In these difficult times of COVID-19 the most scary thing is uncertainty and helplessness of not feeling empowered to fight against this novel coronavirus. There is no COVID-19 vaccine or approved medical treatment yet. The only remedy we have available at hand is prevention. But guess what? This is something we, individually, CAN 100% control!
Moreover, prevention is important for any disease. Keep these tips for the future when you travel or stay home during regular cold/flu season and you will always be prepared.
By now everybody knows by heart the main CDC guidelines on how to prevent COVID-19 (same apply to cold and flu):
- stay home except for essential outings
- wash your hands thoroughly and often
- don’t touch your face
- cough in your sleeve
What else can we do? Actually, a lot more.
One of the biggest things we can do in terms of prevention of COVID-19 and seasonal viruses is boosting our immune system naturally to fight against the disease.
In this article I am going to share with you some easy steps on how to boost immune system naturally to help prevent COVID-19 and other common seasonal respiratory diseases.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice here. These are just tips on how to increase immunity naturally that I learnt through reading many on-line resources and from my personal sources: my two grandmothers (one of whom was a registered nurse and the other a pharmacist) and a good friend of mine who is an expert in Chinese medicine/acupuncture (Marina Dinets, San Jose, CA). Fifty percent of it all is common sense and the other fifty percent is tried and true home remedies that people collected for centuries and passed from generation to generation.
How to boost immune system naturally to help to prevent COVID-19
FRESH AIR to boost immune system naturally
1.Fresh air plays a crucial role in boosting our immune system. It supplies your cells with the needed oxygen. It is especially important for COVID-19 pandemic because it is a respiratory disease. Start your day with a short exercise outside (your backyard, patio, even a balcony). 15-20 minutes of stretching will be perfect. There are lots of routines you can find on the Web. This is an easy one that I like: Rise and Shine: 8 stretches you need to do in the morning.
2. Ideally you should also take a walk each day. Yes, I know that most of us are under shelter-at-home order but even under that order walking outside is considered an essential activity. If you are concerned about COVID-19 do your walk early in the morning or just before bedtime when there are less people outside.
3. Air every room in your living quarters EVERY DAY for at least 30 minutes.
SALT WATER to boost immune system naturally
When I was little I spent almost a month with my grandmothers each summer at the Black Sea coast. The first thing we did every day is go to the beach early in the morning where they would make me gargle my throat with salty sea water. It is well known that salt water kills germs. That’s why doctors recommend to gargle with salt water when you have a sore throat.
In terms of COVID-19 prevention, think about the situation this way: if someone coughed on you and you inhaled the virus particles, they don’t always get into your cells right away. If they get into your nose, your nose has a great defense system inside consisting of hairs and mucus. It will take the virus sometime to penetrate this barrier so it will be hanging around in your nose for a bit.
Therefore, get into the habit of washing your nose with saline solution several times a day, especially after you come home from outside. You have a chance to flush the virus out before it penetrates. Same with the throat – gargle with warm water and salt 2-3 times a day. It is not 100% fool proof solution but it gives you a good fighting chance if it becomes a routine.
Saline solution is a travel size item and you can take it with you any time when you travel during the regular cold/flu season to help prevent these viruses.
FOOD to boost immune system naturally
Eat more foods that are known immune system boosters, such as fruits and veggies. But special attention should be paid to the benefits of honey (if you are not allergic to bee products).
It is well known that honey has disease fighting qualities. But not all honey. It has to be unfiltered, unprocessed and unheated. Unfortunately, a lot of the honey sold in American stores is heated to keep it liquid and flowing. This is DEAD honey. All medicinal properties of it have been killed by heating.
In Russia, on the other hand, untreated honey has a consistency of soft clay, you have to dig it out from a jar with a spoon because unheated honey crystallizes quickly.
When you buy honey, read the label carefully. The label should contain words such as: raw, uncooked, unpasteurized, unfiltered. Another option is to buy honey comb – these are never heated. It is beneficial to eat 1 table spoon of honey a day. Below is an example of a healthy raw honey you can buy:
Another superfood for boostring immune system is garlic. There have been many studies done in relation to medicinal properties of garlic – you can read a summary of garlic’s benefits on Healthline website.
I remember from my childhood my parents would always eat bread with fresh garlic, i.e. take a garlic clove and rub it all over the bread crust. It tastes delicious! Up to these day we use a lot of garlic while cooking. If you cannot eat raw garlic, try a garlic supplement.
FOOD SUPPLEMENTS to boost immune system naturally
Vitamin C is a staple of an immune boosting power. This is a no brainer.
Elderberry is also know to power your immune system. If you would like to learn more about elderberry’s health benefits, check out this WebMD article. I bought an inexpensive elderberry supplement below and have been taking it for a couple of weeks.
Propolis
My grandmothers swore by immune boosting powers of propolis, which is a natural product made by bees. Many people in Russia use propolis in one form or the other, which is easily available in local pharmacies.
Bees use propolis to build their hives and protect them from bacteria, viruses and fungi. That’s why you can use these natural propolis’ characteristics to fight bacteria, viruses and fungi in humans (if you are not allergic to bee products).
To learn more about health benefits of propolis, please, read this WebMD article.
I personally use propolis in a form of a throat spray in order to increase my immune system to fight COVID-19. The one below has a pleasant sweet taste and is easy to use:
All these supplements are travel size items and you can take them with you any time when you travel during the regular cold/flu season to help prevent these viruses.
BREATHING EXERCISES to improve pulmonary function
COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, so we need to do what we can to improve the functioning of our respiratory system. Daily breathing exercises are the best way to do that. Here are 3 easy exercised to increase lung capacity.
SLEEP to boost immune system naturally
Sleep is an important factor in fighting any disease. Studies show that people who don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus, such as a common cold virus, flu and potentially COVID-19. To learn more about sleep’s role in increasing immune system’s response, please, check out this article by Mayo Clinic. Aim for 8-10 hours of sleep every day.
Information on sleep improvement “helpers” is in the Stress Reduction section below because stress reduction and sleep improvement go hand in hand.
REDUCE STRESS to boost immune system naturally
Stress reduction is great overall, not just to give your immune system a fighting chance against COVID-19. But specifically for the purpose of our COVID-19 article, it is important to understand that continuous stress severely undermines the performance of our immune system.
I am not a psychologist but this article that I found from Simply Psychology gives a great explanation on how immune system works and how stress affects it.
Now the big question is: how to reduce stress in this super stressful environment? You can find lots of resources online on various stress fighting tools. Here is a collection of 10 easy stress reducing techniques as suggested by WebMd. Some of them refer back to what we already discussed: exercise and breathing.
My personal favorite remedies for stress reduction (which work for better sleep too) are: yoga, meditation, essential oils and hot herbal tea.
There are several essential oils that are considered to have stress reduction properties, among which is lavender, bergamot, and lemon, for instance. More information on specific essential oils for stress relieve can be found HERE. I bought myself a starter essential oils kit that I use for various purposes (the bottles are travel size so you can easily take 1 with you when travelling):
In addition to that I strongly believe in the power of herbal teas for help with sleep and stress reduction. My grandmas always used Melissa (Lemon Balm) tea for these purposes. If you want to learn about lemon balm healing properties you can check out a comprehensive article from Healthline.
Other herbs also known to help with sleep and stress reduction are chamomile and valerian root. When I moved to the U.S. I discovered this great tea that is appropriately called Mother’s Little Helper, that has both of the above mentioned ingredients. Several friends of mine already got this tea as a Christmas gift from me 🙂
I like to take my own teas on the road with me and these will be helpful in post COVID-19 era too.
If you found this information about how to boost immune system naturally to help prevent COVID-19 helpful, please do me a little favor and share this information with others, for there’s a good chance that it will help them with their travel plans. 🙂 Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram where I post many more cool photos and videos about our trips than I could include in a blog post and organize some nice giveaways!
