Our immune system works every second of every day keeping our cells healthy and active. Over the last few decades, it has had to step up and adapt to changing environments, diets, and lifestyles and is incredibly successful.
If our immune systems fail, we get sick and die. It’s that simple. With toxins and over-use of antibiotics rampant in our lives, there is constant bombardment of the immune system—it needs our conscious help to keep up. Here are some ways to help you help yourself.
1. Too much alcohol
Whether all at once or habitually, more than one drink per day compromises your immune system’s ability to fight infection and disease. Excessive alcohol consumption or long term alcohol abuse can lead to immune deficiency in two ways — nutritional deficiency and reducing white blood cells.
The consequences can be pneumonia, tuberculosis, various infections, and autoimmunity—when the immune system attacks its own body’s cells—not to mention liver and heart disease. [1]
2. Too much sugar
Sucrose suppresses the immune system, leads to weight gain and leaches precious minerals from your body. Even in small amounts, sugar is detrimental to your health. Eating or drinking 100 grams (8 tbsp.) of sugar, the equivalent of about two cans of soda, can reduce the ability of white blood cells to kill germs by forty percent.
The immune-suppressing effect of sugar starts less than thirty minutes after ingestion and may last for five hours. In contrast, the ingestion of complex carbohydrates, or starches, has no effect on the immune system.
In addition, eating too much sugar can lead to excessive weight gain. Fat tissue produces hormones that initiate an inflammatory response by the immune system. Chronic inflammation has been linked to heart disease, stroke, joint and muscle pain, degenerative brain conditions, and diabetes.
3. Too much traveling
Regular and extensive travel mixes up everything from digestion to sleep. Not called “jet lag” for nothing, changes to the body’s internal clock and circadian rhythms affect the production of T cells, a particular type of white blood cell.[2] Try to keep life as “normal” as possible with adequate sleep, exercise, and healthy food.
4. Too much stress
