Winter is the traditional time when everyone gets ill. Bugs start to get passed around the office and inevitably you end with it. By taking steps to boost your immune system, you may be able to miss out on coming down with a cold this winter. Here’s how to be envy of all your colleagues.
Load up on vitamins
Vitamins are vital for our immune system. Vitamin C in particular helps with the production of white blood cells, which in turn help to fight off viruses. This is most commonly found in citric fruit such as oranges and lemons. Drinking a couple glasses of fresh orange juice each morning could be enough to ward off colds. Other foods such as red bell peppers, spinach and broccoli are also high in vitamin C.
Wash your hands
We pick up bug-causing germs mainly through our hands. However, these jobs only enter our bodies if we touch our mouths, nose or eyes. By washing your hands regularly during winter with soap you can stop these germs from entering your system. You could also help to stop the spread of illness to other people. Sharing office keyboards and mugs is one of the main ways in which we spread germs at work, but by keeping hands clean we can all prevent this.
Hit the gym
Exercise has all kinds of benefits on out immune system. It firstly causes us to breathe more heavily, which helps us to flush bacteria from our lungs. It also gets our blood pumping more quickly around the body. Within this blood are our white blood cells and antibodies – exercise allows these to be dispersed all around the body finding sources of illnesses more quickly and fighting them off. To get in your dose of exercise, try an activity such as running, or if you’d rather stay warm sign up to a local gym . Meanwhile, if you don’t want to pay exercise, there are plenty of home exercises that can keep you warm in winter whilst giving your body the benefits.
Get your beauty sleep
It’s during our sleep that we do most of our healing. It’s also during our sleep in which many antibodies are released into our bloodstream. If you’re regularly not getting the right amount of sleep, your immune system is likely to be much weaker. Getting more sleep could be a simple case of going to bed earlier, although there could be many other solutions if you’re having trouble getting to sleep such as distressing before bed, not eating before bed and turning off electronic items with bright screens an hour before bed (these trick our brains into thinking it’s still daytime).
Drink in moderation
Too much alcohol can damage our ability to create white blood cells and fight off illness. If often why we may be more susceptible to a cold after a night’s binging. Prolonged heavy drinking meanwhile can have a permanent effect on our immune system. Go easy on the booze and you could find yourself coming down with colds less.