As 2020 progresses and concerns about coronavirus grow, more and more people are looking for ways to prioritize their health and well-being. Amidst this pandemic, focusing on your body’s ability to defend itself against contagious diseases is pivotal.

And one of the most powerful tools we have when it comes to strengthening our immune systems are supplements. I’m going to reveal some of the most powerful immune-boosting supplements and exactly how they help bolster your defenses against germs.

What Are the Best Supplements to Boost My Immune System?

Your immune system is a complex network of cells, tissues, organs, glands, and chemical messengers. They all work together to prevent infections and promote healing. Your immune system is designed to run like an intricate, well-oiled machine – with your immune system working in conjunction with the rest of your body to keep you safe. 

Because your immune system is so interconnected and complicated, it requires support in a number of ways to run smoothly. In simplest terms, the best immune-boosting supplements can be classified into three categories, which support your immune system through:

• Managing stress and aiding in sleep
• Healing your gut
• Providing essential nutrients

Let’s look at each of these categories a little more closely.

Boost Your Immune System With Stress-Busting Supplements

Chronic stress can put a serious damper on your immune system. 

In fact, studies have found that the hormones released during stress can temporarily shut down your immune system – making you susceptible to any microorganisms that might make their way into your body.1,2 Stress-busting supplements are designed to help balance your body out by minimizing the hormonal fluctuations that come with stress and promoting restorative sleep. Some of my favorite stress-busting supplements are: LipoCalm, Cortisol Essentials, and magnesium.

LipoCalm

Stress can make getting a restful night's sleep challenging, to say the least. Lack of sleep not only weakens your immune system, but it also creates a vicious cycle of hormone imbalance and even more stress. 

LipoCalm is a potent supplement designed to work with your body's natural sleep mechanism to help you fall asleep quicker and improve your quality of sleep. LipoCalm promotes sleep with a powerful blend of botanical extracts and a compound known as GABA. GABA is a neurotransmitter used in the brain to signal your body to decrease wakefulness and relax into a state of deep sleep.3 

Taking LipoCalm each night before bed can help you naturally ease into a restorative sleep so your immune system can recharge and recalibrate.

Cortisol Essentials

Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone” because it plays a monumental role in the body's response to physical and psychological stress. When cortisol levels remain high for too long, like in chronic stress, it can: 

• Disrupt your sleep
• Throw your hormones out of whack
• Suppress your immune system.4,5

Cortisol Essentials is a supplement calibrated specifically to help your body effectively cope with the physiological effects of stress. It promotes balanced cortisol levels and supports relaxation and restful sleep. Taking a daily dose of Cortisol Essentials can help your body naturally maintain the hormonal balance it needs to keep your immune system running on all cylinders.

Magnesium

Magnesium is a mineral that plays a critical and widespread role in the body. It’s considered an essential mineral because it influences or is involved in nearly every body function. Magnesium has been found to play a particularly important role in sleep and your body's stress response system.6

Magnesium deficiency has been associated with an increase in stress, anxiety, and insomnia. What makes this even more challenging is stress increases your body's utilization of magnesium – depleting your levels even more. Taking a daily magnesium supplement can help you avoid this vicious cycle by ensuring you have plenty magnesium to support your immune system

Boost Your Immune System With Gut-Healing Supplements

The health of your gut and the health of your immune system are intricately linked. If you want your immune system running at full force, it’s crucial that you prioritize keeping your digestive tract happy, healthy, and balanced. Here are my top gut-healing, immune-boosting supplement recommendations: probiotics, collagen, and immunoglobulins.

Probiotics

Your gut is home to billions of bacteria. These microorganisms impact the integrity of your gut lining and communicate with the cells of your body – including your immune system cells. This ecosystem of microorganisms is designed to maintain a delicate balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria. When bad bacteria begins to overpopulate and overtake the beneficial bacteria, it can disrupt this delicate balance and dampen your immune system.7,8

Taking a daily probiotic can flood your gut with healthy beneficial bacteria and essentially “crowd out” harmful microorganisms. Since your gut flora and your immune system are in a reciprocal relationship, restoring a healthy population of beneficial bacteria will automatically benefit your immune system.

Collagen

The cells that line your intestinal tract are held together by proteins known as tight junctions. These tight junctions act as gatekeepers – allowing certain nutrients out into your bloodstream and keeping waste in your intestines to be excreted. But when these tight junctions become damaged they create gaps that allow waste products to leak out into your bloodstream.

These waste products floating around in your bloodstream trigger an immune response – causing a chronic low-level inflammation. This chronic inflammation overtaxes and weakens your immune system.

Collagen is an amino acid that plays a key role in healing damage and promoting the growth of new tissue in your intestinal tract – essentially working to “seal the gaps” in your intestinal lining. A daily dose of collagen can give your gut the resources it needs to start healing and give your immune system the support it needs. To learn more about the health-boosting benefits of collagen, head over to my article where we dive into the science behind collagen’s impressive benefits.

Immunoglobulins

Immunoglobulin G, also known as IgG, is an antibody naturally produced by your immune system. One of IgG’s most prominent roles in the immune response is its ability to bind to any foreign invaders. This labels them as “dangerous” so that other immune system cells will destroy them. IgG binds to bacteria, viruses, fungi, or toxins so that your immune cells can neutralize and eliminate them from the body.9

Increasing your IgG levels can enhance your body's ability to remove harmful microbes and supercharge your immune system's capacity to fight off infection. Taking a concentrated dose of immunoglobulins like those found in Gut Immune can reset a healthy immune tolerance and strengthen your body's barrier against potentially harmful germs.

Boost Your Immune System With Essential Nutrients

Your immune system requires countless chemical reactions to function properly and communicate effectively between body systems. These functions and communications rely on some crucial nutrients and compounds such as vitamin D, and glutathione.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is key when it comes to immune function. So much so, that a vitamin D deficiency has been directly linked to an increased risk of developing autoimmune disorders and contracting infections.10 Conversely, increasing vitamin D levels has been shown to improve clinical outcomes.11 

When it comes to your immune system, vitamin D:

• Plays an important role in the activation and regulation of the immune response 12,13 
• Enhances the function of specialized immune cells like macrophages and T-cells and that neutralize foreign invaders14
• Provides potent anti-inflammatory properties15

Making sure you’re getting adequate vitamin D levels can go a long way in supporting your immune system – so I suggest taking a daily vitamin D supplement.

Glutathione

Glutathione has been nicknamed “the mother of all antioxidants” due to its powerful anti-inflammatory effects. Glutathione promotes immune function in two primary ways which are:

• Functioning as a signaling molecule – regulating your immune systems response and keeping inflammation levels in check16
• Reducing oxidative injury by neutralizing harmful free radicals17

Taking a daily glutathione supplement can be a great place to start if you want to boost your antioxidant levels and give your immune system some support. Research is also finding some impressive benefits with the use of inhaled glutathione – particularly in the treatment of respiratory-related conditions.18 Inhaled glutathione supplements can be administered by an Integrative and Functional Medicine Practitioner.

Set Yourself up for Success

With the public concerns surrounding coronavirus, it helps put things into perspective and reminds us all to prioritize our health. Our bodies are complicated systems and there’s no one single way to support your health and boost your immune system – it takes an all-encompassing approach. 

All the supplements in the world can’t reverse the negative effects of an unhealthy lifestyle.

But when paired with an overall healthy lifestyle, the supplements outlined in this article can be immensely powerful tools to bolster your immune system. If you would like information on where to find the supplements in this article, please call the office at 303-993-7910 ext 4.

Like I always say – you are your own best advocate when it comes to your health. And I’m on a mission to provide you with the resources and knowledge to prioritize your health and well-being – especially during this uncertain time. 

For more information on how you can protect yourself by keeping your immune system in tip-top shape, check out my other articles addressing coronavirus:

• Worried About Coronavirus? What You Need to Know to Protect Yourself
• Is there a Cure for Coronavirus? The scoop on Chloroquine and other emerging treatments
• Do You Have Lyme Disease? What You Need to Know About COVID-19
• Powerful Ways to Boost Your Immune System as Coronavirus Spreads

Now it’s time to hear from you. Were you surprised to learn that supplements really can boost your immune system? What supplements do you use to keep your immune system healthy? Leave your questions and thoughts in the comments below!

References:

1. https://www.dana.org/article/the-brain-immunology-axis/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11983310
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18461094
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23916911
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507250/
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006993/
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12801956
9. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.00805/full
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25903964
11. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26113982
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6305614/
13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194221/
14. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100307215534.htm
15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28944831
16. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048347/
17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19393193
18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249747/