Improve Your Health: What is the Best Immune System Booster Supplement?

People around the world have learned a lot in the past year. We’ve realized how important it is to have healthy immune systems, how to take care of ourselves and take precautionary measures to ensure our safety and health. This has helped us create awareness on why building our immune systems can aid in saving our lives. Though we learned these lessons out of necessity rather than curiosity, we are taking our futures into our own hands. This is especially true for those of us tending to someone considered a higher risk, such as our children. In this article, we will go over a few hot topics that have been created by COVID-19. Then, once we’ve revisited some of the basics, we can discuss some of the ways in which we’ve learned to improve our immune systems and what is the best immune system booster supplement.

 

What is the Immune System?

The immune system is the body’s defense against attacks from outside viruses and bacteria. Whenever we get sick, it’s our immune system that gives us a fever, which is meant to burn out whatever virus or bacteria has invaded. It’s also what helps wounds heal while pushing out any foreign agents. In other words, a healthy immune system is the key to staying healthy during difficult times. Cold and flu season, times of high stress, and post-injury or post-surgery periods are all times during which it’s vital to ensure that your body’s immune response is in top shape.

Additionally, the year 2020 brought us a global pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen. Now more than ever, we have to pay attention to our diets, our daily routines, the supplements we take, and any other way we can improve our overall health.

Immune System Booster Supplement: Food vs. Non-Food

Thankfully, there are a number of ways to boost your immune system, with enough variety that everyone would be able to personalize their health plan based on their individual needs. Before you ask what is the best immune system booster supplement that is readily available, it is a good idea to consult your doctor. Discuss which kinds of options below may work best for you – be most feasible according to your current health and daily routine, and therefore be the most likely methods for you to stick to long-term. These methods can be grouped into two categories: food and non-food.

Food-Related Methods

Naturally, the methods involving “food” refer to dietary changes that are specifically meant to boost immunity. This includes everything from having a balanced diet to taking dietary supplements like vitamins and minerals.

Below are some of the most effective foods, vitamins, and supplements in improving your body’s immune health. You may notice that the list of foods the below vitamins are found in contain the same items (i.e. Leafy greens appear in the lists for both Vitamin B6 and Vitamin C). It might be worth noting which repeated foods you’re most likely to enjoy, and incorporate them into your diet after consulting with your doctor.

Vitamin B6

Everyone knows how important it is to “take your vitamins,” but not many of us know what each individual vitamin does or why it’s so useful. B6 is a vitamin that supports biochemical reactions within your immune system and is vital to its functionality; plenty of foods like whole and multi grains are fortified with this vitamin, as are many multivitamins.

If you prefer to get your vitamins through more organic or natural means, you can also find B-complex vitamins in:

• Leafy greens and green vegetables
• Chickpeas
• Chicken
• Coldwater fish (salmon, tuna, etc.)
• Oats
• Soybeans
• Peanuts
• Bananas

Vitamin C

This is a big one. Vitamin C is a must-have for a healthy body and has multiple purposes. First and foremost, its immune boosting properties make it a heavy hitter against infections of all kinds, aiding your body in ridding itself of unwanted viruses and bacteria and recovering from any damage done while sick. Additionally, Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant, reducing the impact of oxidative stress in the body (which has been linked to numerous diseases and medical conditions).

Perhaps most notably, though, is Vitamin C’s role as a preventative and responsive treatment for several kinds of infections, including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) – which is one of the most threatening aspects of COVID-19 – and sepsis. From highly contagious flu viruses down to the common cold, Vitamin C has been known to shorten the duration of a patient’s illness, reduce inflammation, and speed up the recovery process.

As with most other vitamins, you can easily find oral supplements to suit your needs. You can also easily find foods that have been fortified with Vitamin C, including in milk, orange juice, and even butter. Natural sources include:

• Oranges
• Grapefruits
• Strawberries
• Bell peppers
• Leafy greens
• Broccoli
• Potatoes
• Brussel sprouts

Vitamin D and Immune System

This is another one that gets touted as a major health need, yet often gets reported as a deficiency when we get tested. Vitamin D is a key player in your body’s immune defense, enhancing your white blood cells and reducing inflammation. There is research showing that taking Vitamin D supplements lowers your risk of upper respiratory infections, and likely even minimizes the symptoms of cold and flu.

Beyond taking Vitamin D supplements, you can also get this vitamin through:

• Red meat
• Oily fish
• Egg yolks
• Liver

Zinc

Zinc deficiency affects approximately 30% of the older adult population, and that deficiency is tied to a decreased inflammatory response in our immune system, raising the risks of viral and bacterial infections such as pneumonia, bronchitis, and even the common cold.

Beyond fortified foods and supplements, zinc can be naturally found in:

• Oysters*
• Red meat
• Poultry
• Beans
• Nuts
• Whole grains

Elderberry – A Great Source of Supplement Booster

Black elderberry has been used to combat infections for quite some time now, but research shows that it may also have a purpose in improving immune health. The extract has powerful antiviral and antibacterial properties, particularly against respiratory infections. It also serves to shorten the duration of cold and flu-related symptoms and improve recovery times.

 

Non-Food Methods

While food-related methods to improve your immune health are incredibly important, non-food methods are equally so. As the name implies, these methods address non-digestible factors such as lifestyle choices and habits, including but not limited to:

• Not smoking
• Getting enough quality sleep
• Exercising regularly 
• Lowering your stress levels as much as humanly possible
• First aid measures such as cleaning wounds and taking vaccines to prevent infections
• Washing your hands thoroughly and regularly
• Practicing social distancing measures

Some of these standards of living can be difficult to hold yourself to, both for emotional and physical reasons. Emotionally and mentally, making yourself exercise when the gyms are closed or you’ve settled into a sedentary work-from-home life can be daunting, as can the idea of cutting yourself off from the social lifestyles we’ve been used to our whole lives. Physically, giving up addictive vices such as smoking and drinking can seem like an impossible task. However, these preventative measures and acts of self-care may very well save lives in both the short- and long-term and is good to stick to when trying to understand what is the best immune system booster supplement that is available.

Getting an adequate amount of quality sleep can be a difficult task, given that these are stressful times for most of us for a wide variety of reasons. Melatonin supplements may assist to an extent, and these are typically over the counter. It is still wise to discuss this with a medical professional before adding these to your nightly routine, though.

Understanding the Best Immune Booster Supplement – So What Now?

Now that we’ve discussed a wide variety of methods for improving our immune health, we can really start looking into what is the best immune system booster supplement. How do we get started with making these changes? Your first step should always be to seek advice from a medical professional. Your regular doctor will be able to administer the tests needed to determine what your current vitamin and mineral levels are along with other crucial aspects of your health, which will allow them to tell you exactly how to implement the correct supplements into your diet and which exercise regimens may work best for you.

The Benefits of Multivitamins to Boost Immune System

As with anything, it is possible to take too much of a vitamin or mineral. This is why testing is so important, as it will keep you from accidentally making yourself sick instead of improving your health. Or, in the best-case scenario after ingesting too much of any particular vitamin, your body will simply stop absorbing it and it will be filtered out of your system via your kidneys. However, if you are unable to visit a doctor for whatever reason, you can also typically rely on multivitamins, which are carefully balanced to give you a healthy daily dosage of each vitamin and mineral listed. Additionally, there are many different kinds of multivitamins, some of which are specifically targeted to men, women, or children in particular, or are geared toward people with a specific deficiency. Again, testing would be helpful in determining which multivitamin might work the most effectively for you, but multivitamins in general are typically going to be a safe bet.

Overall, it’s up to us to take care of ourselves. You’ve taken the first step by seeking education on the matter and reading this article. Now it’s time to take what you’ve learned and set a change in motion.

Look through different multivitamins, talk to your primary care physician, figure out what exercise routines might work for your situation. Try to analyze what needs to change so that you can get the sleep, nutrition, and care to stay healthy. Learn more about the benefits of multivitamins or what is the best immune system booster supplement.