Supporting Your Body Through a Change of Season

As we come to the end of the summer season getting back into a routine of work or school is an ideal time for setting new habits for health and wellness.

For many of us improving our immunity as we come into the autumn and increasing our energy and productivity are key goals that can be achieved through small habit changes. Here are our top tips to help you get back into a routine that works for you.

Nutrition

A balanced, vitamin-rich diet is the first step in boosting your immune system. In addition, you reap many health benefits by being keen on a healthy, active lifestyle. How well you balance your food intake will determine how the body responds to health challenges once they arise.

A complete meal plan in your day should contain different types of beneficial vitamins, minerals, good fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Its important to fuel your body with a variety of foods, to eat the rainbow and avoid restrictive diets. Try and include as many immune boosting vitamins as you can on a daily basis.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is vital in ensuring that your body is protected  from the presence of harmful pathogens in the system. A powerful antioxidant, Vitamin C helps guard your body against external attacks from the free radicals. The concentration of these radicals in the body can lead to respiratory infections such as the common colds and flu.

By increasing your blood antioxidant capacity, your body is guarded against inflammation. In addition, the anti-inflammatory feature of Vitamin C helps your body curb your immune system threats that could lead to contracting infectious diseases from viruses.

The C vitamin is found naturally in citrus fruits such as oranges and in berries such as elderberry, which has a high concentration of the C vitamin, standing at 52 Mg per cup. Other excellent sources of Vitamin C include Potatoes, Broccoli, Sweet potatoes, Peppers and Kiwis.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D plays a pivotal role in your overall bodily health, keeping autoimmune diseases and microbial infections at bay, among several other essential benefits including maintaining bone health.

Maintaining a natural, steady supply of ‘the sunshine vitamin’ (via sunlight, good food and supplementation) will help stave off a vitamin D deficiency and keep your immune system firing on all cylinders.

If you struggle with including all these vitamins in your diet daily you might consider supplementing these nutrients or adding a multi Vitamin. These are some of our top recommended supplements;

Gut Health

99% of our microbiome is in the digestive track. This microbiome is key in supporting a healthy immune system, preventing infections and aiding digestion. Gut microbes play an important role in your immune system and inflammation by controlling what is passed into the body and what is excreted. Improving our gut health and balancing the microbiome will have many many benefits for the body including improved digestive health, improvement in inflammatory conditions and in cognitive function.

Diet, the environment, stress and drugs such as antibiotics can all disrupt the balance of bacteria, undermining the diversity of your gut microbiome. The gut bacteria are important as they break down food and toxins, make vitamins and interact with our immune system.

Introducing a supplement is a great way to feed the gut microbiome with good bacteria and enable the gut to thrive and to help enforce our immune system. Symprove is a water based gut health supplement that will help rebalance the microbiome and restore a healthy gut.

Oonagh O’Hagan

Meaghers Pharmacy Paid Partnership with Meaghers.