5 Holistic Ways To Beat Fall Flu Season
It’s coming, as it always does.
With kids back to school and people indoors more, the fall cold season is almost upon us.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could not get sick this fall?
That’s what we’re here for today. Strategies that we can think about and take action on now so that we won’t get sick in a couple of weeks.
Start preventative care early
How often do we try to cram down extra Vitamin D capsules and slam green tea and echinacea when we feel a cold already coming on?
Vitamin D can help to cut down on sickness time but works even better if you start with a better vitamin D range in the first place.
Make sure that you’re getting in good doses of vitamin D through sun exposure before the summer wraps up, or supplementing with Vitamin D if you aren’t able to. Take 2,000 IUs per day as a maintenance dose and if you do feel a cold coming on, bump it up to 5,000-10,000 IUs for a couple of days until you see your systems subside.
Also, take advantage of the fresh summer produce and get in your daily dose of veggies. Aim for 800 g of raw produce or about 6 cups. This looks like 6 fistfuls of vegetables each day. Now be honest, are you hitting that every day? If not, a greens supplement like Genuine Health’s greens+ will keep you healthy.
Boost Your Physical Resilience
Colds primarily affect us when our physical health gets compromised when our immune system is working overdrive to fight off those foreign invaders of fall cold and flu bugs. This combined with the stressors of the busyness at work and school as the season changes from school break vacation mode runs us over until illness sets in. Physical resilience gets built by adding healthy doses of physical stress to your system while everything else is under control.
Do a hard workout once or twice a week, experience a cold tub or hot sauna session, or combine them together for contrast therapy. Pushing ourselves in this way when we can properly recover from it makes us stronger to handle other types of physical stressors like colds that push our immune system to the limit.
Minimum dose:
The minimum dose for effectively using the cold plunge is 11 minutes per week and an hour per week in the heat of the sauna.
A hard workout can push you in as little as a couple of minutes if you’re doing a Tabata interval. To really boost your resilience with workouts, 30 minutes to an hour is more likely going to be most beneficial to work on now.
Eat Fermented Foods
Eat Fermented Foods: Incorporating fermented foods into your diet can have numerous health benefits, including boosting your immune system. Fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, and kombucha are rich in probiotics, which promote a healthy gut microbiome. A balanced gut microbiome is closely linked to a strong immune system. By consuming fermented foods regularly, you can support your body's defense against pathogens and reduce the risk of falling sick during the fall season. Whether you choose to add a spoonful of sauerkraut to your salad or enjoy a glass of kombucha with your meals, every bit of fermented food contributes to enhancing your overall well-being.
Minimum Dose: Even a small amount of fermented foods added to your diet can make a difference. If you're not a fan of fermented foods, you can consider taking a daily probiotic supplement as an alternative. These supplements provide a concentrated dose of beneficial bacteria that can support your immune system. Incorporating fermented foods or probiotic supplements into your daily routine can help strengthen your body's natural defenses and keep you healthy throughout the fall season.
Practice Breathwork
Breath work has become a popular way to increase resilience and physical health thanks to people like Wim Hof who have shown the power that breathing can have. Breath work may just be a fancy way to talk about breathing but the distinction is important because we typically breathe shallow and high into the chest, causing a higher state of stress and limiting the ability to relax.
Breathwork can be an effective practice for reducing stress and improving physical health. It involves specific breathing patterns that can help induce a state of relaxation and calmness. By focusing on deep, intentional breaths, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for promoting relaxation and reducing stress. One popular breathwork technique is the Wim Hof Method, which involves taking deep breaths followed by a full exhale. This practice can help regulate your breathing, reduce stress levels, and improve your overall well-being. Incorporating breathwork into your daily routine, even for just a few minutes, can have a positive impact on your physical and mental health.
To practice breathwork, you can start by finding a quiet and comfortable space. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, inhaling deeply through your nose and exhaling fully through your mouth. Then, try the physiological sigh protocol by breathing in fully, sipping in a little bit more air, and exhaling slowly. Repeat this for at least one minute, focusing on the rhythm and depth of your breaths. You can also explore other breathwork techniques and find the ones that work best for you. Remember, even a short session of breathwork can be beneficial, so don't hesitate to incorporate this practice into your daily routine to reduce stress and improve your overall well-being.
Minimum Dose: 1 minute. That’s right. Do four breaths right now following Andrew Huberman’s physiological sigh protocol of breathing in fully, sipping in a little bit more air, and then fully exhaling slowly.
Forest Bathing
The Japanese term shinrin-yoku meaning forest bathing originated when researchers began to notice the negative effects that being cooped up 24/7 in densely populated cities like Tokyo was having on the mood and well-being of people.
Being in nature, bathing yourself in the surroundings and taking it all in has such a pronounced effect on improving mood and reducing stress that it’s become an accepted remedy for ailments. Because getting into nature is beneficial for reducing physical and mental stress, it’s also great for keeping your immune system healthy. Be sure to get lots of time in nature now that the weather is still great but also consider the minimum dose throughout the winter months too.
Minimum Dose: 20 minutes, 3 times per week.
This is enough to make a difference when we’re stuck inside more, spreading germs with friends, family, and coworkers.
Remember, these strategies are not foolproof but can help reduce the risk of getting sick. If you experience any concerning symptoms or have specific health concerns, it's always advisable to consult with a healthcare professional for personalized advice and guidance.
Stay healthy and enjoy the fall season!
4 Ways To Keep Your Immune System Healthy This Fall
The concerns around COVID-19 are not done yet and the fall flu season is upon us.
Now is the time to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep your immune system healthy so that you don’t get sick.
Think about these 4 Ss when it comes to helping your immune system: Sleep, Stress, Shock, and Support.
Read on to learn more about each strategy and how it’ll help you.
Sleep
Sleep is like the Batman of recovery: the hero you don’t want, but the hero that you need.
It’s unrivalled in its importance in promoting recovery, including keeping your immune system healthy, keeping your brain sharp, and your body functioning well.
Sleep is also challenging to try to tackle because we all have preconceived notions of how good or bad our sleep is and why we just have to accept it as it is. Trying to deal with it as a “bad sleeper” is not a good time, as everything else in your life gets affected.
But I'm not suggesting that you try to completely overhaul your sleep routine with what the latest health guru is saying you need to do every hour of the day to prepare yourself for sleep. There are things that can help, but what helps the most is to start with what you're comfortable doing. If that means just maintaining what you're already doing, that's great.
If you have a change in mind that you want to make and you think it'll help your sleep, try that out and notice how it helps your sleep and how rested you feel. Notice the difference it makes and if it doesn’t seem to be doing much, try to add on something else you feel ready to do.
Stress - Manage It Your Best
We all experience stress in many different ways. Stress is as unique to our life as our fingerprint. Managing stress well becomes not just a practice in following a few steps from a template but to understand and explore your own stressors.
By recognizing our own triggers and reactions to stress, we can better come to respect our need for balance and when it's most essential for us. Whether due to life transitions or unexpected events in your life, we can’t go off of a pre-made plan for managing stress better, unless we’ve thought about it ourselves and created it or shaped it to fit our own needs.
So stress management becomes as much about the give and take as a Jiu-Jitsu match. React to everything you experience so that you can keep pushing toward your ultimate goal of getting everything managed as best as you can.
This is exactly what we do in my stress management success course where I teach you how to apply the steps of making changes in your life and creating an action plan for becoming unstressable.
The next cohort for the course is starting soon and you can join the waitlist here: www.flowacademy.ca/stress
Shock
Use deliberate heat or cold exposure to give your immune system a boost.
Sitting in a sauna feels really good but on top of that, it carries with it some powerful health benefits, including being able to strengthen your immune system and reduce the stress hormone cortisol.
When our bodies are exposed to extreme heat or cold, we are giving it a healthy, acute dose of stress. This triggers many of the systems in our body to be stimulated, including our immune system which builds up under this process.
The same happens to us with cold exposure, like doing a cold plunge. This can be harder for people to want to initiate but it certainly feels invigorating after you’ve done it. And the cold creates a great anti-inflammatory effect to reduce pain and promote healing while also turning up the dial on our immune system.
Research suggests that the best practice for this is doing 3-4 sessions per week for a total of 57 minutes of heat exposure above 80 degrees Celsius and 11 minutes total of cold exposure below 10 degrees Celsius. These numbers may be optimal, but certainly, any amount of shock, even one session per week, is going to make a difference that will help you to stay healthier.
Support
Support yourself and your immune system. During cold and flu season, it’s important to turn to our friends and family for support when it’s needed as a way to feel a strong sense of connection that will help to keep stress levels down. It’s also often needed when we do feel the sniffles coming on and need to be proactive to not get sick any further by letting others lend a hand where we need it.
Furthermore, you can support your immune system and your health through supplements. While these aren’t the first step in good nutrition, there are some nutrients that are important for the immune system that become harder to access through our diet as the colder weather approaches, most notably, colourful fruits and veggies and vitamin D. Supplementing with a greens powder can help to cover a lot of micronutrients that we need to stay healthy and keep our immune system strong, and getting vitamin D through supplementation are virtually essential for Canadians once the summer is over and we’re getting less direct sunlight. This one is extremely important for our immune system so I highly recommend it.
Look to supplement with a scoop of a high-quality greens powder, like Genuine Health’s greens+ every day and 2,000 IUs of Vitamin D3.
What to do next:
Look at what you can do to support your sleep and write down a few ideas of what you’re willing to try.
Book in for a sauna or cold plunge to start deliberate exposure to the extremes that will stimulate your immune system.
Try This To Bust Stress and Boost Your Immune System This Fall
As we start a new school year, we’ve all got a mixed sense of optimism and concern over what colder weather and classmates gathering together might bring.
Needless to say, it’s been stressful. And that’s exactly the last thing you want when trying to stay healthy this fall.
Stress negatively affects our immune system when it goes unchecked and staying healthy and having a strong immune system has undoubtedly become one of the most important goals we all keep top of mind.
So whether you’re a teacher, student, or concerned parent, let’s talk about how to get a handle on your stress levels to become healthier and prevent illness.
Floating Helps Improve Your Immune System
Chronic stress happens when we get stuck in a never-ending loop of fight or flight fear. The sympathetic nervous system helps us to engage with threats and we react to our environment with a heightened state of alertness. In our modern world, this threat detection system has gone haywire due to nonstop stimulation whether the threat is real or perceived. Over time if we don’t get a chance to calm down, this wears down our bodies though, making us experience symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and a compromised immune system.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve had your fair share of sleepless nights lately, ruminating thoughts of the negative news and uncertainty about what’s coming next.
Float therapy works so well against anxious thoughts and by reducing our stress levels. Clinical evidence shows that it helps to reduce cortisol levels, the hormone that gets out of control when we are chronically stressed. The safe, relaxing, and quiet space of the float tank also is a miracle when it comes to reducing anxiety. By having no distractions or stimulation around us, the float pod or float cabin is like a sanctuary for the mind and with peace and tranquility, our thoughts slow down and settle into a more calm and clear state.
This state of calm is exactly where we need to get to on a regular basis to counteract the stressful situation we are living through and dealing with. By taking the time to float, or practice any other restful state of recovery, you are proactively recharging in a way that supports a healthier immune system and you’ll better handle the stressors of your daily life.
Small Doses of Stress Train Your Immune System to Become Stronger
Even better than floating alone to strengthen your immune system is through small doses of stress in safe and healthy ways. Stress isn’t all bad, it’s only when it becomes a constant in your daily life that it gets out of control and will start to negatively impact you.
Short exposure to stressors makes you more resilient.
These small doses of stress come from healthy practices like
Working out
Sauna
Contrast therapy using hot and cold plunges
Add in a relaxing float after any of these small and short-lived doses of stress and you’ll be actively training your nervous system to handle stress better, which will also improve your immune system to help you fight off illnesses.
Make a plan to include a sauna session before your next float or book in a float on a day that you’ve done a hard workout to help reset your body and recover.
Boost Your Immune System With These 4 Top Tips
Last week we launched the Flow Academy, an online learning platform for peak performance and flow.
In this time of being stuck at home, I'm seeing a lot of people spiral out of control and lose their sense of well-being.
That's why the first course I've made available on the Flow Academy website is a free challenge week, which unlocks to you a few simple challenges each day for one week so that you've got some steps you can take action on to reclaim your wellness and feel more happy, healthy, and stress-free at home.
I encourage you to go and sign up for the challenges right now.
Today I want to talk a bit about your immune system, a topic that relates to Day 2 of Challenge week with Stress Management.
Watch the video here:
Nutrition
In the course, I touched mostly on stress as the main topic so today I want to cover a few more key points to help you to take care of your immune system during this difficult time.
While I did touch on nutrition in regards to stress in the challenge week let's talk more about the immune system here.
Eat Water-Rich Foods
Foods with the highest water content are important for the nutrients they provide, as well as the water and hydrating effects on our bodies. Hydration is very important for our immune function. By drinking plenty of water and getting more water through a water-rich diet we help to support our lymphatic system, which transports immune cells throughout our body and carries waste away when fighting off infection and illness.
This hydration factor is critical enough let alone the vitamins you get in abundance when you prioritize the vegetables and fruits in your diet.
Exercise
Regular exercise not only feels good, but it also keeps us resilient to getting sick. Next to old age, the risk factors for obesity are linked to susceptibility to COVID-19 so making sure that you are moving your body and staying active is something that’s in your control during this pandemic.
You can find out more about easy ways to move more instantly on day 1 of the wellness challenge week.
Sleep
One of the easiest ways to get sick more often and crush your immune system is to sleep less than your body needs. While I sometimes fall prey to this as well, don't get caught in a YouTube binge that compromises your sleep and have a proper sleep hygiene routine to wind down well at the end of the day. If you are going to be watching TV or on blue light devices after the sun goes down, try using some blue light blocking glasses.
Food safety
Another factor to keep in mind right now is food safety, and not just through hand washing prior to eating or preparing your meals. Be cognizant of the foods you are eating to watch out for foodborne illness or gut health issues. Whether you get sick from food poisoning or due to digestive distress from foods that don't agree with you, it's going to compromise your immune system and make you susceptible to other illnesses, which is what we most certainly don't need right now. This is something I’ve always recommended with strongman athletes in the days leading up to a competition to avoid any issues with fuelling and preparing for competition and the same applies to us all right now.
Those are four of the things that are in your control to boost your immune system during this pandemic. You can learn more by watching this week’s video.
Remember to go and sign up for the Flow Academy challenge week to level up your wellness at home even more.
Find Your Flow,
RJ