You’re already doing as much as you can correctly. You’re living a healthy lifestyle through eating nutritiously, getting in regular physical exercise, and working your spiritual muscles as well. Sometimes, unfortunately, even with our best practices in play, we can succumb to seasonal illnesses. Although we’re likely to recover much quicker if we’re even affected at all the better shape we’re in, it’s still worth considering supplementing your healthy lifestyle during cold and flu season. Let’s take a look at some ways to do that for optimal health.
Fight Inflammation With Food
Inflammation is the route of many things that all people of any age or healthy lifestyle. When you’re trying to stave off illness, one way to do so is to eat the most anti-inflammatory diet you can. Whether or not you love a good steak or indulging in the occasional cheeseburger, a plant-based diet could be a good fit for you when you’re avoiding germs. This is because whole food plant-based diets are packed with more antioxidants in one day than you’d get eating a standard diet in a week. If you’re not willing to commit to veganism to skip out on the flu (and it’s not a guarantee anyway), you should at least consider eating plant-based half the week. If you start small, you may find that it’s easier to incorporate into your current lifestyle, and you could end up committing to it for a lifetime.
Take Some Supplements
There are certain supplements like Elderberry oil, which are known as antivirals. It’s not an opinion; it’s science. Taking supplements like elderberry, Echinacea, and Vitamin C are excellent and easy ways to boost immunity during the Canadian winter. Vitamin D is another ideal supplement to take during the fall and winter months since our bodies aren’t getting the Vitamin D they receive in the summer months by simply being outside more. You can still get Vitamin D from the sun during the fall and winter months, but you have to commit to spending time outside a lot more than in the spring and summer.
Additionally, if you do catch the sniffles during the winter, supplements like Zinc have been shown to drastically cut the duration of colds and cases of flu, primarily if used with the others, as mentioned earlier. So, take a trip to your local natural foods store (or a gander online) and stock up on nature’s answer to keeping your immunity up.
Maintain Your Workout Schedule
Getting your fitness on in the summer is easy. The weather is beautiful, and it’s easy to add more walks, runs, hikes, and swimming to your already healthy exercise schedule. In the fall and winter, the dreary weather can make us feel less motivated than in the warmer months, with the sun beaming down on us as we work out. Still, it’s just not, if not more, so essential to keep up with exercise during the winter.
If you need help staying motivated to go to the gym, consider enlisting a gym buddy to keep each other accountable. For many people, working out is something they like to do solo – if that sounds like you, there are plenty of apps to help keep you motivated and remind you to get your body moving. Just remember to keep up with it. Not only is physical exercise great for our overall physical health and immunity, but it plays a crucial factor in our mental and emotional health as well.
Guard Your Sleep
Sleep is something we all know we need, and we know we need at least eight hours of it. But, between work, social lives, and parenthood, we don’t always get as much as we need. But, when you’re trying to stay healthy during cold and flu months, make sure you’re prioritizing your sleep every night; it will do wonders for your immunity! Sleep is a time for the body to restore itself as well as repair too. So, if you’re already fighting something off, it’s even more important to catch those z’s.
You probably have other tried and true methods of keeping your immune system in peak function that you utilize. Maybe it’s Grandma’s Chicken Soup recipe, drinking chamomile tea to unwind and sleep easily, gentle affirmations to keep your mental health positive. All of those things are great, and hopefully, you can incorporate the items in this list with your lifestyle and plan. Here’s to your health!
