Pumping up Immunity

With cold and flu season around the corner, and schools back in session acting as incubators for every little plague to come along it's time to tune up your immune system. Here is a list of things you can do.

1. Not to harp, but eliminate sugar. Most germs love sugar -- especially the special sugar your body turns all those cookies into: glucose. Germs multiply exponentially. So try this little math exercise. Some bacteria can divide every 4 minutes. So start with one. In 4 minutes you have 2. In 8 minutes you have 4. In 12 minutes you have 8. In 16 minutes you have 16. In 20 you have 32. In 24 minutes you have 64. In 28 minutes you have 128, and on it goes. Ok? Get that? THEN, consider your immune system reacts to sugar by shutting down for 6 hours. If your immune system is asleep on sugar for 6 hours, it will wake up to how many bacteria? Answer: I got tired of multiplying at 2 hours and the number was 1,073,741,824. There are still four hours to go and your immune system is still sleeping. Quite a mess for it to catch up to when it comes out of it's sugar-land.

2. Stress knocks down the immune system badly. Oh, if only we could eliminate all the things in life that stress us! Unfortunately, there is usually very little that can be done on that score. So, coping with it better is the only solution. The best stress-reliever there is comes not in a pill but in your tennis shoes. Get up and exercise! Exercise improves all the body's ways of coping, and reduces the risks for just about EVERY chronic disease stalking humankind, including Alzheimer's, depression, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease -- hey, even the common cold.

3. If you're eating most of your food off the World's Healthiest Foods list (www.whfoods.com) then vitamin supplementation is probably not a necessary addition. The more nutrition one can get from food (and not from synthetic, humanly formulated tablets) the better health everyone will have.

4. Hand-washing is really important, and almost as much so: keeping your hands away from your face. The majority of common infectious diseases travel on water droplets that get sneezed out onto nearby surfaces and left on commonly handled things, like doorknobs. Wash often, and try not to obsess.

5. If worse, comes to worse and you do begin feeling like you're catching something grab a natural immune system stimulant/tonifier, and take a lot and frequently at first. Some of these immune system aids include: echinacea, golden seal, mushrooms, colostrum and combinations.