Immunity

It all starts and ends with our immune system. Threats to our health and wellbeing are able to infiltrate our system when we are tired, run down, stressed. How we get tired, run down and stressed is for another blog, but this blog is about how we repair and recover and build our immunity so we are not susceptible to illness or disease. Start with sleep - good quality sleep between 7-9 hours a night, its always good if you can get to bed before 10pm when you get that ‘second wind’ that makes it so hard after 10pm. Winding down before sleep is important too, relax in a bath, listen to soothing music or meditation are all good. Eating a wide range of plant based foods is also important, these help to give us valuable antioxidants that help to boost our immune system and a variety of colours is helpful here. A variety of 30 different fruits and vegetables in a month is a good barometer. The high levels of fibre also help to sweep through the bowel and keep things moving with the fibre found in fruit and vegetables, important as most of our immunity is built in the bowel. Water is important for fibre as well, so remember to have 6-8 glasses throughout the day, warm water is better for the gut than cold. Take some good supplements for immunity, vitamin c with zinc, turmeric and incorporate ginger and garlic into your cooking. I find elderberry excellent at fighting and preventing virus’s and have a recipe to share with you that makes it easy and cost effective, see at the bottom of this blog. Also managing stress - again a subject in its own right, but in brief for this post, try some meditation there are lots of different apps (insight timer is a good one), breathing, walking and connecting to nature and generally any way you can find to switch off or loose yourself in something - ME TIME. Above all else remember that all the cells in our body LOVE us and want to do the very best for us so have faith and do not fear the unknown……

Elderberry syrup

1 cup dried elderberries ( I get mine online)

2 cups water

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Raw honey to taste (local and non heat treated, or Manuka works too)

Place all the ingredients, other than honey, in a pan and simmer gently for around 20 minutes, allow to cool down and sieve into a jug. You need to keep squishing the berries with a spoon against the sieve as a lot of the juice is inside them. When you are happy you have all the juice then when just warm add the honey to taste. I store mine in the fridge and have a tablespoon every day in the flu and cold season. Elderberries are thought to stop virus’s developing throughout the cell population. A note on honey generally - it looses its properties when it is heated, any vegans can simply replace the honey with a sweetener of choice.