion of expo­sure. But in order to strength­en the immune sys­tem, you need to do this con­stant­ly, includ­ing such pro­ce­dures in your usu­al sched­ule — then the effect will be long and per­sis­tent.

Sex­u­al inter­course is no less use­ful for strength­en­ing immu­ni­ty, and not just close­ness with rhyth­mic move­ments, but a process that brings plea­sure. This is due to the fact that dur­ing orgasm the num­ber of phago­cytes increas­es sharply, which are respon­si­ble for rec­og­niz­ing and destroy­ing cells infect­ed with infec­tions.

Good sleep and night rest

There is evi­dence that peo­ple who suf­fer from chron­ic insom­nia or sleep dis­or­ders (inter­mit­tent sleep, fre­quent awak­en­ings, pro­longed falling asleep with dif­fi­cult awak­en­ing) are more like­ly than every­one else to get colds. There­fore, in order to strength­en immune pro­tec­tion and nor­mal well-being, health and per­for­mance, it is impor­tant to include a full-fledged sleep in your usu­al sched­ule. More­over, you should go to bed before mid­night so that the inter­nal mech­a­nisms asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of hor­mones, includ­ing mela­tonin, which helps nor­mal full sleep, do not suf­fer. In addi­tion to the fact that the nor­mal pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin helps to ful­ly relax and sleep, it also has the prop­er­ties of a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring immunomod­u­la­tor that were acquired dur­ing evo­lu­tion. If sleep is dis­turbed and a per­son chron­i­cal­ly does not get enough sleep, or goes to bed far at mid­night, this leads to a decrease in the immune defense of the body.

Useful drink for prevention

To pre­vent colds and main­tain a full-fledged metab­o­lism, it is impor­tant to drink plen­ty of flu­ids, this helps the immune sys­tem to work ful­ly, since all meta­bol­ic process­es in the body take place in the aquat­ic envi­ron­ment. The liq­uid is no less impor­tant as a source of vit­a­mins and microele­ments, due to which the full pre­ven­tion of res­pi­ra­to­ry and oth­er infec­tions is also car­ried out. But not every liq­uid is suit­able for drink­ing, ide­al­ly it should be clean drink­ing water, with­out gas­es. The most cor­rect pro­phy­lax­is will be when drink­ing liq­uid on an emp­ty stom­ach, as well as half an hour before a meal and an hour after a meal. It is impor­tant to con­sume at least 2 liters of flu­id per day.

In order to car­ry out full-fledged dis­ease pre­ven­tion, it is worth giv­ing up some drinks that can be harm­ful to health. So, cof­fee can be attrib­uted to them, tak­ing 4–5 cups of which per day leads to a decrease in the body’s immune defens­es by 25–30%. It is worth replac­ing it with green tea, which has a lot of use­ful qual­i­ties. Alco­hol, which sup­press­es the pro­duc­tion of anti­bod­ies and inhibits the activ­i­ty of lym­pho­cytes in the fight against dan­ger­ous pathogens, no less harms the body.

Vaccinations and their benefits

Even before the start of the cold sea­son, it is worth get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against the flu. Although they are aimed only at this virus, they also par­tial­ly pro­tect against SARS by stim­u­lat­ing non­spe­cif­ic immu­ni­ty. It is rec­om­mend­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed from the begin­ning of autumn, when the epi­dem­ic of colds has not yet begun, but they can be car­ried out lat­er than this peri­od. It takes at least 2–3 weeks from the moment of vac­ci­na­tion to devel­op immu­ni­ty, but full-fledged immune pro­tec­tion will devel­op by the begin­ning of the sec­ond month from the moment the vac­cine is admin­is­tered. The main thing that is impor­tant dur­ing the vac­ci­na­tion peri­od is to car­ry it out against the back­ground of com­plete health. Even a slight run­ny nose and colds are con­traindi­ca­tions to vac­ci­na­tion. It is worth post­pon­ing it until a full recov­ery.