6 Factors Affecting Immune Health
The most productive way to significantly reduce your chance of complications related to an infection is to support your own immune system directly through daily healthy habits. If you focus on a comprehensive approach to supporting your immune system, you will be that much stronger and able to withstand whatever comes at you.
Here are 6 factors that can affect your immune system and what you can do about them.
Poor Hygiene.
Let’s get this one out of the way first. If you are harboring higher volumes of organisms, there is a greater chance of infection from a harmful organism. Simply put, keep your hands and face clean.
Food.
What you eat is one of the most important factors related to overall health. The goal is to have your diet provide enough essential nutrients for an optimized immune system. If you are not eating a balanced high-quality and varied diet to supply these nutrients, immune system efficiency is compromised.
Here are a few of the key nutrients that have been supported by evidence to help support the immune system: zinc, selenium, iron, and vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. However, there are many other nutrients that play a role in the immune system working optimally that you can get from whole foods. Although it may seem like taking vitamin and mineral pills would be the best idea, actually, it is best to get these and other nutrients from high-quality whole foods as overdosing on vitamins and mineral pills is real and can do more harm than good. Work with your doctor to consider testing such as a comprehensive micronutrient panel (offered at Aspen Health) and to review your entire diet to decide which dietary and supplementation options would be best for you personally.
Another dietary factor that negatively affects your immune system is the damage from highly processed foods (refined flour, sugar, etc.), saturated fats, and excessive salt intake. In the setting of these foods being eaten regularly, it is difficult for your body to balance the inflammation related to your immune system’s function. These foods essentially make your immune system less efficient and increase the side effects we experience when we have an infection.
Stress and Sleep.
Long-term chronic stress has been shown to suppress immune system function. Your brain tells your body systems to do certain functions. The immune system responds best with occasional short bursts of stress hormones to tell your body to respond to threats like infections. When these signals are too frequent or constant such as with chronic stress, the response to this signaling can essentially get burned out leading to a weakened immune system response. Stress reduction techniques as well as making bigger decisions about reducing some of your stressors are important to consider.
Your body does a lot of regeneration and healing while sleeping, so if you are not getting enough deep sleep, it is difficult to recover from an illness. Also, often insomnia is directly a result of too much chronic stress.
So, if you think about it, excessive worrying about your health rather than focusing that same energy on useful techniques to improve it will only weaken your immune system and overall health.
Working on sleep hygiene and stress reduction techniques is critical here. Working with your doctor to work on these and other strategies may further help to improve your sleep and reduce stress.
Physical activity.
Moderate physical activity gives you the best balance for your immune system function. Studies have shown that being sedentary leads to a sluggish and weakened immune system, so we know that we need to be moving around every day. On the other side of the spectrum is extreme exercise such as marathon running which can essentially use up many of the nutrients needed for an efficient immune system requiring an even higher intake of nutrients and more recovery time. So, the ideal is a balance between being sedentary and exercising too much. Set a goal to exercise with moderate-intensity 2.5 to 5 hours per week, spread out over the week. By the way, low-intensity activity such as walking would not be intense enough to be included in this category but is recommended every day anyway.
Toxins.
Alcohol, heavy metals, and chemicals such as parabens and others can each weaken the immune system via different pathways. When you combine these exposures together, they can overwhelm body functions including the immune system. Work with your doctor to consider testing for toxin levels (offered at Aspen Health) as well as discuss how to effectively reduce exposure to improve your immune system.
Microbiome.
A healthy microbiome includes a variety of healthy organisms in the gut that support healthy gut cells (enterocytes) and the tightly knit immune system nearby. In fact, approximately 80% of your immune system resides right there in your gut. Many of the other factors discussed above have a direct relationship with the microbiome, including food, stress, and toxins. Sometimes microbiome testing (offered at Aspen Health) is helpful to determine if additional supportive treatments would be needed to help restore optimal gut function and to further optimize your immune system.
To summarize, working on good hygiene, a quality diet, appropriate nutrient supplementation if needed, quality sleep, stress management, reduction of toxin exposure, and support of your microbiome each plays an important role in achieving your strongest immune health and should be considered when implementing a comprehensive plan for boosting your immunity.
Dr. Benson