By Shweta Khanna Bhandral
Coronavirus or COVID which turned into a pandemic is something that our living population had never witnessed. That’s why with each passing day world health organization also amends, adds and reviews its guidelines with regards to coronavirus. There are countries working on the vaccine day in and day out. As more patients are being studied closely there are new findings that are available on the virus. In the beginning, there were fear, anxiety and lockdown to deal with but now there is a deteriorating economic condition, unavailability of medical help, food, work and anxiety leading to depression. All this is making the situations worse in most parts of the world.
In such a situation if at all there is something that can help us sail through is our Immunity. A strong immune system helps you fight the worst of viruses. In this article, we will discuss about these top 3 immunity boosting mantras in detail. Before we move ahead just a quick recap of the biology lesson on this.
There are three basic types of immunity.
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Innate: Which is inborn, all of us are born with some level of immunity.
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Acquired: This protects from pathogens and it is developed by us by our lifestyle
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Passive: This is “borrowed” from another source
Organs in our immune system control the production and maturation of defense cells, the lymphocytes. Bone marrow, the thymus, a gland situated above the heart and behind the breast bone, are so-called primary lymphoid organs.
Now that we know the biology of this let’s apply this science to our lives and find out what our immune system depends on, how can we understand it and make it strong.
Ruby Ahluwalia, Founder, Sanjeevani– Life Beyond Cancer shares, “There are three things that are most important for our immune system, Eating, Breathing and Thinking.”
Let me break down these three immunity boosting mantras in detail:
Let us begin with eating first. Eating is not only about what you eat which includes your daily dose of vitamins and minerals that you get from seasonal fruits and vegetables but it is also about When do you eat? And With what thoughts you eat? In this, the most important tip is that your last meal should be at least 3 hours before you sleep and it should be the lightest of all your meals.
After eating its time to breath right, we normally do not pay attention to our breathing. To breath well we to need to exercise. Fitness expert and founder JG’s fitness center, Shalini Bhargava says, “Exercise may help you flush bacteria and viruses out of lungs and airways because of increased breathing rate. It also helps you to bring about change in antibodies which are part of our defense mechanism.”
Exercises like Pranayama and Cardio training are good for breathing right and keeping the body oxygenated.
Now the third and the most important thing to keep building your immunity is your mind. You have to be calm and composed to keep yourself away from fears and anxiety. As Ruby Ahluwalia puts it “we react to people and situations around us with anger because there are fears that we have developed inside. Fear develops with our own negative thought process or expectations or ignorance. This engages our immune system and keeps it busy in dealing with this stress. Hence, it is the best time for all the unwanted viruses to do their work.” To address this there are some basic tips, engage yourself in Music, Art or any other activity that helps you relax your brain. Sleep well, at least for 8 hours a day and to make it sound read or listen to something that will relax you before going to sleep. With these basic and simple immunity tips, we can become fighters.
Stay Fit, Stay Healthy.
