While your immune system helps your body fight off illness and disease, it needs your help to work properly! Finding out exactly what your immune system needs to do its job can be a challenge especially with so much conflicting information on the subject. Thankfully, to maintain a healthy immune system you can focus on three basic things: sleep, nutrition, and exercise. By maintaining these three “pillars” of health, you’ll be helping your immune system and working toward living a healthier, happier life.
Sleep
There are few things more important for your body than quality sleep. When you’re sick or just having an “off day,” you’ll find that a good eight hours of uninterrupted sleep tends to make everything feel just a little bit better.
Combined with regular exercise and good nutrition, sleep can become extra powerful. While you sleep, your body uses the energy you aren’t using to perform basic maintenance, such as metabolizing your food, repairing muscles, and supporting immune function. No wonder we feel great after a good night’s rest!
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to maintain a regular sleep schedule with our hectic lifestyles. Even so, try your best to maintain a regular sleep schedule and get six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. We promise you’ll feel great!
Nutrition
Food is more than just calories. It contains the essential nutrients and “tools” that your body needs for its many jobs, including running your immune system. Without a diet rich in various nutrients, your body would slowly fall into disrepair.
A poor diet can have indirect effects on your immune system as well. Obesity, increased blood pressure, and high cholesterol are just a few of the life-threatening conditions that often result from a poor diet. Each of these conditions causes your body to work overtime just to keep up, taking away valuable resources from your immune system as a result.
While there are plenty of ways to adopt a healthy diet to maintain a healthy immune system, the best diets usually emphasize sticking to a variety of whole foods. By getting nutrients in their natural forms, your immune system (and the rest of your body) will have everything it needs to stay in top shape.
You can also improve immune health by eating immune system boosting foods. Examples include citrus fruits, leafy greens, and nuts. Generally, an immune system booster food will be rich in vitamins C and D, as well as other trace nutrients.
Exercise
While sleep and nutrition are often enough for people who already lead active lifestyles, regular exercise can further improve sleep and help remedy many diet-related health conditions. According to Harvard Medical School, regular exercise helps control cholesterol, blood pressure, and body weight. All three components improve overall health and, as a result, your immune system.
However, many people have difficulty adopting a regular exercise routine. No matter your exercise goals, consistency is key. Make exercising a regular, enjoyable habit, you’ll be well equipped to lead a healthy life for decades to come.
Chiropractic can also contribute to a healthy lifestyle. For more information, call our team of professionals at 877-254-4654.
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