Amid a sharp uptick in Omicron cases across the country, getting fully vaccinated and boosting the efficacy of body’s immune system are some of our defences against the viruses. With a highly-infectious strain of Covid-19 around, it is time to prepare our bodies to fight the virus effectively with proper diet, exercise, sleep and a more active lifestyle.
T-cells of our immune army play a prominent role in targeting and destroying virus-infected cells and provide us protection. Their role in combating new strains of Covid-19 has been found to be more effective than antibodies.
Wearing masks and using sanitisers is essential but one also must prepare their body and immune system to fight the virus. In such a case, short-term immunity boosters won’t be of help. It is best that you change your lifestyle, follow healthy habits, and incorporate the right kind of foods on a long-term basis. People must understand that bolstering immunity is not a one-day or one-week effort, instead it’s a lifelong commitment.
The pandemic has taught us that no supplement will cure or prevent the disease. Boosting one’s immunity is one of the essential things one has to follow. The antioxidant-rich foods such as broccoli, kale, strawberries, pecans, blueberries, spinach, walnuts, green tea, and others, will not only combat inflammation but will also treat unstable compounds. Include immunity boosters such as ashwagandha, tulsi, giloy in your daily diet.
Healthy habits that you can adopt to boost your body’s immune response against the omicron variant:
Vitamin C
Vitamin C has excellent anti-oxidant properties that make it very important when it comes to skin health and immunity.
Being one of the most important immunity boosting foods, it is present in citrus fruits such as orange and lime. However, there are also various Vitamin C supplements that can help boost your immunity.
Immunity is the first wall of defence and therefore, maintaining it in this crucial time becomes ever more important. Hope the tips and suggestions help you to stay healthy and well.
Hydration
Our body is majorly composed of water and this means that water serves as an important component in almost everything that goes on inside our body. Therefore, there is no doubt about the strong link between hydration and health.
And since water is a component of almost everything in our body, it also helps the immune cells and increases its circulation across the body, ensuring that the cells reach every tissue and cell.
Complete Your Sleep
7-8 hours of sleep is considered adequate for adults as it completes the REM cycle responsible for proper functioning. A complete good quality sleep not only helps you stay refreshed throughout the day but serves as a healthy rest for your body.
Sleep can act as a recharge, charging your body up after a restful sleep to go about the everyday activities with a new energy. This affects your physical wellbeing as much as it improves your mental health.
Fruits and Vegetables
A good diet is essential to stay healthy and what’s healthier than the nutritious fruits and vegetables. As much as we like to fuss over it, a well balanced diet with the essential nutrients is exceptionally healthy.
Add in a few veggies and fruits in your everyday diet in proportions to provide you with the necessary nutrients required for a healthy diet.
Stay Active, Stay Healthy
Exercise is the key factor of staying healthy, along with a good diet. And just like exercise helps you stay fit and active; it also keeps you strong and helps improve your immune system.
A 30-min exercise 4-5 times a week can help you stay active and maintain a healthy body. And a healthy body will only motivate strong immunity, keeping you fit and maintaining your overall health.
MIMI (Multi ion mask insert)
- Can be worn with any facemask and provides additional heavy-duty protection.
- Adult & Youth Sizes Available
Turmeric
The most expected food item when it comes to immunity and let me tell you, the hype and fame is worth it. The anti-oxidant and healing properties of turmeric is recognized and passed on to us from our wise sages.
And what more to get an immune boost against a Covid infection than a good dose of turmeric, either in water or milk. The soothing property of turmeric helps prevent flu and also plays an active role in helping with the immune functions
Reduce Stress
And we cannot stress this point more. Stress is good only when it is moderate and when it motivates you to strive further ahead. However, when stress starts affecting your physical health and starts discouraging you that can prove to be unhealthy.
While we understand that in times as such, it is prone to get stressed by everything we hear, we still advice you to reduce activities or events that trigger unhealthy stress. Hobbies and recreational activities are alternatives through which you can distract yourself and are ways by which you can attain happiness and calmness.
Regular Health Check-Ups
Regular health tests update you with the level of Vitamin D, calcium, Iron, and other important nutrients in your body. It assists in tracking a disease at its inception, which further makes the treatment easy. Remember when it comes to your health, ignorance is ‘NOT’ bliss.Breathing exercises
Staying calm and stress can do wonders to your immunity and the best way to achieve it is doing some basic pranayama exercises. The breathing exercises will oxygenate your cells and make you healthier over a period of time.Bottom Line
A virus mutates through and through in order to get better at surviving just like we humans have evolved through centuries, getting smarter throughout.
And that is what the Covid-19 virus did in order to survive, it mutated into various variants, the present one being the Omicron.
But adaptation is not just what virus can do, we humans, in fact all living beings are capable of adapting to the changes that life throws upon us.
Keeping this in mind, if virus just got better at surviving, all we have to do is get better at preventing it with the help of our immune system.
The ‘How’ here depends on the researchers figuring out medicines and vaccines, and the other on a more personal level, improving our habits and foods.
