We are currently heading into a season where people love to talk about “cold and flu season.” Now, many of you already know what I’m about to say –
– there is no cold and flu season.
You know why?
Because you have an immune system, and it doesn’t care what season it is.
At least not the way people think.
So why does it seem like more people are getting sick in fall and winter than during summer? Or, more importantly, why do other people not get sick?
Again, it’s about your immune system. We have a few different factors involved here. We are getting less sunlight, and the sunlight we are getting is at an angle that the body just can’t use to produce vitamin D.
Most of us are already deficient in vitamin D to begin with, and keep in mind that vitamin D is a really important immune regulator.
To add to that, sugar cuts your immune system in half for the next 5-12 hours after you consumed it.
Sugar intake also tends to increase with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, and all the various festivities and parties we have surrounding those.
When you then consider that, as adults, we need 8 hours of proper sleep per night, and anything less will also cut your immune system in half…
and your body can’t “catch up” on sleep, either, is it starting to make sense why people are more prone to getting sick during certain seasons? Because the earlier mentioned festivities also typically lead to disruption of sleep patterns.
To go even further, for a lot of people, the holidays = stress.
Stress also diminishes your immune system (and is harmful to your health in general).
You are fully capable of staying healthy, even during the mislabeled “cold and flu season.”
So here are a couple of the things I, and my family, do to stay healthy:
- 1-2 capsules of DV3 daily, if we feel something coming on, we take 4 capsules
- 1-2 capsules of MIN daily
- CZI (vitamin C) spread out throughout the day – some days I feel I need more, others less. It just naturally varies. Really work on listening to your body on this one. If we fell something coming on, we really take a lot of vitamin C…
- 8 hours of sleep (try to make that non-negotiable, there is nothing about your health that isn’t affected by sleep)
- Drink plenty of water
- Meditate daily (or pray, be still, whatever resonates the most with you)
- Exercise – you know my go to is hiking, but whatever works for you. Bonus points if it’s outside!
- Get chiropractic adjustments regularly
Of course, there will be variations to this from person to person, but this is the general, basic outline of what I (and my family) do.