11/11/21
The Secret to A Healthy Holiday Season
With Thanksgiving only two weeks away, it is safe to say we are at the beginning of the holiday season! After scaling back our celebrations last year to protect the health of the ones we love, many of us are excited to get back to our normal holiday traditions. With family gatherings, gift exchanges, and delicious dinners, there is certainly a lot to look forward to during this holiday season.
Alongside all that excitement, you may also be a little anxious about exposing yourself to so many extra germs during your holiday celebrations, which is understandable. After all, the last thing any of us wants to do is to expose ourselves to pathogens that could have a negative effect on our health.
Don’t worry though. You don’t have to skip those holiday celebrations again this year in order to keep yourself healthy. Instead, you just need to do what you can to make sure your immune system is in tip-top shape. That way, it will be prepared to keep you healthy while you enjoy those holiday festivities.
But how can you keep your immune system healthy during the holiday season? Of course, there are a number of common tips you can follow like eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting plenty of sleep. However, the real secret to a healthy immune system is a healthy gut.
That’s right. Your gut health can directly impact the health and functionality of your immune system. How? Here’s a quick overview.
Your immune system is one of the most complex systems in the body, and it is especially unique because it is made up of organs that are borrowed from other body systems. Because of this, your immune cells can be found nearly everywhere in your body from your skin to your gut.
In fact, it is estimated that nearly 70% of your immune cells reside in your gut, which means your immune system has direct exposure to the trillions of bacteria that live in your gut microbiome. This close connection means that your gut can directly impact your immune system in 2 important ways:
- Improving adaptive immunity. Your adaptive immunity is the part of your immune system that is developed over time as your body is exposed to various antigens and foreign bodies. These exposures teach your adaptive immune system how to identify and attack different threats, which makes it ready to launch a more effective response if you are exposed to similar threats in the future. Since so much of your immune system resides in your gut, it has direct access to all the good and bad bacteria that also live there. This exposure leads to beneficial diversification and production of various types of immune cells, which ultimately helps boost the functionality of your immune system.
- Keeping bacteria colonies in check. Since your gut is home to both good and bad bacteria, the balance of these colonies can also have an important impact on your immune system. In a healthy gut, the colonies of good bacteria will compete for resources and be able to keep the colonies of bad bacteria in check. How does this affect your immune system? If those colonies of bad bacteria get out of hand, then it’s your immune system’s job to help get them back under control. If your gut is healthy, then this won’t happen and your immune cells can focus their efforts elsewhere.
Needless to say, having a healthy gut can do wonders to keep your immune system strong. Thankfully, our gut-supporting supplements like Essentials make it easy to keep both these systems healthy so you can enjoy all your holiday festivities. Stock up on yours today so you are prepared well before the holidays are here.