Do you feel run down and tired and just generally feeling that what you attempt to do just sounds hard work? Maybe your immune system is flagging a bit. We owe it to ourselves to take decent care of our bodies and this is much more important with today’s hectic lifestyles – we’re often running around, dealing with the daily business of job, paying the mortgage and looking after a family and not spending enough time looking after our own health.
Wat moet ik doen?
Allow you to fix some of your bad habits and give your body more of a opportunity to permit you to have a healthy lifestyle by boosting your immune system. Even if you just pick three and stick together, you’ll stand a better prospect of boosting your immune system and preventing those annoying coughs and sneezes.
- Get a lot of sleep. You really do need to have a good night’s sleep. Quality rest is among the most important things you can give yourself. Over-tiredness may depress your immune system and permit colds and coughs to take hold.
- Eat a balanced diet. Proteins will help the body repair itself and complex carbohydrates such as oats, pasta and bread will offer the slow release of sugar that your body needs to operate effectively. Fresh foodstuffs provides vitamins to truly boost immune systems and fatty fish like mackerel will offer omega-3 oils that are regarded as beneficial for long term health.
- Drink loads of water. As a guideline the average person should drink 8-10 glasses of water every day. Tea and coffee don’t count and neither do fizzy, carbonated beverages.
- Avoid coffee and alcohol. Be cautious of extra alcohol – drink too much and it can badly affect your sleep, which is going to have further knock-on impact by weakening your immune system. Both coffee and alcohol will dehydrate your system making you feel lethargic and slow to react.
- Good personal hygiene. Always know about good hygiene practice – wash your hands frequently throughout the day, especially before eating and when you’re unwell. This plays an important role in preventing the spread of micro-organisms which might play havoc with a weakened immune system.
- Try to decrease stress. If you believe you have too much to do, create a list and cross off things until you finish them. Tasks that seem insurmountable at first don’t seem quite so scary broken down into small steps.
- Regular exercise. Even if it’s just walking to work in the fresh air rather than sitting on a crowded bus filled with people coughing and sneezing, this will give your body much needed exercise and make it possible for you some “me time” for quiet reflection, in addition to providing a welcome immune increase.