Immunity Essentials Needed Right Now
The reason why I wanted to do this article is because there is a lot of fear right now in the collective and there’s a lot of uncertainty around what we should and shouldn’t be doing to keep ourselves healthy, and I’ve noticed there’s a lot of misinformation, there’s a lot of pressing things around health that we have questions in our community right now.
And there’s a lot of chat on social media and in the media channels as well. There’s just a lot of confusion and misinformation. So yes, of course, wash your hands and use a natural hand sanitizer.
That’s a given, but you know, there’s a lot more that we could be doing, that I don’t feel is really being shared freely. And that’s why I want to share some of what you can be doing with you.
By all means this list is not exhaustive that I’m sharing with you. There’s like many, many ways to skin a banana, so to speak. But what we’re going to cover, will just give you a really healthy, strong foundation upon which to build on and give you the confidence in your health and your health choices, especially as we’re heading into winter here in the Southern hemisphere.
I’ve also done up what I call the immunity power pyramid, which is really, really simple to follow, I’ve included here in this article.
And this, what I’m going to share with you really does encapsulate this pyramid.
Take Control
So what’s happening for us right now in the midst of this C***D experience? We’ve got changes in our routine, we’re in isolation, we’ve had job losses, and the added stress with feeling really hopeless.
This can all lead to crappy food choices, anxiety, not sleeping well, watching the news is really bad cause we’re feeding into that fear as well, which all creates that low and immune function and just leaves us feeling really vulnerable to actually getting sick, which is what we’re all trying to avoid in the first place. Right. It’s kind of ironic.
So, how do we get the tools in our tool kit or the medicine cabinet, so to speak like my natural medicine cabinet, is what I call it, that’s really going to help fortify us in these crazy uncertain times.
So that’s what I want to share with you guys tonight is my tools in my medicine cabinet or my army that I use regularly to help boost my immune system.
I’m going to break it down into simple steps for you guys into compartments, like the pyramid. So you have an idea of what sort of the baseline immune strategy which I call the frontline soldiers and what to use when you need to bring the special forces in, but when you do get sick and what do to use to really launch a stronger attack on v**ses and pathogens.
Of course, you know, what you should be trying to do on a daily basis and what I encourage you to do, to feel safe and confident in health is be wise with the type of food you’re eating.
It needs to be as nutritionally dense as possible each day. Before I go on, I just want to clarify for you guys, I’m not a naturopath, I’m not a nutritionist.
I’m just an everyday person that I have just spent many, many years studying natural health through my healing journey and working out what works and what doesn’t. Getting training from mentors and teachers on raw food, holistic health and how to coach.
I stay up to date with cutting edge health practitioners and way showers and going through my own healing journey. I use these principles and protocols that I share with everybody who follows The Raw Food Kitchen.
Research
Before I dive in, I just want to encourage you guys to do lots of digging. This is called taking responsibility. It’s, it’s called taking ownership of your health. And when you do that, it feels so empowering.
We’re all quite unique and what works for one person doesn’t work for another, but you’ve got to get confident experimenting because this puts you in the driver’s seat of your health and your destiny.
That is empowering. So research, research, research feel what resonates for you guys when you research trusting and experimenting with what does, and getting reconnected to your body, trying what works, keeping what works and eliminating what doesn’t.
So just a little public service announcement, before we get into these immune essentials is that, it may or may not come as a shock to you guys, but what we see and read on the internet is being heavily censored.
This is why I encourage you to dig a little deeper and don’t just look at the first article you see, and take it as gospel when you’re doing a Google search.
It’s no secret that Google’s algorithms got changed a few years ago to only display medical based pharmaceutical based websites. First on page one when researching anything health orientated.
So that means even if you research a vitamin or a mineral or something to do with alternative medicine, you are going to get search results that is from pharmaceutical or medical website.
The thing that doesn’t resonate very well with me about this is that very little nutrition gets studied in Western science when it comes to getting a medical degree.
So I don’t feel like these guys particularly have an honest, clear view on alternative health. And I feel there’s a little bit of an agenda when a lot of these websites are actually funded by pharmaceutical industry.
And natural health websites or alternative holistic health websites actually had their rankings cut by over 50% with this algorithm.
So that means even really big natural health websites have completely disappeared from page one search.
Now, to find real honest answers about immunity, that requires you to be more tenacious. You need to dig deeper, you need to do more truth seeking and you need to do more digging.
So just to share with you, these are some of the people that I love to follow and encourage you to go check them out on Instagram because they are sharing honest truth, true natural health solutions. And these guys are Dr. Ben Lynch, the medical medium, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. Mercola, Dr. Josh Axe, Dr. Berg, Dr Buttar, Dr Shiva.
Now these are just a little handful. There’s a heap more but this would be a great starting point for you to start following these people. So you’re starting to get real information about health.
These people are the way showers that really understand the power of diet, lifestyle and supplements for strong immune system. Okay. Alrighty. So let’s dive in.
Oxygen
So the key thing to remember here is that we want to oxygenate our bodies as much as possible. If you have an oxygenated body, you have a healthy body. And that means it can fight disease and keep the bad guys at bay
In fact, disease cannot hang out in an oxygenated body, disease loves anaerobic – without oxygen. That means an acidic environment which means a less oxygenated body. This is the perfect house for the viruses and the fungus and the tumours, and all these other diseases can really take hold in the body.
For most of us, to become more oxygenated we need to clean up our diet.
We need to implement protocols and we need to start to incorporate a mainly plant based diet.
As I said, what I’m going to cover today is going to fit really nicely into the immunity power pyramid just to help keep it really simple for you.
At the bottom of the pyramid, you know, when you think about like how a food pyramid looks like traditionally, you have, um, the kind of the bulk of what makes up that foundation.
And so that’s your baseline diet for your requirements, and that’s going to be your 80/20 plant based diet.
The Foundation of The Pyramid
You want to make sure that that 80% is the mainly plants and that you’ve got lots of greens in there because greens is oxygen for your blood, and the 20% can be whatever you fancy, but, you know, I do encourage you guys to make it quality, gluten free grains, dairy free options, maybe some quality, organic protein, maybe a little medicinal red wine, and some really healthy, dark organic chocolate in there as well.
It’s important for me and for everybody, that when you’re doing plant-based that it’s sustainable and you can do it long term. So that means, not being dogma about this diet. It means about making the foundation of your diet plants. And then you still got a little bit of room to live life, have a bit of fun, go out and have that pizza. Yes. Make a healthy choice. You know, choose the dairy free, gluten free option, but you’re still enjoying life.
Life is to be enjoyed, life is to be loved. Okay. So that’s why I love the 80/20, it’s sustainable. It gives you longevity in this diet and it keeps you healthy. The other thing that makes up that baseline foundation is, super foods. Things like chia, flax, your greens, cacao, greens powder, medicinal mushrooms, good quality protein, good fats.
So things like coconut oil, avocado oil, hemp, seed oil. You want to get those in there and get rid of the nasty veggie oils out of your diet. There’s processed oils. We want filtered water, absolutely crucial. Get rid of that tap water. We want to filter out that fluoride and chlorine. Okay. Absolutely crucial.
Also In Your Baseline Foundation:
Fermented foods –
Make sauerkraut a staple in your fridge, and then lots of soups and broths, especially heading into winter tumeric, ginger, garlic, and everything is going to keep you pretty good.
It’s so easy to make a jar of sauerkraut these days. You know, there’s no excuse to not have that in your fridge. They detox your body out of environmental toxins, bad estrogen. They render chemicals and other toxins, harmless, they pre-digest your food.
They increase good gut bacteria and boost your immune system, of course in turn. It’s just an absolute, no brainer. They increase all the mineral and vitamin content of the veggies that you put in the sauerkraut too.
Check out my Complete Fermentation Kit or the Fermentation Kit Top Up Pack if you want to get fermenting the fail safe way.
So, you know, when you think about throwing in turmeric and garlic and ginger, you’ve got a powerhouse in that jar of immune boosting properties.
It should definitely be a staple in your fridge to get your immunity in tip top shape.
Avoid gluten & dairy
Through winter and beyond, right now as a really good time to be avoiding gluten and dairy. I always make an exception for chocolate, but just make sure it’s and it’s 80% dark and organic, dairy free.
There are so many great gluten free dairy free alternatives out there now that it really is a no brainer to do those easy swaps. Just practice discernment around when you’re doing that so that you can look at the back of the product, make sure the ingredients are not full of preservatives and nasty oils.
Gluten and dairy create inflammation in the body, no matter how well you seem to tolerate them. I guarantee you at a cellular level, there is inflammation. And that means your immune system is constantly working over time. And when your immune system is working over time, it has less time and less reserves of army to fight a foreign invader such as a virus.
So now really is not the time to be sneaking in that slice of cake or a bowl of pasta or drinking milk. If you know, you have an immune response to it in some way. Does that make sense?
Did I mention greens?
Remember to include greens, they actually contain chlorophyll, which is what I call plant blood, and it basically creates oxygen for our blood. So greens get us oxygenated and alkaline. So, you know, you want to be thinking about adding in a green juice every morning, a green smoothie, leafy greens, if you can’t do that, get a really good brand of organic greens. Take that every day.
Superfood Spotlight
The superfood spotlight for me. Right now I want to talk about medicinal mushrooms because they’re such powerful immune boosters and there is a range of medicinal mushrooms that you can get. They’re huge. So, they all have unique properties. I just recommend, cause I’m not going to dive into all of them tonight, but I recommend you do some research around these and choose ones that resonate for you.
I bought this is a mushroom blend by FourSigmatic and it’s, it’s got a whole bunch in here. It’s probably got about a dozen. It’s amazing. I have this just with some hot chocolate or, it’s great in a coffee as well.
It’s got some nice earthy flavors that go really well with chocolate, creamy stuff (non dairy of course) and coffee.
So the two that I’m going to share with you today, the reishi mushroom is incredible for enhanced immune function. It’s specifically antiviral. It also improves liver function. It reduces stress. It’s great for improving sleep and lessening fatigue.
So great for all of us. Ladies are generally trying to burn the candle at both ends managing businesses and family and work and husbands and all that crazy stuff. And kids.
Cordyceps
This could be a great one for you guys to try. Then the other one that I’m loving is Cordyceps because it’s really specifically targeted to benefit the lungs. And Cordyceps is commonly prescribed for treatment for asthma, for cough, for shortness of breath and phlegm, and Cordyceps actually invigorates the lung Meridian.
So it’s really great for the treatment and prevention of all kinds of respiratory problems. And that has been shown to work quite well with lung cancer as well. So blocking tumors in the lung. Quite a powerful mushroom, the Cordyceps. Antiviral as well. So that would be a great one to look into now.
Filtered Water
Filtered water. I hope none of you are doing tap water anymore. Tap water is just filled with fluoride and chlorine and they, these two ingredients, both cause acidity and inflammation in the body of blocks and minerals, it basically blocks hormone function, thyroid function. Fluoride is quite toxic.
It’s been linked to thyroid cancer and other hormonal cancers. Chlorine, as we know, is a toxin, also the free radicals in chlorinated water have been linked to liver malfunction. Chlorine also, damages the gut bacteria. Chlorine also feeds candida. That’s just bad news in general. So it’s really, really crucial for you guys to get a really good water filter system for your home.
You want to get a really good filtering system for the house. Make sure you do this because – how many times a day do we drink water?
Lemon & Hot Water
Always, always, always start your day with lemon and hot water. Hot water is going to kick start your digestion and the lemon is going to kick start your liver detoxification.
Baseline detox
This detox should be done regularly. And these are things like getting sunshine, getting exercise meditation, doing some pranayama, which is breath, work exercises. If you don’t know what Pranayama is just Google it and you can get some exercises that you can easily do as part of your meditation in the morning.
And look, you don’t need to do half an hour, just do 5 – 10 minutes of meditation, just do something.
You know, I think it’s absolutely crucial in the morning. You take some time for yourself and it’s a little bit of a self care routine. I know it takes a little bit of time to get into that habit, but, you know, meditation journal, gratitude exercises, getting out and doing a walk in the sun, doing some quick breathing exercises, to get the oxygen flowing, to get you grounded and centred in your body and get you vibing, right?
It’s all about the vibe baby
We want to get you high vibe. And I’m going to talk about vibration a little bit on the end of this article, not too much, but when we’re in this state of high vibration and high frequency, low vibration or negative energy can’t come in.
And that also means v***ses and pathogens and bad bacteria, which are low vibrational frequency can’t come and either, okay.
So you really want to make a ritual around this and dedicate just half an hour in the morning or maybe an hour to exercise and meditation. If you have that luxury to honoring yourself before you start the day, it is absolutely crucial.
I know it’s hard when we’re so time poor, but I think maybe for some, most of us, we have a bit more time at home right now. So see if you can do this and really start implementing this because honestly it’s incredibly powerful.
You’ll really start to notice like how your energy changes. You become more focused, you’re more optimistic, you’re more confident in your body. When you’re doing all these principles, you know, you’re doing everything right to fortify your immune system.
You know, you’re coming from a place of love and not fear. And this is really, really important during this crazy time that we’re in. And the healthier you become, the less chance you have of getting sick.
And if you do get sick, it’s not as long. And with this article, you’re going to learn how to use these tools in the toolkit. Give you the medicines that you know you need and you know what to do to fight it. If you do get sick. Natural immunity really is the best line of defence.
Your body develops antibodies naturally to the V***s, Once exposed. It means that your body now has a naturally built an immune system immunity, to these v***s in the future.
That’s one of the issues I have to say I have with va****es is that, you know, the body is exposed to a virus along with other toxic additives and preservatives in a really unnatural way. You know, we’re jamming a v**s straight into our blood. It’s not coming in through the natural way. The natural way we’re breathing in v**ses and our tonsils are actually a part of the immune system recognizing this and sending signals to the immune system to launch the right attack, to launch the soldiers to fight.
And so when we’re getting va***inated, it’s bypassing all of that and it sends the immune system haywire.
There’s also studies showing that having a flu s**t actually increases your chances of getting upper respiratory tract infections by up to 47%.
On the next level of your pyramid are the front line soldiers:
So on the next level of your pyramid is your baseline supplements, and these are what I call your frontline soldiers.
Astragalus
We love astragalus, astragalus benefits the liver, the spleen, the lungs, the circulatory system, the urinary system.
It’s also used to treat osteoarthritis asthma nervous conditions. It’s an incredible herb, but most importantly, it’s antiviral. It’s also an adaptogen, which means the herbal work, where your body needs it most, which is quite unique and quite special. I love using adaptogenic herbs for that reason.
Lyposomal Vitamin C
The next is Lyposomal vitamin C. Now Lyposomal C actually increases the bioavailability of the vitamin C throughout the body.
It doesn’t get broken down in the gut as much as traditional vitamin C. So this is what I’ve been using.
And they come in little sachets, usually 1000mg which is a good dose to take each day. They’re a gel and the reason they’re called Lyposomal is that they’re kind of suspended in a fat soluble ingredient.
And the way that it’s it’s held in this fat cell is it actually means that it gets into the body without it being broken down by the digestive juices.
So it becomes a lot more bioavailable, the strength of the vitamin C delivered this way is a lot more potent. So I highly recommend you get Lyposomal C.
The most amazing thing about vitamin C is that it actually disarms vi***ses. So, um, it’s really gonna stop the v**s from progressing.
Vitamin D
Important we get this vitamin D coming into winter, not so much for us Aussies cause a lot of us are getting out into the sun.
If you’re not though, and you’re stuck indoors, you want to get into vitamin D supplementation.
That’s really good for the immune system. It’s anti-inflammatory, it’s, immunoregulatory, it’s crucial for the activation of the immune system defenses.
Many of us have been stuck in lockdown, stuck in doors, and we’re probably quite low in vitamin D and especially coming into winter, vitamin D really helps them enhance the function of the immune cells, including T cells and macrophages that really protect your body against pathogens, viruses, bacteria, cancer.
And you want to take that in a capsule form and about 5,000 ICU per day.
Zinc
The next one that I love is zinc glycinate. Now this is a chelated form of zinc. We want to be thinking of ways that we can get these vitamins into our body and that easily absorbed.
So Lyposomal, chelated, methylated. You want to be looking for these buzzwords when you’re looking at vitamins, because they are much more easily absorbed into the body and therefore we can use them more effectively.
So when we take zinc regularly, um, your risk of becoming sick with the common cold, if you do get sick, it just shortens the duration of all of it.
Zinc also interferes with the molecular processes that cause mucus and bacteria to build up in your nasal passages. So that exerts an antiviral effect, essentially blocking the effects of the v**us.
So zinc is a super important one and nine milligrams a day is a really good starting point.
And you can up your dose when you get sick, right. When you’re starting to feel sick, then you can like take that three times a day, during that acute phase.
Glutathione
The next one is glutathione. Glutathione is the master. It’s the master detoxifier in your body and this declines with age, and this is why we find most older people are susceptible to getting, because the natural ageing process means a decline in antioxidants, such as glutathione.
Along with the vitamins and minerals. So this is why it is absolutely crucial to supplement as we get older, especially with glutathione and you can get that on i-herb.
It’s really important for proper immune function and detoxification of the liver, and plays a really, really crucial role in cellular health. It neutralizes all the free radicals, and you can start by just taking 500 milligrams a day.
Honourable mentions
So some other worthy mentions a methylated B vitamins. Now most of us are B deficient.
B’s are crucial for nervous system, blood health, and so much more honestly, you need to be getting B vitamins, look for a methylated range.
Again, that means more bioavailability for us.
Magnesium
Then magnesium is a really good one as well. Magnesium is huge where really a lot of us don’t have enough magnesium stores. 300 chemical reactions in the body need magnesium. It really helps calm your nervous system. It helps with sleep and also helps protect against EMF radiation.
So really important when we’re surrounded by all of this EMF stuff every day. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m surrounded by laptops and screens all day. Okay. So it really helps stimulate your detoxification pathways. It helps with the removal of toxins.
So magnesium is a pretty important one to have in there.
Kelp tablets
Kelp tablets are great because they’re high an iodine. And it’s a mineral that most of us are deficient in as well. And kelp helps detoxify the body and fight radiation is, and it’s also very alkalizing.
Next level on the pyramid:
Detox
Now, before I dive into this topic, I’ve got to stress to you how important it is to have a detox body during these crazy times, right?
Because if our liver is overburdened, which most of us do have an overburdened liver these days, I mean, unless you’ve been living under a rock, I can’t imagine anyone having a perfect liver to be honest. So when the liver is overburdened, it means all the other organs in our bodies have to take on a lot of extra work things like the spleen and the lungs, especially, they’re kind of almost forced to do the job of the liver, which means more strain on these organs, especially the lungs.
And that means that less oxygen to the lungs. And that means more types of complications if you get a viral attack. Okay. So it’s really, really important that you guys start to have a detox protocol and these are the things that you can do at home.
You can order these online and start incorporate these daily things like bentonite clay, get an enema kit, I’m such an advocate of coffee, enemas, check out my video on YouTube, how to do a coffee enema, amazing for the liver, to detoxify the body improve digestion, allergies removed, remove candida, improves the peristaltic action of the colon, there’s just so many benefits.
So definitely check that out guys, if you want to get your liver cleansed.
Dry skin brushing.
You can do that at home that wakes up your lymph system, helping to detox. Do that before you get in the shower, it’s easy to get a dry skin brush online.
Epsom Salt Baths
I love Epsom salt baths. They’re great for pulling out toxins through your skin, really help relax your nervous system as well and help give you a nice sleep and boost your immune system too.
Liver Cleanse
Liver cleansing, you can do at home, it’s a deeper cleanse but a really powerful cleanse for pulling up liver stones and gallbladder stones so that your liver can get back to functioning normally again, right?
You can restore normal liver function, which means taking the strain off all the other organs, which means oxygenation, right, and having a healthy tip top immune system.
You can go online. If you want to Google liver and gallbladder cleanse, you can find instructions online, how to do that, set aside some time on the weekend and give your liver some love.
Fasting
Try fasting one day a week, intermittent fasting for a period of time. They’re all really great for boosting your immune system is the old things you can do at home. You don’t need to be an expert at it. It’s something that anyone can do.
Try some breath work. This really helps oxygenate your body as well, and helps with detoxification and purification.
At the top of the pyramid: Special elite forces
Okay. So at the very top of the pyramid, we have the special elite force. This is what I call this specially elite team. So, they are going to be the ones that you’re going to use when you get sick. You are pulling out the big guns, right?
Only for when you get sick, you’re not going to use these regularly every day. So have these in your medicine cabinet, have them on hand so that when you do get sick, you can pull out the big guns and can knock these v**ses on the head. Okay.
Andrographis
So the first one is Andrographis. This is powerful. So you’re going to pull out this big gun when you get the first sign of illness. I take it in pretty big doses. I take each tablet, usually about 400 milligrams. I take two to three tablets, three times a day just to knock it all on the head.
So no more v**s after that. The benefits about this herb is that it attacks viral pathogens. So not only does this antiviral herb fight v***l infections, it boosts the immune system so that it can launch a full scale attack on the invaders.
It restrains the virus, virus replication and virus development. So basically decreases the virus load and reduces inflammatory cytokines.
This herb is very powerful but it’s very safe if used in the acute phase of virus attack. You know, of course this is why I say don’t continue to take it because it’s can create toxicity in the liver if you take it for too long or take it daily.
So you want to just use it for that duration of when you’re sick until you’re better.
Oregano Oil
The next one is Oregano oil, again, a powerful antiviral agent. It’s proving to be even better than some antibiotics and treatments for bacterial infections without the harmful side effects. It’s got some powerful compounds in there, they’re really antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal.
For those of you that have doTERRA mates or do doTERRA, you know, about this, so make sure you’re taking this. I like to just take it on the thumb brief of the math swig of water done. That might be a bit hardcore for some people to do for a couple of drops and some water and just knock it back, that is a great way to get that in as well.
And, you know, you can up that in times of acute illness phase as well.
Vitamin C
But Lyposmoal C. This C gets to the body in the appropriate dosage, when unwell, take 1 every hour, you cannot overdose on Lyposomal Vitamin C.
Zinc
We talked about this in glycinate form. So as mentioned, just increase that three times a day, however, you know, what is the maximum dose you feel you can tolerate and the same with high dose vitamin A, you can take up to three to four drops, to shorten the duration of an illness as well.
Standard dose is around 1500 micrograms. So, you know, up to 3000 and that should be okay. Vitamin A is incredible for increasing natural killer cells and and also strengthening the mucosal barriers in your body.
Ginger, Garlic, Turmeric Shots
You’ll want to try garlic, ginger turmeric lemon shots. Blend all of those up with a bit of water strain, keep that fridge, keep it in the fridge as a concentrate and add a bit of hot water to it for when you are actually sick. Just keep knocking that back.
Phew.
I know that is a lot to take in guys, so some guidance on how to get started on being plant based and staying plant-based – living, embodying this way of life, being every day healthy, instead of just something that you want to do one day, remaining stuck in the overwhelm and fear of what path to take and how to take it correctly, check out my Every Day Healthy 8 Week Course.
You get all the recipes, the tools, the tricks the support and tribe to create step by step a sustainable, easy, joyful plant based lifestyle using food as medicine.
Check out this article here for more tips on how to boost immunity.
Much raw <3
Amanda
