Enhance Your Health

Health Tip of the Week: Change of Season

As the seasons change and the weather turns from warm to colder, the days get shorter with less health boosting sunshine.  In a pre-emptive strike on the cold and flu season, now is the time to pay attention to your body’s immune system needs.  It is time to pay attention to what is needed to enhance the way your immune system responds to the colder environment and the different viruses that will be floating around this winter.

As you are aware, there is a flu season.  The flu season is in the winter time.  Winter is the season when our bodies have less exposure to sunshine.  Sunshine is nature’s health tonic.  Sunshine creates vitamin D3 in our body.  Vitamin D enhances immune system function, which in turn allows the body to better handle germs and viruses, keeping us healthy.  In addition, and off topic, vitamin D3 has also been shown to help prevent cancers (another topic for another day).  Less sun exposure to our bodies results in a less than optimal functioning immune system.  That is why in the summer time there is less sickness and almost zero flu cases.  Our bodies, in the summer, have higher levels of vitamin D3 and more efficient immune systems.

That being said, when the seasons turn, it is important to supplement the body with vitamin D3.  Recommend doses for optimal health are 35 units per pound of body weight.  For instance, it is common for a person to take anywhere from 4000-8000 units per day based on body weight.

Other areas that require your attention are daily diet and nervous system function.  Diets made up of processed foods (foods from boxes, bags or cans) have been shown to lower immune system function and lead to illness.  Sugar is toxic to the immune system and lowers resistance to diseases, such as the flu and 24 hr viruses (also, off topic, cancer cells feed, thrive and grow on diets with sugar).

As far as the nervous system goes, the nervous system controls the function of the immune system.  Therefore, impeded or disrupted nerve flow from the spine can decrease the function of the immune system.  Restoring the proper flow of the nervous system, via chiropractic spinal adjustments is a very viable way of keeping the immune system functioning at a higher level, helping the body to be healthier and helping to prevent colds and the flu.

The 3 most important things you can do to keep your body healthier this flu season are supplementing the diet with Vitamin D3, eliminating processed foods and sugar from the diet and receiving regular chiropractic adjustments from your chiropractor.

Thought for the Week

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, so does vitamin D3 and your chiropractor.

 

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