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?

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.


If you would like to consult with me privately, please click on 'Consult'.

From Lybrate: If you found this tip useful, please thank the doctor by clicking on the heart icon below. Also, spread good health by sharing this tip with your loved ones over WhatsApp, Facebook and other media.


How To Live With or Handle Auto Immune Disease

The immune systems in your body are always at work trying to fend of many of the attacks that happen on it every day. Although it is able to protect the body most of the time, sometimes it fails in doing so. While medicines can help to restore the balance, it is advisable to include certain food items in your diet, which boost the immune system naturally. Let's take a look at six vegetables which can help your immune system in getting supercharged:

Ginger - This food item is very good in regulating mobility within the gut and regulating bowel movement and is also known to relieve nausea, cramping and bloating. Ginger is also known to have many anti-inflammatory properties as well as being an antioxidant and antimicrobial. All of this makes ginger very good for the immune system.

Wheatgrass - One of the most densely packed green nutritional food ingredients when consumed in the form of a juice, it helps the liver by increasing its ability to flush out toxins. This results in an improved immune system. Wheatgrass is also rich in B complex vitamins, beta carotene, chlorophyll, magnesium, potassium and many other vital nutrients.

Garlic - This vegetable has been used for centuries in home remedies such as to lower blood pressure, prevent blood clots and many others. Garlic is also known to boost healthy cholesterol. Inclusion of garlic in your diet will not only boost your immune system but it also contains 'allicin', which is known to improve the health of your heart.

Papaya - An extremely good food for digestion as well as digestion problems, the extracted enzyme from this plant known as papain, is used in many medications. Papaya is full of beta-carotene that is very well known to be good for the health of tissue, skin and the eyes as well as boosting the immune system through the production of vitamin A within the body.

Carrots - This is one vegetable which has been encouraged to be included in diets as it contains copious amounts of beta carotene and is extremely good for the eyes as well as boosting the immune system.

Turmeric - Possibly the most talked about ingredient on this list in the last few years, it is known to have almost an unending list of health benefits. Turmeric has detoxifying properties as well as being anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and is great for digestion along with boosting the immune system.It is a rich source of minerals, such as Zinc, Iron, B group vitamins and Manganese, turmeric is also known to have cancer preventive properties.

Top 6 Vegetables that Supercharge your Immune System

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

Probiotics are healthy bacteria that resolve two crucial factors:

1) Boost Immunity: They help in production of antibodies and other substances that fight infections.

2) Digestion: They help in digestive disordes, gastro as well as other stomach related problems.
Yogurts, Probiotics fortified drinks and foods are the common sources.

What are Probiotics?

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?

Don't wait any longer, manage your Toxicophobia online with a Lybrate doctor today

Consult for Toxicophobia - Online and Easy!

FilterClear All

COMMON SPECIALITIES

COMMON ISSUES