If you are looking for an effective immunity boost in your body, you should choose Ayurveda and undertake ayurvedic procedures and remedies. Good health, according to Ayurveda, involves balancing of your doshas such as vata, pitta and kapha and making sure that your agni or digestive system is working smoothly. There are several Ayurvedic ways using which you will be able to boost your body s immune system and its capability.

They are as follows:

Keep your immune system in proper balance by eating proper food: A weakened immune system makes you prone to all sorts of illnesses and diseases. In case the immune system becomes overactive, it targets your body s own tissues, confusing them for foreign invaders and attacks them. Your diet is very important for balancing this fighting response within your body. If your body gets the right nutrients and eliminates toxins effectively, the immune system gets strengthened. You should consume leafy vegetables, whole grain, nuts, legumes and highly pigmented food.

Detox: According to Ayurveda, ama is a primary factor, which leads to the development of diseases. Ama is the name of stored toxins in Sanskrit language and if your body has unhealthy ama, an environment is created where invaders thrive. Ama may occur due to both mental and physical indigestion. Ama and indigestion prevent essential nutrients from reaching your tissues, which weaken your immune function. You need to detoxify your body at regular intervals if you have unhealthy eating habits or get exposed to harmful environmental toxins.

Keep your agni strong: The digestive system or agni is very important for your health and it highly influences your immunity and immune system capability. The ability of digestion, assimilation and absorption of nutrients by the body also determines your immune strength. If your agni gets impaired because of an imbalance within the tridosha, your metabolism is affected, which weakens the immune system and body s natural resistance. Eating food items which are harmful for the digestive system leads to excess ama formation. A toxic environment is created in the body. This factor interferes with the natural intelligence of every cell which is encoded with the will of living healthy and working as a whole, together. Ayurveda aims at restoring this intelligence factor. You can boost your agni by consuming hot water and ginger tea regularly.

Yoga and meditations are important for boosting immunity, according to Ayurvedic traditions. Yoga and meditation help in reducing stress and positively affect your immune system.

Immunity - How Ayurveda Can Help You Restore it?

Catching a cold once in a while is nothing to worry about, but needing to take sick leave every few weeks is a sign of low immunity. Immunity can be defined as our ability to fight infections. By eating right and making a few lifestyle changes, you can easily strengthen your immune system and lower your risk of catching infections. On that note, here are 10 ways to strengthen your immune system.

Eat a balanced meal: Along with fruits and vegetables, your body also requires carbohydrates and proteins. Eating a balanced diet helps keep your blood sugar levels stable and allows your body to prioritize building your immune system over generating energy to perform normal tasks.
Drink plenty of water: When you re ill, fluids help transport nutrients to the infected area and flush out toxins from the same. Hence, it is important to stay hydrated in order to recover faster from an illness and to build your immune system.
Probiotics: 80% of your immune system is located in the gut. Probiotics help the body produce more healthy gut bacteria. Thus, probiotics directly boost the immune system.
A good night s sleep: Ideally, a person should get 8 to 10 hours of sleep on a daily basis. While we are asleep, the body produces cytokines ad antibodies that are vital to a strong immune system. Depriving the body of this sleep can thus make us more susceptible to infections.
Get some sun: While we put a lot of effort into protecting ourselves from the harmful UV rays of the sun, sunlight is also a rich source of vitamin D. Vitamin D helps protect us from a number of serious illnesses. Apart from sunlight we can also get vitamin D by adding cod liver oil, egg yolks and fatty fish to our diet.
Quit sugar: Sugar is an immunosuppressant and hence cutting out added sugar from your diet can have a drastic effect on your immunity. Added sugar refers only to refined sugar in cubed, crystal or powdered form and not the natural sweetners in fruits.
Exercise: Regular exercise improves blood circulation and boosts the production of antibodies. A healthy circulatory system combined with antibodies enables your body to fight infections in any part of your body.
Avoid tobacco and alcohol: Alcohol impairs the immune system and tobacco smoke weakens the body s basic immune system. This holds true for both first hand and second hand smoke.
Reduce stress: Stress increases the production of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol suppresses the immune system and thus makes us more susceptible to illnesses.
Prevent germs from spreading: Lastly, make simple things like washing your hands before eating and after coming home or using the toilet a habit. This prevents germs from spreading and entering our bodies.

10 Ways You Can Strengthen Your Immune System

The human body is a marvellous creation and functions in a highly synchronised and balanced way. Disease results when this balance is disturbed either due to infections, inflammations, trauma, autoimmune diseases, tumours. Whatever the reason, with any of these, the body has a strong immune system, which reacts to these changes and tries to ensure that balance is restored as quickly as possible and with minimal effect on overall bodily function.

While most of us have a natural tendency to do so, some have it weaker. This makes them more prone to infections and they take more time to repair and restore health. However, there are a number of supplements which can help to strengthen the immunity. These can be used with the consultation of a professional, and this can help improve overall health.

Homeopathy obviously fits into the class of therapeutic methods that augment the body's own defenses. A microdose of a substance heals the symptoms in large dose. Homeopathic medicines are both considerably smaller and safer in dose and more individualized to the person they are being used to treat.

Although homeopathic medicines are thought to stimulate the body's own defenses, how they do so remains a mystery. Homeopathic medicine do not simply stimulate the body's immune system to treat ill people, for they can also calm it when this is necessary for the healing of the individual.

People with auto-immune ailments suffer because their body's immune system is over-active and it attacks the person's own cells, not just bacteria, viruses, or foreign substances. Homeopathy believes that  like cures like.  So in treating a disease, what it does is use small amounts of the substance that is known to induce the disease. This way, similar symptoms are induced and the disease is treated. Some of the most common homeopathic medicines are-

Allium Cepa: With winter setting in, more and more people are prone to developing a runny nose, nasal congestion, and teary eyes. So, with winter still around the corner, using allium cepa (small onion) helps build immunity by easing these symptoms. Keeping 3 to 5 pellets of this compound under the tongue can help control nasal congestion.

Oscillococcinum: Popularly known as Oscillo, this contains very small amounts of duck liver and heart. When used on the first couple of days with the onset of flu-like symptoms, this helps the body aches and fatigue disappear. It is proven to be safe, effective, and helps prevent further attacks of similar symptoms.

Gelsemium: Obtained from the vine Gelsemium sempervirens, this is useful to build immunity towards cold and flu symptoms. Keeping it under the tongue also helps relieve symptoms if they are already present and controls further attacks of flu-like symptoms.

Silica: This is responsible for stimulating the production of macrophages. These are a type of cells, which are essential for eating up bacteria and foreign bodies. It, therefore, helps improve immunity and fight infections.

Arsenicum Album (white arsenic): This is used in a variety of conditions ranging from anxiety to poisoning to digestive disorders.

While some people refer to most homeopathic medicines as immune stimulating, they are in fact immunomodulatory. Whether a person has an autoimmune disease or repeated infections, homeopathy can be used. A detailed discussion with a specialized homeopath would be the first step to identify what is the right compound to use.

5 Best Homeopathic Medicine for Strengthen Immune System

When you have soft drinks or sodas, the pancreas quickly start to make insulin because of excessive sugar. Insulin is a hormone the body uses to move sugar from food items or drink into the circulation system, where cells are then ready to use that sugar for energy purposes. Within 15 minutes, glucose levels increase and the liver reacts to the insulin by transforming sugar into fat for capacity. Here is how soft drinks affect our health:

Asthma: It is prevalently found in a large number of soft drink consumers. Soft drinks contain sodium benzoate, which is utilized as an additive to control microbial growth. Sodium additives get blended with the rest of the diet and decrease the amount of potassium in our body. This expands the odds of rashes, asthma and skin aggravation.
Tooth enamel: Soft drinks contain high responsive solvents, which when blended with saliva or acids in the stomach, become acidic in nature. This starts affecting the body immediately. Because of such a quick effect, our mouth and teeth get influenced. It is proven that with every sip of a soft drink, the layer of the teeth decreases by two percent. The skin in the mouth and throat is very delicate and is easily harmed. This also causes rashes on the face and leads to pimples some times.
Heart diseases: Soft drinks contain fructose corn syrup, which has been connected with an increased danger of metabolic disorder. This condition increases the danger of both diabetes and heart diseases. One of 40 deaths each day are caused by heart strokes, which is an aftereffect of consuming soft drinks.
Kidney issues: A number of soft drinks contain phosphoric acids. These phosphoric acids irritate the digestive system and healthy organs. The stomach-related framework is connected to kidneys. Phosphoric acid expands the odds of stones in kidney and other kidney issues and diseases.
Reproductive issues: Soft drinks contain tar in them which contains BPA (Biphenyl   A) and is a similar tumor-causing compound found in pet bottles, water bottles and tinned food cans. This affects the endocrine framework, bringing about untimely adolescence.
Osteoporosis: It is seen that calcium is urinated alongside phosphoric acids, by the use of these drinks. This leads to osteoporosis, which results in corrosion or thinning of bones.  This in turn leads to calcium deficiency, which is one of the vital minerals of the body.
Obesity: It is dangerous to gain weight because of soft drinks. So it is not encouraged to consume soft drinks regularly since they can lead to obesity-related issues.
Sugar over-burdening: After around 15 minutes of soft drink consumption, our glucose shoots up, bringing on an insulin burst. The liver acts by changing the sugar particles into fat. This excites the consumer and increases the pulse, which causes the liver to deposit more sugar into the circulatory system.


Soft Drinks - How They Affect Your Health?

Ayurveda is a holistic method of treatment which focuses on treating the cause of the disease rather than the symptoms. There are ayurvedic remedies, which boost the immune system that keeps the body healthy. A well-functioning immune system is essential for your body to be in optimal health.

The various ayurvedic tips that help in boosting your immune system:
1. Use spices in your food: various spices such as cumin not only add flavor, but also have certain properties which help in boosting immune system. They aid in the digestive process and allow the nutrients in the food to be absorbed more readily.
2. Choose wisely: you must eat natural foods as much as possible for a healthy immune system. Eating processed foods creates various problems in the body which reduces your immune strength. Eating natural foods also provide your body with the necessary nutrients and vitamins, which are beneficial for the body.
3. Limit alcohol intake: you should restrict alcohol consumption as it impairs the functioning of white blood cells in the body. It also impairs the oxygen delivery mechanism of the body.
4. Exercise on a regular basis: you should exercise on a regular basis to keep your body healthy. Exercises such as running improves your cardiovascular endurance and increases stamina levels in the body.
5. Sleep: you should get 6 to 8 hours of sleep to help your body recover and regenerate. Lack of sleep can impair the functioning of the immune system and makes you prone to various disorders.
6. Herbs: various herbs such as ginger, garlic and amla help to boost your immune system as they contain various medicinal properties. They increase the white blood cells in the body which enhance the immune system.
7. Meditation: meditation has been linked with lower stress levels; implying that it has a beneficial effect on your body.
8. Pranayama: you should practice pranayama as it helps in strengthening the body and calming the mind. It reduces stress in the body thus enhancing your overall well-being.




Health & Immune Development With Ayurveda

Handling an Auto Immune Disease

What are Autoimmune Disorders?
It is a disorder of the immune system where the immune system can get ‘hyperactive’ or on the other end of the spectrum can become exceptional slow in its response to germs and bacterium, leaving the individual vulnerable to a host of infections and diseases.
When in ‘Hyper mode’ the body’s immune system starts producing antibodies (White Blood Cells) attacking and damaging the body’s own tissues (Red Blood Cells) beyond repair. Treatment of the Auto-Immune diseases generally focuses on reducing the activity levels of the immune system so as to let the Red Blood Cells multiply and heal the body to an extent.
Not all Auto Immune diseases are life threatening or terminal in nature. Some are even classified as “commonly occurring” disorders in the larger population. Examples of these would be –
1) Psoriasis – A Skin disorder where overactive immune system blood cells called T-cells collect in the skin. The immune system activity stimulates skin cells to replicate rapidly, producing layers of silvery scaly plaques on the skin. These often look like ‘Dandruff’ and can be seen all over the individual’s body, accompanied by severe itching and skin irritability. Psoriasis is often triggered due to stress and hormonal imbalances along with other environmental factors such as poor hygiene, inadequate diet, lack of sleep etc. Along with oral medication, lifestyle changes such as reducing stress at work or home, making sure one gets at least 8 hours of restful sleep per night and regular head and body massages are known to help reduce the severity of the problem to a great extent.

2) Rheumatoid Arthritis – The hyper immune system produces antibodies that attach themselves to the joint linings and then start to eat away at the cartilage and tissues causing swelling or inflammation and a sharp stabbing continuous pain. Oral medication along with gentle cardio (slow walking) and stretching exercise routines such as Yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates are known to have countered the ill-effects of this movement restricting disorder, to a large extent.


3) Aggravated Thyroid – An aggravated thyroid is a result of the excessive antibodies produced by an overactive immune system which attack the thyroid gland and slowly destroy the cells that produce the all-important thyroid hormone. Prolonged negligence or when left undetected for long, it often leads to Grave’s Disease (linked to hyperthyroidism) or Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (linked to hypothyroidism.) The former can lead to weight-loss, bulging eyes, rapid heart-rate, and chronic fatigue while the later often causes sudden weight gain, depressed state of mind, dry skin and severe constipation.  A good way to avoid diseases of the thyroid would be to maintain a healthy active lifestyle and a stable healthy body weight. It is also recommended that one goes in for regular preventive health check-ups for early detection of any thyroid related disorders.

A little can go a long way in limiting ill effects of autoimmune disorders.


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How To Live With or Handle Auto Immune Disease

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