[Babybird]

Boosting your immune systems part 1​

Boosting your
immune system
4 ways to strengthen your body’s
natural defenses
By Stephen Kopecky, M.D.
In early 2020, life as most of the world
knew it came to a screeching halt.
That’s when a previously unknown
virus began spreading like wildfire,
forcing businesses, office buildings,
schools, stores, gyms, places of
worship, restaurants, movie theaters
and other public gathering places to
shut their doors.
For our part, those of us who could
hunker down in our homes did so as
best as we were able. The hope was
that by avoiding mingling with others,
we would help minimize transmission
of the coronavirus and the disease it
causes (COVID-19) and avoid all of the
possible complications.
Although our knowledge of the
virus and how it spread seemed to
change by the hour, one fact remained
the same: Illness can and did strike all
sorts of people, but the vast majority
who developed a severe case of
COVID-19 had preexisting health
problems. Those at higher risk had
conditions such as obesity, high blood
pressure, diabetes, heart disease, or a
history of stroke or smoking.
Small changes in everyday habits,
such as eating less red meat or taking
the stairs whenever you can, are ways
to help prevent long-term chronic
illnesses from developing. And these
same healthy habits — as well as other
habits, such as washing hands and
wearing a mask in public — can help
prevent communicable diseases such
as COVID-19 by protecting overall
health and boosting the immune
system. And if an infection does
occur, it’s likely to be much less severe
than if you were in poor health.
There will always be risk factors we
can’t change — genetics, sex, age or a
global pandemic. But we can control
other risk factors, such as what we put
in our bodies and how much exercise
and sleep we get. Prevention should
be the cornerstone of medicine
because it helps to prepare for the
unexpected. But more often than not,
health care providers end up seeing
people only after a problem has
developed. COVID-19 highlighted why
we need to be more proactive.
A glimpse inside the immune system
We tend to take our immune systems
for granted. But they work hard to
keep us healthy. This complex system
of cells is the body’s primary defense
system, constantly on the lookout for
internal and external threats. To
better understand how we can
improve or boost the immune system,
it helps to have a little backg