Monday Health & Wellness: Building Up Your Immune System

Image by The Italian Voice

Sadly, “the crud” hit us over the weekend.  Ben came home from work on Thursday saying, “I’ve felt sick for a few hours…decided to just come home.  I’m going upstairs.  Bring some of that anti-nausea tea.”  But by the time I got it upstairs 15 minutes later, he said it was already too late.  He spent the night sick.  Bekah and Jacob were each sick for about 20 minutes (really — they threw up once, then were magically fine), Daniel never got sick (that kid never does anymore!!), and I just felt really tired and icky Friday and Saturday.

Sunday we all felt better.  Which is nice.

We’re not the only ones.  Unfortunately, “the crud” is going around, and we know many friends (locally and online) who have been affected by similar stuff.  It’s not fun.  And personally, I blame our holiday “slipping” (in terms of diet) for some of this.  Bekah had way too much organic candy and homemade cakes and cookies for a month, and her gut health is precarious as it is.  (She is 4 and you can read her story if you are curious why this is.)

Now we, and others, are in a position to need to re-build our systems!  We did not break down and use any sort of conventional medications during our illness (if you did/do, you will have more rebuilding to do because these medications damage your gut flora), but still — illness and the symptoms it produces can wreak havoc on your system.  (Try this link for natural alternatives!) So what to do?

Building the System Through Diet

First, it’s important to be extra careful about your diet, whether you’re recovering from a recent illness or hoping to avoid one that’s going around.  Here are some important keys:

• Few/no grains (and any you do consume should be properly prepared whole grains)
• No sugar (a tiny amount of raw honey in tea is okay, but skip even other natural sweeteners now)
• Plenty of bone broth
• Fresh garlic (see below for ideas)
• Limit/eliminate dairy (especially store-bought, which is highly allergenic and mucus-producing)
• Lots of fresh vegetables
• Seafood (especially salmon)
• Crispy nuts
• Healthy meat
• Coconut oil (full of medium-chain lauric acid, an immune booster)

It’s so important to be extra careful at this time.  When your body is in a weakened state, it is more vulnerable to infections, meaning it’s more likely that you’ll get sick (again) — or take longer to recover.  Avoiding processed foods like white flour, white sugar, and vegetable oil, plus any weird food additives, is key (but you should ideally do that pretty much all the time).

What about that fresh garlic?  How are you supposed to consume that?  Here are some ideas:

• Mixed into homemade salad dressing
• Mixed into olive oil dip for bread (preferably whole wheat sourdough)
• Smeared onto bread with a little butter and lightly toasted (like garlic bread)
• Slightly crushed and swallowed whole (for the brave!)
• Crushed and mixed into soup (also for the brave!)

If you’re wondering, yes, it’s important to somehow crush the garlic first.  Crushing it releases the allicin, which is the active compound that gives garlic its wonderful properties (anti-viral).

These are milk kefir grains

Image by tarik gore

Building the System Through Supplements

After any digestive-related illness, it’s likely that your gut flora could use some help.  The reason you got sick in the first place is because the balance shifted so that the pathogenic bacteria was able to “take over.”  The symptoms produced (vomiting, diarrhea) are intended to flush out the bad guys so your body can fight back.  Annoying, but necessary to your health.

Post-illness, the balance is only precariously in favor of the “good guys.”  It’s important to shore that up as soon as possible.  With that in mind, here are some supplements you should consider:

• Probiotics (ideally food-based, and consumed with every meal)
• Fermented cod liver oil (take a double dose for a few days)
• Herbal multi-vitamin (we’ll be starting ours)
• Activated charcoal (this is actually taken at the first hint of symptoms, or can be taken pre-emptively if other family members are sick.  It binds with all the “yuck” and carries it out of your body.  I took it and think it minimized some parts of the illness for me)

There is some evidence to show that forms of kefir can actually help to re-colonize the digestive tract, while other forms of food-based probiotics (like yogurt) “pass on through,” helping only immediately after you’ve consumed them.  Including kefir in your diet would be a great idea.  Try adding it to smoothies if you don’t care for the taste straight — I don’t. Here is a neat article on types of bacterial strains and what they do for us.

We will personally be including yogurt, milk kefir, kombucha, pickles, raw cheese and other forms of probiotics in our diet now.  (Even more regularly than before!)

Building Your Immune System in Other Ways

One of the most crucial things you can do to boost your immune system is to address your vitamin D and vitamin A levels.  Both are heavily tied to immune function.  If these levels are too low, you can expect more frequent and more serious illnesses.  Fermented cod liver oil ( FCLO) contains both of these important vitamins.  The dose that you would need to take will vary depending on how low your levels are.  If you are sick often, please see your doctor and get a blood test to check your levels.  It is possible to supplement with an oil-based, non-synthetic vitamin D and/or A supplement up to 50,000 IU (vit D) per day and 100,000 IU (vit D) per day for a short time.  It is crucial that you do not take high levels of synthetic vitamin A, as this is toxic.

Exercise, in a low-impact, mild form is good.  Pushing yourself to exercise too much, especially post-illness, can tax your body’s reserves at a time when you don’t have much, weakening you and setting you up for further illness.  Start exercising slowly and build up over time to prevent this.  Always listen to your body.  If you feel exhausted, do not push yourself to continue exercising.  It’s important to remain hydrated, and a homemade electrolyte drink can help with that.

Visiting a chiropractor is also a good idea.  We go once a week, and the kids actually get adjusted about once a month (or after any illness or injury).  Chiropractic aligns the bones so that the nerves can then be properly placed and can send appropriate messages to the body.  If part of your spine is out of alignment, a nerve(s) may be pinched, which means the messages from the body part to the brain can’t get through properly, sometimes causing illness.  When the body is aligned, it functions better and this can boost your immunity.  If you have never seen one, try to find one!  They can help with a lot of different issues, including things like recurrent ear infections.

Essential oils can help, too.  Diffusing oils into the air can help clear up bacteria and other junk and prevent future infection.  You can read about how I use essential oils if you’re curious, though I am by no means an expert.

Addressing Antibiotic Use

My personal belief is that antibiotics should be used only in very serious situations.  If you have a known bacterial infection that is not responding to home treatment and you feel that you truly need something stronger to “kick it,” then take it.  For me, I would have to strongly believe that the body was compromised enough that it was temporarily unable to fight off what was going on, and that there were no natural remedies that I could use to boost it that would work quickly or well enough.  So far this has never happened, though we have considered it a couple of times.  Choosing antibiotics is a much more serious decision than most people believe (unfortunately), and if we were all more cautious, we probably wouldn’t see the resistance issues we currently do.

Regardless, it happens sometimes that you have taken them, either because you were sure you needed them, or perhaps because a doctor convinced you to take them.

If you have recently taken antibiotics or other medications, these cause damage to gut flora.  This can result in thrush or yeast infections, as well as other types of infections.  As soon as you begin the antibiotics, ideally, you should be giving probiotics about 4 hours after each dose (in between doses — too closet to the dose, and the probiotics will kill the antibiotics, too).  Continue to consume probiotics at each meal and also for snacks (a nice fermented pickle makes a great probiotic snack) once the antibiotic course is finished.  Make sure you follow the directions on the antibiotics so that they can work properly and you don’t allow the infection to come back.

Since thrush and yeast may be a problem, consume no sugar and limited to no grains at this time, as these feed yeast.  Yeast is normal and healthy, but must be balanced with bacteria.

If a yeast infection does occur, applying some milk kefir directly to the affected area can help to clear the infection.  Consuming garlic and coconut oil will help as well.  Cranberry can be taken for a UTI (juice is fine, and diluted by sweeter juices is okay).

One of the major things to avoid is a second course of antibiotics soon after the first.  When gut flora is wiped out from antibiotics (good and bad), infections can get in more easily because there are no ‘good guys’ to fight it off.  This is another reason why it is important to choose carefully!  Keeping up a steady round of probiotics between doses and after the antibiotics are done should help fight this.

See my other post today for healing and boosting ideas!

Luckily, if you’re on top of everything, it’s possible to boost your immune system and stay healthy for — hopefully — the foreseeable future!

**This post has been entered in Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist.**

How do you boost your immune system?