Get your stores of vitamin D to full power
Most people’s vitamin DWhat it does: Helps maintain strong and healthy bones by retaining calcium. Deficiency Signs: Joint pain or stiffness, backache, tooth decay, muscle cramps, hair loss…. blood level is below 50nmol/l. You want to get this up to 80nmol/l for maximum protection. While 15mcg, which is what’s in in the multivitamin I take, is enough for most of the year, if your vitamin D level is average you want to boost this during the winter by taking the equivalent of 30mcg daily.
However TAKING VITAMIN D ONCE A WEEK works just as well.
Here’s what I do and why: if I’m already taking 15mcg every day I need an additional 15mcg x 7 = 105mcg a week. I take a vitamin D emulsion that gives 25mcg(1000iu) per drop. So, I just take 4 drops once a week.
A recent study of teenagers confirms this. The researchers found they needed up to 30mcg of vitamin D during the winter to boost vitamin D levels to a healthy level. Vitamin D boosts immune system’s ability to respond against invaders.
Eat a clove of garlic every day
Garlic not only boosts immunity, it triggers genes that ‘upregulate’ immunity a recent study shows. This effect has been shown to happen with just one raw clove of garlic a day.
A study this year showed that those eating garlic daily for 90 days showed reduced cold and flu severity, with a reduction in the number of symptoms, the number of days participants functioned suboptimally, and the number of work/school days missed.
I have a clove of garlic every day. Admittedly, I use it in cooking – I don’t think steam frying lessens its power much, but I also squeeze a raw clove into salad dressings.
Up your anthocyandins
These are the blue/red colour in berries. They’re especially rich in bilberries, black elderberries and montmorency cherries and blueberries and have been shown to inhibit neuraminidase which is the enzyme that viruses use to break into cells.
The vitamin CWhat it does: Strengthens immune system – fights infections. Makes collagen, keeping bones, skin and joints firm and strong. Antioxidant, detoxifying pollutants and protecting against… I take, twice a day, gives me a concentrated extract of both black elderberry and bilberry, but I also bump up my daily levels with a shot of either CherryActive or BlueberryActive every day. By the way, on a cold day make it hot – it’s delicious and warming.
Have a cold shower or swim
If you have a hot shower, and then a quick burst of cold shower, it stimulates your metabolismMetabolism is a term that is used to describe the chemical reactions that take place within the body’s cells. The body gets the energy it… and boosts your immunity. So does cold water swimming. This is because you make more immune cells, according to investigators at Britain’s Thrombosis Research Institute.
However, if you get a cold keep warm. Have warm baths and showers. Your immune system can kill bugs better with a higher temperature – that’s why the body turns up its temperature when fighting an infection. You can help it.
Remember, if you get the first signs of a cold take a high dose vitamin C tablet containing zincWhat it does: Component of over 200 enzymes in the body, essential for growth, important for healing, controls hormones, aids ability to cope with stress… and black elderberry, every hour, or two tablets every two hours, until the cold ‘breaks’. Ginger also helps reduce throat inflammation.
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