HOW TO BOOST THE IMMUNE RESISTANCE

And avoid getting infected by the microbes including viruses

Well strong immune system is the best protection against falling ill in any deceases or pathogens     
    
      The pathogens (viruses and bacteria) have numerous ways to spread and its very good at that. We get exposed to them sooner or later anyway. In Spain 5900 ill care professionals died in the hospitals and clinics despite of their mask’s viziers, gloves and protective clothing. Multiple amounts got ill of course.
      The immune system efficiency in the body varies on large spectrum. One can dramatically influenced on the strength of immunity (immune defence) with one´s own actions and choices.

Here are the best simple LIFESTYLE HINTS how to improve the immunity:

  1. Sleep

Immune defence empowers during good long sleep. Sleeplessness is very a big risk to collapse your immune defence.

  • Physical activity

The blood and immune liquids are together 12-20 l. They flow in 400.000 – 500.000 km of macro and micro vessels. Physical activity speeds up and activates the flow. There must be enough of it in all organs and tissues to make efficient transport of waste removal and feeding tissues with oxygen and nutrients. The immune defence cells also lurk in the 600 – 700 lymph nodes of the body where all lymph vessels end up. The flow of lymph liquid transports the pathogens into those, where they are eliminated. The hormonal effect connected with physical exercises is beneficial concerning the immune resistance.

The best way to benefit from physical activities is to do about 1-2 hours a day different kind exercises like
a) normal walking at work  (which is very good to start the morning with that and have some walk just before bedtime)
b) power exercises to develop or maintain the muscle power which is more important when we age
c) long term aerobic exercises (best in the woods off road)
d) heart and circulation organ boosting exercises like HIIT (high intensity interwall training) where only some 25 -30 sec. sprints in any
     sorts are performed or several 5-7 sec sprints for seniors past 60 years
e) coordination exercises like ball games or sports with rackets

f) rhythm exercises like dancing where closeness and music boost benefits
g) stretching – yoga type of exercises to maintain good condition of the joints, ligaments, and fascia

  • Short Heat Stress

Viruses are spreading fastest in cool temperatures, but they die in less than 60 C. Viruses usually enter the body though respiratory organs and may stay on the mucosa surfaces up to 3 days before entering deeper into the tissues.
This means that you may kill the virus with the hot air in a well heated sauna or by breathing hot (but not damagingly hot) steam over a boiling water pot with a towel over the head or from a cooking teapot.
Short hot stress also increases the immunity responses in the body. It’s worthwhile to teach your body to tolerate higher and higher temperatures in the sauna and thus to increase the heat stress for health impacts.   
I personally recommend taking the 90 – 120 C heats in the sauna depending on the humidity which you can control by throwing water on the stove rocks. To keep the face and ears from getting burned, one can have a “sauna hat” which also has an extension hanging over the face. This way you can have higher temperature and more heat stress all over the body. In this purpose you can also lie down on the bench and lift your arms and legs. The heat tolerating capacity grows quickly with practice, which gives you improving effects on your health. Soon you see that you want clearly hotter temperatures than those, who do not practice. Wood heated (pre- or continuously heated) sauna with frequent water cups thrown on the rocs to keep the air humid, is superior for comfort, health and immunity effect.

  • Short Cold Stress

By exposing your body to short cold shocks (ice swimming, cold shower, snow dive, cold air bath in the frosty wind) builds up hormonal and immunity health with mechanisms, which have many of the same impacts as in the hot stress.

NUTRICAL MEANS to IMPROVE IMMUNITY

  • Fibre

The natural and healthy microbes in the intestine make 8 different kind of immune cells from the fibre. They patrol in the blood and lymph system, seek, and destroy pathogens (microbes like viruses, bacteria, and other pathogenic organisms). They even destroy our own cells which are deformed and may develop into cancer.

The best sources of fibre are seeds, wild berries, vegetables, some fruits, mushrooms, algae, nuts and 100 5 wholegrain cereals. The amount of dietary fibre should be about 50 g / 1000 kcal. We eat now average 10 – 15 g but the stone age man ate over 100 g/day.

  • Vitamin D
    Vitamin D on the sun holiday level in the blood (= 100 – 150 nmol/l, 40-60 ng/dl) gives necessary support to the immune cell (T-calls) production. Outside the sunny climate one needs vit. D supplementation 50 (young children) to 100 – 200 (seniors, rehabilitating) mcg/day. Its best to test one´s levels and find optimum supplementation. 20 -30 min in the sun in the middle of the day in small clothes makes your skin process 100 -150 mcg.
    (Vit D is actually a very important hormone in the body, the shortage of which is liked to multiple modern life-style illnesses. 
    In Sweden, a long-term study with 25.000 people resulted that the solarium and sunbathing fans had the lowest all-cause mortality, including cancer, even if their skin cancer rates where a bit higher than with others.)

  • Vitamin C
    The very basic body metabolism requires minimum 155 mg of vit C, but for the improved immunity its very beneficial to take 1-3 grams.
    Optimum habit is to take 3 x 1-2 g 3 times a day, one in the morning, second in the daytime, last in the early evening.  This way you maintain high and protecting vit. C level 24 h. Take them all with meals, because vit. C also improves the nutrient intake.

  • Vitamin K1 and K2

COVID-19, has tendency to cause blood coagulation which is clotting degradation of elastic fibres in the lungs. Vitamin K plays a role in coagulation. People with severe COVID-19 have significantly lower vitamin K1 and K2 vit. levels compared to patients without the disease.
Green and fermented vegetables (natto, sour grout, spinach, broccoli etc.) have vitamin K1 in them and animal products from pasture grazing animals like old cheeses, eggs, butter, milk etc. have vit. K2 in them.
In Japan, people who eat regularly “natto” (traditional fermented soybean food with lots of vit. K in it), have avoided falling ill in severe forms of covid19 infections.

  • Glutathione Deficiency Associated With COVID Severity
    One scientist linked glutathione deficiency with many of the comorbid conditions that raise COVID-19 severity, including age, diabetes, gender and smoking.
    It has also been found data indicating that glutathione deficiency can impact your ability to synthesize vitamin D, another risk factor for severe disease. 
    Foods that have had a positive impact on glutathione production include cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, green tea, curcumin, rosemary, and milk thistle.36 Getting quality sleep may also help.

  • Other nutrients and the total nutrition intake

Flavonoids (4000 of them, existing in many fruits and vegetables) the power of immune defence when the gut microbes use them in making immune cells.  
We should be getting over 20 nutrients regularly for our healthy metabolism. Our body wants to manufacture about 3500 biochemicals from them. Any shortage of them is bad for our health and immunity. Old age and long storage of the food, harsh conservation and cooking methods, food processing, nutrition deficiency of the chemical farming and the soil lowers the nutrition content. Fresh organic, raw or minimally processed food from clean and naturally rich and clean environment is the best. There are also several nutrients which would be beneficial to use as supplements depending on the person, diet, amount of sun exposure, quality of the food available etc. Such micronutrients are: D, E, C, A, B12, B9, B6, B1-B5, Mg, Cr, I, Se, Zn and Ca. Melatonin 1-5 mg/person day (smaller amounts for the younger persons) build up immunity. Supplements are unquestioned routine on farms for animals and in feeding pets because of fundamental research in veterinary nutrition.

  1. Some other helpful actions:
  2. There are certain herbs that help build up immune defence as well.

They are: Sundev flowers (Dosera rotundifolia, D. longifolia, D. intermedia), Black current (Ribes nigrum), Nettle (Urtica dioica), Horse tail or Joint weed ( Equisetum arvense), Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idea), Healing herb (Symphytym officinale), Sarsaparilla (Potentilla erecta), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Downy / Lesser / Greater burdock ( Arctium tomentosum / A. minus / A. lappa), Buckthorn ( Hiphophae rhamnoides), Rasberry (Rubus ideaus) and carlic.

  • There are also numerous inti-inflammatory herbs which vitalize metabolism in general, and thus work for better immunity. One can find good books or internet sources about this information.
  • Medical mushrooms like Shaga, Canoderma lusidum, Reishi, Inonotus obliguus, Shiitake, Lentinuda Edodes etc. improve immunity. 
  • Human body immunity weakens easily from toxic unnatural chemicals and heavy metals that we are exposed to. We are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of industrial chemicals against which we have very varying individual tolerance. Many of them also react with one another, which makes the comprehension of their effect very complex. The best thing is to avoid alien substances. This means to live “organic and natural” life as much as possible.
  • There are zinc acetate products developed especially against influenza. As soon as the flu /covid19 symptoms appear, take this product as described with a higher doze (2 g / 2 h) of vitamin C to shorten the number of ill days.
  • Good and natural posture and activity in the middle body speed up the flow in the gut. Crucial good (max is 24 h) flow in the intestine can be helped to function automatically by using divided (two part) saddle chair with swinging /swaying mechanism which has also many other health benefits like better spinal and genital health, deeper breathing and better blood flow into the brain.

THINGS TO AVOID…:

  1. Excessive Stress

Long lasting and excessive stress of any kind (physical, emotional) seems to be connected in most modern illnesses and should always be taken seriously. The high level of stress hormones (cortisol, adrenalin etc.) burden the body and stress drops the immunity through many mechanisms.

  1. Inflammation

The level, number, and activity of acute or quiet inflammations in the body drop the immunity. The most common tissues with quiet inflammation are tooth gums, intestine, genitals, liver, large joints, and excessive fat tissue. Measures to put down the inflammation or put it down with whatever means as much as possible improves immunity. Using antioxidants and finding the root causes of the inflammation and healing them, is the best health care. Any chosen and activated routine measures and habits to decrease number and power of quiet inflammation, also empowers the immunity.
Low lymphocyte (= white cells = active sells in the immune system) count (lymphopenia) is strongly connected (60 % increase) with increased risks of cancer, respiratory diseases, infections, heart diseases etc. This condition together with quiet inflammation is common (but not a “must”) with older people.
 

  1. High blood sugar level

Fast carbon hydrates too frequently and too abundant eating (not even to mention diabetes or milder disturbances in the blood sugar level control) can keep the blood sugar too (unnaturally) high. This weakens the immune system and especially together with some other factors like stress, lack of sleep and exhaustion not to mention other chronical degenerative illnesses.

  1. High blood pressure (= powerful risk when infected to covid-19)

Take it down with selection of methods.

Natural and lasting ways to lower your blood pressure are to lose weight, lifting the vit D-level in the blood to 150 nmol/l, taking omega3 supplements (E-EPA) 3-4 g/day and magnesium, selenium, zinc, potassium (lots in vegetables and fruits), K2 supplements , eating red rice, reducing stress, taking sauna 4-6 times a week with cold dipping/ shower and exercising / moving every day. It´s also helpful to quit smoking, stop eating anything salty, red meat, processed meat products and processed foods in general (salt and sodium-based chemicals), or oriental fast foods with MSG. A fast way to lower blood pressure is medication.