
What no-one tells you about Immunity?
Immunity is more than just popping a probiotic and hoping for the best. While probiotics have their place in a healthy diet, 1. They don’t have to come from a pill and 2. They need to be balanced with prebiotics as well. Natural examples of both of these are listed on my free resource called Boosting Immunity Naturally.
There are many factors that influence immunity and one of the most important of these is stress. Have you ever noticed how you get sick either during a very stressful period or immediately after just when it’s all over and you get to relax. As a teacher I’ve seen this many times at the end of a school term. We battle through the term and right at the end of the very last week we start to feel under the weather. Bam, we’re sick for the first week of the holidays. Stress plays a major role in allowing our body to get sick because it makes our energy focus on the wrong place and leaves us susceptible to attack from bacteria and viruses.
What isn’t going to help boost your Immunity?

So the first mistake I want to talk about is running yourself into the ground for a period of time and allowing yourself to do this by promising that at the end you’ll take a break. Yes I know a few of you are nodding vigorously right now. You never take the break do you? All you do is keep running yourself into the group time and time again.
The second mistake is not realising how much our busy, stressful lives impact on our immunity, in particular our gut health. We’ve become accustomed to how busy our lives are, so much so that we now think of this standard of busyness as ‘normal’. And while it might be normal (ie. most people are doing it) that doesn’t mean it is healthy or useful. It is time to acknowledge the massive detrimental impact that our constant busyness has and immediately implement regular ways to step out of this fast lane.
The secret to boosting your Immunity is…..

So what is going to work for you to improve your immunity? First and foremost is an understanding of immunity and more importantly the myriad of things that exist in our world today that will decrease your immunity. Did you know that the majority of your immunity is based in the gut – the small intestine to be precise? What controls most of our immunity is a population of bacteria that control many things in our body such as appetite, sleep, other behaviour and even our hormones. We need to control this population as best we can by adding in new species of the ‘good’ bacteria (probiotics) we need in our gut and also by feeding them what they want to eat to thrive (prebiotics). But we also need to reduce/restrict or eliminate what is going to harm these ‘good’ bacteria or promote the growth of the ‘bad’ bacteria. These things include stress, lack of sleep, excess sugar and alcohol, genetically modified food, preservatives and additives and more.
If you’ve got my free resource Boosting Immunity Naturally cheat sheet already you’ll have the starter list of probiotics and prebiotics that you can include in your diet to help boost the activity of these ‘good’ bacteria in your gut, and therefore your overall immunity.
How do you make these strategies work for your family?

This week I’m going to talk about how to make these strategies work for you and your family. Every family is in a different situation and even every mum has different needs – some mums will be experiencing too much stress for their immunity to be at its peak, while other families are consuming too much processed foods to be able to improve their immunity. It’s often not feasible that everyone can go on the same diet because not all kids (let alone adults) will eat the same things. Thankfully there are plenty of options to naturally boost our immune system, as you’ve hopefully found on my free resource Boosting Immunity Naturally. There are also many other differences between each family that mean you need to implement each strategy a little bit differently, including lifestyle, schedule and other priorities. This is why my personal consultations are so important. I will personally work with your family to figure out which strategies will improve your self care and therefore the overall level of happiness in your household.
I want you to know that you can have more energy, you can feel happier and more confident each day. Often, you’re making choices that you don’t even know you’re making because they’re happening subconsciously. I want you to know that you DO have time in your day to nurture your immune system and boost your immunity ready for this winter. The first step to achieving this is my Boosting Immunity Naturally cheat sheet.