Stay Healthy and Strong: Essential Immunity Tips for Back to School

As families prepare to head back to school in person this fall, and with increased risk of the winter flu and colds coming quickly, immune support becomes a top priority—and it’s more important this year than ever.  

For year-round immune health, your immune system needs to keep your defenses strong, without letting inflammation get out of control. How can you protect your immunity? A trained and balanced immune system is the key to protecting your health and immunity. Here are simple tips for balancing and protecting your immunity this back to school season.

You may have heard the terms “boosting immunity,” but it’s not what is actually best for protecting and defending your immunity against viral infections and pathogens like the common cold. There are natural herbs, supplements, and formulas that claim to “boost” the immune system, but “”boosting” your immune activity can have unintended consequences, like sending your immune system into overdrive, and causing an immune overreaction, from fevers to headaches and organ issues.  

That’s why, rather than immune-boosting, you need to optimize, train and balance your immune system to give the right responses to each threat it faces.  

Balancing your immune system improves your immune cells function, while supporting healthy inflammation responses, allowing your immune system to launch an appropriate attack that can defend your body against invaders, without unleashing an inflammatory cytokine storm that can end up damaging vital organs and harming your long-term health.

Getting plenty of sleep is key for total-body repair and balance. Lack of adequate sleep can fuel immune imbalances, contributing to autoimmune inflammatory conditions, as well as immune suppression and more frequent infections. Focusing on getting good, quality sleep that rejuvenates your body and helps you feel rested is essential for improving your immunity.¹ 

Healthy stress relief is essential for immune balance. Stress can fuel inflammation and send an immune response into overdrive, leading to uncontrolled inflammation and inflammatory responses, impacting our gut health, and even the deadly cytokine storm. Healthy stress relief practices like meditation, yoga, and breathwork improves immune function and reduce the body’s inflammatory reactions supporting your immune system and overall health. ²  

Staying hydrated is one of the easiest ways to protect and defend your body’s essential functions, while detoxing and removing harmful toxins and threats to your immune system that can cause infection. Drinking plenty of water can help you stay clear of illness and give your body the nourishment it needs to support healthy total-body functions. 

To prevent inflammatory immune overreactions, an anti-inflammatory diet is best for supporting your immunity and gut health. The typical Western diet is full of inflammatory foods like refined sugars and grains, trans fats, carbohydrates, and processed ingredients that are shown to fuel autoimmune disease and other immune issues. By eating foods that are unprocessed and rich in phytonutrients, like non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats and lean protein, you can support your immune health and improve your defenses, naturally.³ 

Have you heard of functional mushrooms? Functional mushrooms are a natural, potent ingredient that balances, trains and optimizes your immune system and supports your overall health, naturally. Many species of functional mushrooms work to modulate and educate the immune system for optimal response to invaders, unhealthy cells, and other immune challenges to protect your immunity. These powerful functional mushrooms can calm an overactive immune system to help combat inflammatory immune flare-ups, and support the ability of immune cells to defend against occasional colds and flus.

MycoPhyto is a six functional mushroom blend that gives you complete immune support to protect and defend your immune health. This powerful mushroom supplement is botanically-enhanced and grown with additional immune properties, for the highest level of immune balancing and support.* 

With over 70 published studies, PectaSol modified citrus pectin is one of the most important super-nutrients for immune balancing. Published research shows how PectaSol modified citrus pectin promotes healthy immune cell activity, and maintains balanced immune responses and prevents over-reactions.* 

Regardless of what time of year it is, your immune system needs the right support to keep you healthy and feeling your best each day. With the right immunity support, you can protect your health all year long. Upgrade your immunity, with intensive immune support benefits that help keep you healthy, and your immune system balanced. 

Sources: 

1. Zielinski MR, Systrom DM, Rose NR. Fatigue, Sleep, and Autoimmune and Related Disorders. Front Immunol. 2019;10:1827.
2. Black DS, Slavich GM. Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2016;1373(1):13-24.
3. Manzel A, Muller DN, Hafler DA, Erdman SE, Linker RA, Kleinewietfeld M. Role of "Western diet" in inflammatory autoimmune diseases. Curr Allergy Asthma Rep. 2014;14(1):404.