Back to School Immune Challenges
Welcome back to this week’s blog post!
With summer coming to an end, kids and teachers are all heading back to school, which means they will be faced with increased exposure to germs. Anytime we are in large, crowded environments, this is the case, but combine that with other factors that tax our body’s defenses, like stress, fatigue, and poor nutrition, those germs can have an easier time sneaking their way into our bodies and cause us to get sick. Today, we will discuss some tips to give your immune system the boost it needs to combat these numerous back-to-school attacks.
Sleep and Your Immune Health
One of the best ways to ensure that your immune system is running at its best is through good sleep hygiene. Sleep is essential for immune health because when we sleep, our body is able to produce and replenish key infection-fighting immune cells like inflammatory cytokines, which are like the messengers that tell other immune cells when the body is under attack and coordinate the immune system’s response. General recommendations for how much sleep to get are between 6-9 hours of sleep each night. Several factors can play a role in where your optimal timing lies, though, such as age and stress levels. These things can alter your body’s sleep requirements.
In general, we need less sleep as we age. For example, as newborns, we require the most sleep, between 14-17 hours per day, then as adults, our daily requirement shrinks and becomes between 7-9 hours per day. Below is a list of sleep range recommendations for a variety of age groups.
Newborns: 14-17 hours
Infants: 12-15 hours
Toddlers: 11-14 hours
Preschoolers: 10-13 hours
School-aged children: 9-11 hours
Teens: 8-10 hours
Young adults: 7-9 hours
Adults: 7-9 hours
Older adults: 7-8 hours
Sleep hygiene is more than simply “getting enough sleep,” though. Keeping a consistent sleep and wake cycle, even on the weekends, can improve our body’s health. Having a relaxing bedtime routine, such as using warm, gentle lighting two hours before bedtime, drinking a chamomile tea, and reading a bedtime story, are all simple suggestions that can help our bodies wind down to get ready for sleep. Finally, where we sleep—a comfortable bed and pillow, and a cool environment—can also help us fall asleep and stay asleep more easily.
How do You Know if You’re Getting Enough Sleep?
One of the first questions I ask my patients with regard to sleep is, “When you wake up in the morning, do you feel rested, or do you feel groggy and like you need more sleep?” Some other questions to ask yourself if you are getting enough sleep are: are you able to maintain focus throughout a normal day? Are you able to remember your daily tasks? Do you have brain fog? Are you waking up in the mornings sore from tossing and turning? These are questions to help you figure out if you need more sleep, or need to change something about your sleep environment or bedtime routine. One night, you could try going to bed an hour early, bringing the temperature of your bedroom down one degree, or changing the pillow you’ve been using.
Nutritional Support
The next most important thing to help bolster your immune system is to provide your body with the necessary materials to defend against illnesses with vitamins and minerals. The RDA (recommended dietary allowance) for vitamins and minerals are not amounts that necessarily make you healthy, but are the average nutritional intake required to prevent issues under normal circumstances. [Note, again, these are suggestions under normal circumstances. When we undergo periods of higher demands, such as high stress, longer workdays, going back to school, exposure to pathogens, etc. these are all circumstances that put higher demands on your body, and therefore, require more vitamins and minerals.] When we undergo these periods of higher nutritional demands, it is important to increase our vitamin and mineral intake, whether through supplementation or increasing our nutrient-dense foods. To ensure you are covering your nutritional demands, try to ensure the foods you eat vary in color, as color indicates various vitamins, minerals, and nutritional compounds (foods that are yellow/ orange/ red for example, will have higher levels of beta carotene, which becomes vitamin A.) In general, try to “eat the rainbow”, and vary your food coloration.
We also offer Ortho Molecular’s Alpha Base Premiere Packs, which include high-quality vitamins and minerals, healthy omega-3s, and an antioxidant blend. These three components give your body the comprehensive foundation it needs with bioavailable compounds to help you function at your best. A strong nutritional foundation can help give your body the pieces it needs to, in turn, build a strong, healthy immune system.
Another Ortho Molecular product we offer is called WholeMune. This is a supplement that specifically helps build up your immune system. Think of it like someone training for months to build up the endurance to run a marathon. The WholeMune supplement prepares your immune system, so that when a virus or bacteria arrives, your body is ready to jump into action.
Taken together, Alpha Base Premiere Pack and WholeMune can help fortify your body to weather the increased stresses of back-to-school life and increase your body’s ability to fight off infections quickly when they arise.
Water Intake
One component of health that I will almost always ask my patients is “how much water are you drinking?” Your immune system requires water to function optimally. Textbook recommendations are to intake half your body weight (in pounds) in ounces of water per day. So, if someone is 150 pounds, optimally, they are drinking at least 75 ounces of water per day (or roughly 9 glasses of water each day.) When our bodies are under higher demands, we adjust our water intake accordingly. With hotter weather, we need to increase our intake. When we are fighting infections, we must also increase our water intake as well.
Is There a Water I Recommend?
Not all water is created equally when it comes to hydrating your body. You need electrolytes in order to properly absorb and transport water through your body systems. For this reason, I usually recommend drinking spring waters as they will naturally have higher electrolyte content. One sign to look for is a TDS (total dissolved solids) rating that is on all waters. The higher the TDS, the higher the amount of electrolytes within the water, which leads to better water absorption and utilization within your body’s tissues. These electrolytes also give water its taste. So, when patients tell me their water doesn’t have taste, they are usually referring to drinking tap water, which undergoes many processes that leave little to no electrolytes in the water.
What if You do Develop an Illness?
If you do begin to develop symptoms of illness, it is imperative that you do not ignore them but begin implementing steps to fight the illness as soon as possible. Increasing your sleep, if possible, is the first step to combating illnesses. Hydration and increasing your daily water intake—adding an additional bottle of water is a good place to start. After we ensure you’re well hydrated, it’s recommended to increase your vitamin and mineral intake. If you are already taking your multi-vitamins, which we hope you already are, there are 6 main nutrients to put added emphasis on: vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, selenium, and zinc.
Vitamin A
There are two main forms of vitamin A that are naturally occurring: retinol from animal sources and beta-carotene from plant sources. Its primary roles in the immune system are in producing T-cells and other immune cells, which help combat pathogens in your body. Vitamin A also help maintain the integrity of mucosal membranes to act as a physical defensive barrier in the eyes, lungs, and gut.
Food sources for retinol (the animal source form of vitamin A) is found in higher concentrations in beef liver, eggs (yolk especially- cooking eggs “over easy” where yolk is runny helps preserve the bioavailability of vitamin A), and fatty fish such as salmon or tuna. It is important to note that vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin and requires a fat source to be absorbed and transported in the body.
Food sources of beta-carotene (the plant-based form of vitamin A) is found mostly in fruits and vegetables that are red/ orange/ or yellow. Spinach and broccoli are also very good sources of beta-carotene as well. Since vitamin A is fat-soluble, a fat source must be consumed to ensure absorption and transport are optimized. Consider olive oil or avocado oil as potential fat sources (bonus of omega 3 fatty acids with these choices).
Below is a general recommendation for daily vitamin A intake based on age and sex.
Vitamin C
One of the more widely recognized vitamins is Vitamin C, L-ascorbic acid. It is a water-soluble vitamin, meaning it is transported and absorbed by water in your body. Vitamin C plays an important role in protein metabolism. Vitamin C also plays a role in collagen formation, an essential component in connective tissue (skin, muscle tissue, nervous system, bone, and even blood are types of connective tissue). Vitamin C is also a powerful antioxidant that helps protect against the damaging effects of free radicals. It also helps boost your immune system and helps your body absorb iron.
Below is a chart that displays RDAs for vitamin C. Please note that RDA is the recommended amount under normal conditions to limit the potential for disease, not to maintain optimal function. If you are sick, inflamed, or stressed, the demand for vitamin C increases accordingly. Emergen-C, for example, a popular supplement to take when you are sick, has 1,000 mg of Vitamin C. Since vitamin C is water-soluble, excess Vitamin C is simply eliminated through urine. [Word of note, taking high-dose Vitamin C may result in diarrhea, so please slowly increase your Vitamin C intake to establish your body’s tolerance].
Some food sources of Vitamin C include Raw red pepper, orange (recommend whole orange as opposed to orange juice for sugar intake reasons and there are some bioavailability benefits to whole fruit intake), kiwifruit, and broccoli (raw broccoli preserves vitamin integrity).
Supplemental Vitamin C may help you boost your immune system to help you get over an infection faster. Since Vitamin C is water soluble, there is little to no adverse side effects apart from gastrointestinal distress (ie. Diarrhea and abdominal cramps). It is still recommended, however, in order to avoid these potential adverse effects that you slowly increase your intake to establish tolerance.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D(calciferol) is another fat-soluble vitamin aid in immune function as a cell-modulator as well as reducing inflammation. Below is a chart of blood values for Vitamin D. While it is not necessary to have blood values established in order to supplement, it might be useful to have these values checked annually to determine if you are at an optimal level for bone and immune health.
Recommended daily intake ranges from 600-800 IUs daily (if healthy levels have already been established). Some expert bodies and vitamin D researchers suggest, for example, that approximately 5 to 30 minutes of sun exposure, particularly between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., either daily or at least twice a week to the face, arms, hands, and legs without sunscreen usually leads to sufficient vitamin D synthesis.
The NIH (National Institutes for Health) reports “Few foods naturally contain vitamin D. The flesh of fatty fish (such as trout, salmon, tuna, and mackerel) and fish liver oils are among the best sources [17,1]. An animal’s diet affects the amount of vitamin D in its tissues. Beef liver, egg yolks, and cheese have small amounts of vitamin D, primarily in the form of vitamin D3 and its metabolite 25(OH)D3. Mushrooms provide variable amounts of vitamin D2 [17]. Some mushrooms available on the market have been treated with UV light to increase their levels of vitamin D2. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved UV-treated mushroom powder as a food additive for use as a source of vitamin D2 in food products [18]. Very limited evidence suggests no substantial differences in the bioavailability of vitamin D from various foods [19].
Animal-based foods typically provide some vitamin D in the form of 25(OH)D in addition to vitamin D3. The impact of this form on vitamin D is an emerging area of research. Studies show that 25(OH)D appears to be approximately five times more potent than the parent vitamin for raising serum 25(OH)D concentrations [17,20,21]. One study found that when the 25(OH)D content of beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and eggs is taken into account, the total amount of vitamin D in the food is 2 to 18 times higher than the amount in the parent vitamin alone, depending on the food [20].”
Of Note, Vitamin D requires both Magnesium and Vitamin K2 for the body to convert to the useful form of D3 in your body. We recommend and sell Ortho Molecular’s K2/ Vitamin D3 if your intake is low and/ or your bloodwork indicates a mild deficiency.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) is another fat-soluble Vitamin (meaning it requires a fat/ lipid to be absorbed into the body. The NIH states “Antioxidants protect cells from the damaging effects of free radicals, which are molecules that contain an unshared electron. Free radicals damage cells and might contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease and cancer [5]. Unshared electrons are highly energetic and react rapidly with oxygen to form reactive oxygen species (ROS). The body forms ROS endogenously when it converts food to energy, and antioxidants might protect cells from the damaging effects of ROS. The body is also exposed to free radicals from environmental exposures, such as cigarette smoke, air pollution, and ultraviolet radiation from the sun. ROS are part of signaling mechanisms among cells. Vitamin E is a fat-soluble antioxidant that stops the production of ROS formed when fat undergoes oxidation. Scientists are investigating whether, by limiting free-radical production and possibly through other mechanisms, vitamin E might help prevent or delay the chronic diseases associated with free radicals. In addition to its activities as an antioxidant, vitamin E is involved in immune function and, as shown primarily by in vitro studies of cells, cell signaling, regulation of gene expression, and other metabolic processes [1].” So in short, Vitamin E protects the cells from damage as well as boosting your immune system’s ability to fight off pathogens.
In general, nuts and seeds provide Vitamin E, dry roasted sunflower seeds and almonds are amongst the most concentrated food sources – aim for 1 ounce per serving to have 49% and $5% of your daily intake respectively. Dry-roasted hazelnuts and peanut butter are also higher in Vitamin E at 29% and 19% of your daily value respectively.
If you cannot have nuts/ seeds, spinach and broccoli are amongst the higher vegetable sources for vitamin E at 13% and 8% respectively per ½ cup serving.
Selenium
Selenium is an essential micronutrient mineral with roles in thyroid hormone metabolism, DNA synthesis, reproduction, and protection from oxidate damage and infection. Because selenium in foods is protein bound, foods that are high in protein tend to be the best sources of selenium. Brazil nuts, seafood, meat, poultry, and organ meats are the richest food sources of selenium. Other sources include cereals and other grains, and dairy products.
Zinc
Zinc is another essential mineral that plays many roles in the body and is involved in many aspects of cellular metabolism. It is required for the catalytic activity of hundreds of enzymes, and it plays a role in enhancing immune function, protein and DNA synthesis, wound healing, and cell signaling and division. Zinc also supports healthy growth and development during pregnancy, infancy, childhood, and adolescence and is even involved in the sense of taste!
Below is a chart of foods that are higher in zinc. It is of note that zinc does not absorb easily from food sources with some estimates of only 5% to 50%, with animal-based sources having a better absorption rate compared to plant-based sources.
Immune Support Supplement Suggestion
An immune system supplement that we carry at Peace of Health Chiropractic is Ortho Molecular’s Viracid. Viracid is a supplement we recommend you take when you are actively feeling sick. It has several of the immune health vitamins the body needs to combat illness—Vitamin A, C, and Zinc. It also has natural botanical immune health ingredients like elderberry and echinacea.
Next time you visit Peace of Health Chiropractic Wellness Clinic, ask us how any of these tips or supplements can help you combat the immune hurdles of the back-to-school season.
