Prevent the Flue/Cold Bug From Biting You
We all know the story. Someone at work passed around a nasty virus, your children brought something home with them from school, or maybe it came after doing some traveling. However it happens, we all get sick. Here are a few tips to beat those cold bugs.
Wash Your Hands: Keeping our hands clean can help in so many ways. Viruses and bacteria can live anywhere and trust me, they do! We pick things up off the ground, we flush the toilet, we handle money, we pet our animals; our hands are our tools for everyday living. By keeping our hands clean, we can reduce the chance that those pesky bugs get into things like our food or, worse yet, our bodies.
Hint: When washing your hands, it's the friction that actually kills the germs more so than the soap. Rub your hands vigorously for twenty (20) seconds, or sing "Happy Birthday" to yourself twice over. Just remember, these aren't American Idol auditions!
On that same note, keeping your hands away from your face can also help reduce the chance of infection. We collect most of our little germy friends through our eyes, nose and mouth. Touching our face is the key way we catch colds and pass them on to other people. Also, grab a Kleenex or hanky when you feel a sneeze or cough coming on instead of using your hands to muffle it.
Drink Plenty of Fluids & Eat the Good Stuff: Water flushes the poisons and toxins out of your body. Keeping your body hydrated allows things to flow a little easier. The natural chemicals in plants give the vitamins in food a supercharged boost. So put away the vitamin pill, and eat dark green, red and yellow vegetables and fruits. Orange juice, apple juice, and tomato juice are great sources of vitamin C. Vitamin C helps to strengthen the immune system as well as to reduce the appearance of aging and stress. Chicken noodle soup (along with being totally yummy) is a great source of useable calcium that our body can absorb. The boiling of the chicken bones releases the free calcium, which helps tell the white blood cells (good guys)to eat the bacteria (bad guys).
Learn to RELAX: No, relaxing doesn't mean doing nothing. Do some big deep belly breaths, close your eyes, and think of something that makes you happy. Try doing some yoga or meditation. Whatever you do to relax (that doesn't involve a margarita or the tv), take time for yourself everyday and do it. This lets your body and all of its systems get back to the business of keeping you healthy. When we get stressed, our body's nutritional storage gets depleted (it needs to use the good guys like vitamins and minerals to help keep us un-sick as long as it can!). The more stressed you are, the more your body becomes susceptible to all those viruses and bacteria.
Exercise and Sweat: Aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, and playing with the kids) speeds up the heart to pump more blood, makes you breathe faster to help bring oxygen from your lungs to your blood, and makes you sweat once your body heats up. Sweating in our Infrared Sauna or Oxygen Sauna heats up the core body temperature and is one of the body's best ways of detoxifying; our porous skin covers our entire body, allowing us to get rid of more of those bad guys.
Get Outside and Be in the Sun: The healing and life-giving energy of the sun boosts our immune system. We absorb that energy through our skin and the pupils of our eyes. That’s why we often see dogs and cats lying in the sun during the winter or cold days not only to warm themselves but also to boost their immunity. Being cooped up indoors all the time just sends your germs (and everyone else's!) back around.
Lemon and Ginger: Lemons become ripe in the fall and winter and are a big help with our immune system. Squeeze a whole lemon in a warm (not hot, don’t want to kill its immune properties) glass of water and drink it up. Ginger also boosts immunity. Make a tea out of ginger: Grate fresh ginger and steep it in hot water. Once it’s cooled, add some fresh lemon and a little honey and yum -- you have yourself an immune cocktail that will protect you all winter long.
Keep these tricks up your sleeve, and hopefully say "Sayonara!" to those seasonal colds and flu!
Wash Your Hands: Keeping our hands clean can help in so many ways. Viruses and bacteria can live anywhere and trust me, they do! We pick things up off the ground, we flush the toilet, we handle money, we pet our animals; our hands are our tools for everyday living. By keeping our hands clean, we can reduce the chance that those pesky bugs get into things like our food or, worse yet, our bodies.
Hint: When washing your hands, it's the friction that actually kills the germs more so than the soap. Rub your hands vigorously for twenty (20) seconds, or sing "Happy Birthday" to yourself twice over. Just remember, these aren't American Idol auditions!
On that same note, keeping your hands away from your face can also help reduce the chance of infection. We collect most of our little germy friends through our eyes, nose and mouth. Touching our face is the key way we catch colds and pass them on to other people. Also, grab a Kleenex or hanky when you feel a sneeze or cough coming on instead of using your hands to muffle it.
Drink Plenty of Fluids & Eat the Good Stuff: Water flushes the poisons and toxins out of your body. Keeping your body hydrated allows things to flow a little easier. The natural chemicals in plants give the vitamins in food a supercharged boost. So put away the vitamin pill, and eat dark green, red and yellow vegetables and fruits. Orange juice, apple juice, and tomato juice are great sources of vitamin C. Vitamin C helps to strengthen the immune system as well as to reduce the appearance of aging and stress. Chicken noodle soup (along with being totally yummy) is a great source of useable calcium that our body can absorb. The boiling of the chicken bones releases the free calcium, which helps tell the white blood cells (good guys)to eat the bacteria (bad guys).
Learn to RELAX: No, relaxing doesn't mean doing nothing. Do some big deep belly breaths, close your eyes, and think of something that makes you happy. Try doing some yoga or meditation. Whatever you do to relax (that doesn't involve a margarita or the tv), take time for yourself everyday and do it. This lets your body and all of its systems get back to the business of keeping you healthy. When we get stressed, our body's nutritional storage gets depleted (it needs to use the good guys like vitamins and minerals to help keep us un-sick as long as it can!). The more stressed you are, the more your body becomes susceptible to all those viruses and bacteria.
Exercise and Sweat: Aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, and playing with the kids) speeds up the heart to pump more blood, makes you breathe faster to help bring oxygen from your lungs to your blood, and makes you sweat once your body heats up. Sweating in our Infrared Sauna or Oxygen Sauna heats up the core body temperature and is one of the body's best ways of detoxifying; our porous skin covers our entire body, allowing us to get rid of more of those bad guys.
Get Outside and Be in the Sun: The healing and life-giving energy of the sun boosts our immune system. We absorb that energy through our skin and the pupils of our eyes. That’s why we often see dogs and cats lying in the sun during the winter or cold days not only to warm themselves but also to boost their immunity. Being cooped up indoors all the time just sends your germs (and everyone else's!) back around.
Lemon and Ginger: Lemons become ripe in the fall and winter and are a big help with our immune system. Squeeze a whole lemon in a warm (not hot, don’t want to kill its immune properties) glass of water and drink it up. Ginger also boosts immunity. Make a tea out of ginger: Grate fresh ginger and steep it in hot water. Once it’s cooled, add some fresh lemon and a little honey and yum -- you have yourself an immune cocktail that will protect you all winter long.
Keep these tricks up your sleeve, and hopefully say "Sayonara!" to those seasonal colds and flu!
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