• There are over 100,000 species of fungi
• There are over 1,200 different viruses present in our gut
• A square centimeter of skin has about 100,000 bacteria.
• The human mouth contains more than 500 species of bacteria
• A liter of seawater has 20,000 different types of bacteria
But most of us don’t take any notice whatsoever until something goes wrong. Then when we DO get sick, we say that someone ‘gave’ it to us.
Why do we get sickNo one can make you become ill.We get sick only when the immune system fails to do its job. And most of the time, this failure is preventable. Our diet, exposure to
environmental toxins
, amount of exercise we got and how much stress we have all play a role in whether we stay healthy or get ill.
There are genetic components that influence whether we get certain illnesses also, but lifestyle is a major contributor as to whether those genes actually cause illness or not. Just like genetics influence whether you are short or tall, they don’t determine your exact height – diet and lifestyle factors determine that.
Even though the Immune System is as complex as an orchestra in full concert, taking care of it doesn’t have to be. Its complexity can actually make things easy because all of its parts affect all of the others. Just like dropping a pebble into a pond, a small change can create ripples that affect the whole system either positively or negatively.
So taking care of your
immune health
is a matter of maximizing these 4 areas of your life:
• What you put into your body
• What comes out of your body
• How much you move your body
• How you think
That’s it. If you can make some changes in these areas, then you can really change your health in a big way. While that is obviously a simplistic model, it really is true. But you really can help improve your resistance to pathogens by boosting your immune system by using strategies like: