How to Boost Your Immune System (7 Tips)

If you want to be proactive with your health, you can adopt lifestyle practices that boost your immune system and keep you healthy. Your immune system defends your body against illness and disease. It’s a complex system that involves the cells of your skin, bone marrow, blood, tissues, and organs. When properly supported, it protects you from viruses and bacteria that cause all kinds of nasty problems.

But what kind of support does our immune system need to function well?

You don’t need to fork over wads of cash for a top doctor or a cutting-edge prescription. Boosting immunity doesn’t even require a pricey supplement subscription (yeah, they exist). No fad diet or rigorous exercise will get the job done either.

It only takes some daily lifestyle adjustments to defend your body from invaders, and so we’ve compiled the most valuable tips for staying well.

1. Eat a Nutritious Diet

Getting most of your nutrients from food is one of the best ways to boost your immune system. Plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, herbs, and spices are packed with vital nutrition that supports immunity. Many of these foods also have antiviral and antimicrobial properties to help fight infection. A lack of key nutrients like vitamin C can even increase infection risk.

Essential vitamins and minerals for a robust immunity include:

Protein

It contains amino acids that support immune cells. Try healthy protein sources like plant-based protein (beans, lentils, soy products), lean poultry, and seafood.

Vitamins A, C, E, B6, B12, Zinc, Folate, Selenium, Copper

Each has a specific role in immune function and is necessary to keep it running effectively. You’ll find these nutrients in a variety of produce, seeds, nuts, and lean proteins. We’ll break down the most important of these below.

Iron

Iron activates and multiplies immune cells and is critical to a healthy immune system. Foods like lean meat, poultry, seafood, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruit, and cruciferous vegetables are excellent sources of iron.

Top 3 Nutrients to Boost Your Immunity

With so many nutrients supporting immune function, you might wonder how to keep up with it all. But to keep it simple, you can focus on incorporating the following three vitamins into your diet.

Vitamin C

Your body doesn’t produce or store vitamin C, which means you must get adequate amounts in your diet. Produce like spinach, bell peppers, strawberries, kale, grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, and broccoli are rich in this vitamin.

Vitamin B6

This nutrient supports critical biochemical reactions within your immune system. You’ll find it in foods like cold-water fish (i.e., salmon and tuna), chicken, green vegetables, and chickpeas.

Vitamin E

This is an infection-fighting nutrient that acts as an antioxidant. Nuts, seeds, and spinach are rich in Vitamin E. (Be sure to avoid vitamin E supplements. See below for details.)

Should You Take Supplements to Boost Your Immunity?

Supplements are a convenient way to fill in the nutritional gaps in your diet. After all, it can be almost impossible to get all the vitamins and minerals you need daily. But it’s best to rely on healthy foods to fill most of your nutritional needs.

Your body absorbs nutrients more easily when they come from food sources, which is why healthy eating is the best way to get your daily dose of vitamins. But some vitamins, like vitamin E, aren’t effective in supplement form and might even cause damage since it’s easy to overdose.

2. Get Plenty of Quality Sleep

While you’re asleep, your body heals and regenerates. During nighttime rest, your immune system creates and disperses critical immune cells where needed. This process isn’t as effective without adequate, quality sleep, which compromises your body’s ability to fend off illness and disease.

Have you ever experienced a bout of insomnia and a short while later contracted a cold or another virus? It wasn’t a coincidence. Good sleep is crucial for good immune health.

Cortisol levels also rise when you’re sleep-deprived, which triggers your immune system to produce too many inflammatory cells. When your body is in a chronic high-stress, high cortisol state, your immune system can become resistant, producing inflammatory cells that build up and compromise your immunity further.

If you’re like the average adult, you need about seven to eight hours of sleep to boost your immune system and regenerate your bodily systems.

3. Reduce and Manage Stress

We’ve covered why the stress hormone cortisol is an immunity killer when it remains elevated constantly. But a lack of sleep isn’t the only cause for high cortisol levels. Chronic high stress in your daily life also downshifts your immune system. When cortisol levels remain high long-term, they effectively block your immune system and leave you open to attack from pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

It’s always a good idea to reduce or eliminate unnecessary stress in your life, but sometimes you can’t control your stressors. As an alternative, try meditation, prayer, journaling, or an enjoyable hobby. Be sure to incorporate one stress-reducing activity into your daily routine.

For more information, read our article, Stress Management for Seniors: Tips for Improving Health and Wellbeing.

4. Limit Alcohol Consumption and Don’t Smoke

Alcohol and the toxins in cigarettes distract your immune system from its primary job to protect your body from illness and disease. When you drink too much alcohol or smoke, your immune system focuses on detoxifying your system rather than defending it. This makes you more susceptible to infection and increases recovery time.

Consuming large amounts of alcohol also makes you more prone to illnesses like pneumonia, certain cancers, alcoholic liver disease, and certain respiratory conditions. This is why the NIH recommends men limit their alcohol intake to two servings per day and women to one serving per day. Your immune system should focus on an adequate defense rather than dispelling alcohol and toxins from your body.

5. Get Regular Exercise

Physical activity boosts your immune system, putting it on alert. It galvanizes your system to action, dispensing immune cells throughout your body to look for damaged or infected cells. Studies have shown that more active people are less likely to develop acute illnesses (like infections) and chronic conditions (like type 2 diabetes and cancer).

(like cycling, walking, and jogging) or 75 minutes of high-intensity aerobic workouts per week. They also recommend strength training twice per week.

But if you can’t meet these expectations, don’t worry. Any amount of activity benefits your immunity. Take a daily walk or find other ways to be more active. For more tips, check out our article, Exercise for Seniors: Best Workouts for Older Adults and Workout at Home: Best Apps for Any Age.

6. Manage Chronic Conditions Well

When chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes, and heart disease aren’t well managed, it can affect your immune system, increasing your risk of infection. For example, when diabetes isn’t properly managed, it incites a low-grade inflammatory response that undermines your immunity, leaving you open to infection.

When your chronic conditions are well-controlled, it boosts your immune system, freeing it up to fight off infection and disease. Otherwise, it focuses on correcting the imbalances and problems resulting from unmanaged and unhealthy symptoms. Be sure to follow your doctor’s treatment plan and discuss any changes or adjustments.

7. Take a Probiotic

A healthy variety of good gut bacteria (probiotics) promotes robust immunity and even staves off autoimmune disorders. Autoimmunity means your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body rather than invading organisms. A healthy gut helps your immune system differentiate between healthy cells and invaders, preventing illnesses.

Sound strange? Not when you realize that a significant portion of your immune system lives in your gut (GI tract) and especially in your gut microbiome (small intestines). Scientists are still researching how this complex system works and the diseases that develop when harmful gut bacteria overtake the good.

A daily probiotic or adequate servings of fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt, and kefir will keep your gut bacteria flourishing to maintain healthy immunity. And that plant-based diet we recommended earlier in the article contains prebiotics that are food for beneficial bacteria.

Not sure which probiotic to take? We recommend Renew Life brand available through Amazon.

Is Weakened Immunity Causing Your Bladder Symptoms?

If you battle urinary tract infections (UTIs), yeast infections, or bladder inflammation due to a weakened immune system, you might experience bladder leakage. But it’s possible to boost your immune system with these seven tips and notice improved incontinence symptoms. A strengthened immune system can alleviate underlying infections and inflammation that trigger leaks.

As you work toward more robust immunity and improved health, you may still need protection from those pesky urine leaks. Try our line of light incontinence products or Protective Underwear for moderate to heavy leaks.

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