It’s everywhere.
Everyone and their mom and their mom’s dog is slowly disappearing from the church pews, from the office cubicle, from the normal routine of life into a pile of blankets and crumpled tissues. Except the mamas don’t get to disappear because they still have to run life as normal, so there’s that. But really, at this time of the year, it’s almost impossible to find a family that’s totally avoided the sickness making its miserable rounds.
Our family was almost one of those families. Last weekend, my husband didn’t sleep very much and the result is that on Sunday he began talking about a sore throat. I was having none of that so I immediately pulled out all the stops I could think of to boost his immune system and the next day he was better. Then this weekend, he did the same not-sleeping thing again and now him and my son are both fighting something off. They’re not sick yet, but they’re straddling the line.
A study published by the journal Sleep in 2015 showed the importance of sleep to keep our immune system functioning. 169 healthy adults were exposed to a live cold virus and those who slept less than six hours a night were four times more likely to develop a cold than those who slept seven hours or more. As participants got even less than six hours of sleep, their chances of getting sick continued to go up.
What do we learn from this? One of our first lines of defense is sleep. Without getting an adequate amount of sleep (seven hours or more) every night, your chances of catching the crud go way up so if you want to stay well it’s vital you make sleep a priority this winter.
When we talk about winter wellness, prevention is an extremely important word. You can treat a sickness once you’ve got it, or you can take measures to prevent it so you’re not sick to begin with.
Sleep is clearly an important preventative measure, but also as important is eating real, nutrient dense foods. Eating whole, healthy foods is crucial in not getting sick, and it can help kick it when you start feeling the crud coming on as well.
As a general rule, you always want to avoid processed foods, but when we’re getting sick we especially stay away from anything sugary (excluding fruit and raw honey) and wheat, which is basically immediately converted to sugar in your body. Choose vibrantly colored foods such as blueberries, carrots or tomatoes, eat a lot of probiotics, consume only natural sugars, and stay away from processed food. When we’re getting sick we want to eat comfort food such as mac and cheese or pizza but this is a really great way to not get better quickly.
Those are really the two most basic preventative measures to take: eat and sleep well. Of course, there’s your common sense ones like don’t lick shopping carts, don’t share eating utensils with sick people, and try to avoid places that are teeming with germs (such as doctor’s offices!) but your immune system needs to be around germs sometimes to get stronger so being a total germ freak won’t help anyone.
But guess what? Sometimes eating and sleeping well aren’t enough and your bodies need more.
Especially this time of year when almost every single person has been sick at some point, eating and sleeping well are incredibly important preventative measures but they are certainly no guarantee of health.
In times like these, you’ve got to to pull out the big guns.
Preventative is two things:
First, it’s not getting sick in the first place. Second, if you start feeling symptomatic, it’s having the resources and taking the measures you need to in order for it to go away rather than turning into a full blown issue. The big guns our family pulls out are preventative measures. I am not a doctor and I certainly cannot treat, diagnose, or cure anything!
What I can do is tell you how we stay healthy and how we’ve been holding the crud at bay recently.
- We drink our goji berry puree every day. Goji berries are one of the most antioxidant-rich foods in the world, and antioxidants are important because they stop the harmful effects of free radicals, disease-causing molecules, on our bodies. When free radicals aren’t wrecking our bodies with disease, we are far healthier. Our goji berry puree is extremely high quality and made even more powerful with added essential oils and fruit juice concentrates. We take one ounce a day regularly and when our immune systems are under extra stress, we up it to 2-4oz daily. Plus it tastes amazing. We don’t give our son regular juice but we sure let him have this stuff!
- We use essential oils to keep our immune systems strong. Throughout the winter months, we routinely have Thieves oil, an ick-killing blend, running in our diffuser so it neutralizes any yuck that’s in the room and anyone who is breathing in the air gets the benefits. This is very important in not getting sick at all, but when we do feel our immune systems straining we add Oregano, Lemon, and Orange oils. We rub Thieves and Oregano oil on the bottom of our feet for quick, safe absorption, and we add all our immune boosting oils to our cooking. Even after having sick people in our house more than once, we’ve all managed to not get sick.
- We take high quality supplements. Multivitamins for us all, extra probiotics, and an immune boosting supplement called Inner Defense. Our bodies do not absorb synthetic vitamins well which is why it’s vital your supplements be high quality. We haven’t been sick so we personally haven’t used Elderberry syrup but I know that’s a fantastic supplement should you end up with the crud!
We do our best to eat and sleep well regularly but we wouldn’t have our oils and supplements ready to prevent getting sick if not for taking initiative and buying them before we actually needed them. I have all sorts of friends who feel their immune systems straining so they order Thieves oil and by the time it arrives, they’re already sick. You can treat a sickness but isn’t it so much better to prevent it?
Don’t wait until you’re already buried under a mountain of tissues to think about what you need to stay healthy. But I’ve already been sick, you say. It’s too late for me.
Ahh, friend, I know many who said the same thing, did nothing, and got sick all over again. I wish you the best of luck during this flu season that’s debilitating everyone and their mom and their mom’s dog.
Really, I do wish all of you the best. Being sick is the worst, especially when you’re a parent and you don’t get sick days because life goes on. I’ve been that sick parent who still had to cook and clean and change poopy diapers because the world doesn’t stop when I don’t feel good. However, I haven’t been that parent for a year and a half because I learned how to prevent it before it started.
You can invest in staying healthy now or you can invest in curing disease later.
We all have priorities and as part of a military family, believe me, I understand limitations, but that doesn’t change the fact that your priorities will play a great part in determining the health of yourself and your family.
So don’t wait until you’re already sick.
Go to bed at a decent time. Take a few minutes to think about your meals for the day so you don’t end up pulling frozen pizza out of the freezer at the last minute for lack of planning. Buy vibrantly colored fresh foods at the grocery store. Find high quality supplements. Get your goji berry puree and essential oils.
PS. It’s my passion to educate and empower others on how to keep themselves and their families healthy so I would love to hook you up with the supplements, essential oils, and goji berry puree our family uses.
You’ve got this, friend! You absolutely have the power to get on top of the crud before it gets on top of you.