How To Boost Your Immunity During Cold and Flu Season

Don’t want to get sick? Here are some simple tips to stay healthy.

During the cold months, it can be difficult to avoid catching a cold or getting the flu. Often times, these are annoying problems that put you out of commission for a few days to a week, but sometimes, an illness like the flu can be dramatically more serious. Regardless, most people wish to avoid getting sick if possible. Here are a few easy ideas to help prevent the common cold as best you can. 

Eat Foods Rich in Vitamin C. 

Vitamin C is known to help prevent the common cold, and many studies have shown that in therapeutic amounts, Vitamin C might assist in shortening the duration of the common cold. While you can supplement with any variety of vitamin C supplements, it is best to include foods rich in Vitamin C in your diet.  

Certainly, most people equate vitamin C with oranges or orange juice, but on the Kaufmann Diet, oranges are primarily off limits due to their sugar content. There are however a number of foods permitted on the Kaufmann diet that are rich in Vitamin C. These include lemons, limes, grapefruit, chili peppers, parsley, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and strawberries.  

Wash Your Hands. 

Sometimes, mom’s advice is the best. Washing your hands is one of the easiest ways to prevent getting sick to begin with. Certainly, it goes without saying that public places are a haven for germs. Any sort of handrail or door handle is likely to be contaminated with germs carried by anyone else that touched it. 

But there are other, less obvious places that you should be wary of when it comes to being exposed to germs. The surface of your phone and/or tablet, computer keypad, or other handheld electronic device is known to harbor all kinds of bacteria and viruses. It helps to try your best to keep these surfaces clean, but ultimately it is just best to keep your hands washed often, especially before you eat or touch your face. 

Take Beta Glucan. 

Beta glucan is a powerful immune enhancing supplement. Beta-glucan allows your immune system to work optimally. Think of it like putting premium gas in your gas tank. While your car would likely run just fine on regular gas, putting premium gasoline in your tank allows a powerful car motor to run exactly how it was designed––subsequently, it will likely run smoother for longer. In the case of fueling your immune system with beta-glucan, that means fending off germs and pathogens with greater efficiency and fervor, making it less likely that you will catch whatever is going around. 

Stick Closely to The Kaufmann Diets. 

How can diet make your immune system work better? Certainly, a nutritious diet can facilitate optimal health, but that is not the only way The Kaufmann Diet can assist in keeping your immune system strong. 

There is much published evidence that mycotoxins contaminate certain parts of our food supply, particularly corn, grains, sugar, peanuts, and soy. It goes without saying that these are the foods that underpin our industrialized food chain––these and ingredients derived from these are found in virtually all processed foods, even in foods you wouldn’t expect to necessarily find them. Despite the fact that regulators do screen for these poisons, the likelihood that these poisons wind up in the food on our dinner plates is still high. 

Mycotoxins are, among other detrimental things, immunosuppressants. They are so effective at this that they are used as immunosuppressive medicines in transplant patients. That’s right––mold toxins are used to suppress our immune system on purpose!

While you won’t find doses of these poisons in our food supply on par with what you would find in prescription medicines, a little over a long time ads up. It is possible that if you are eating corn, sugar, wheat and other foods contaminated with mycotoxins, you are introducing tiny bits of poison into your body, gradually compromising your immunity. 

The Kaufmann Diet, however, seeks to rectify this and eliminates many foods that are at-risk for mycotoxin contamination, mitigating the risk that these poisons are getting onto your plate and into your body. So, in the interest of maintaining optimal immune system health, it may be a good idea to support your immune system with the Kaufmann Diets.