HH381-The Gut-Immune System Connection

Welcome back to another episode of health hacks as I continue talking about our gut health, and I am now into the sixth episode of this series. It started back at Episode 484, so if you haven't listened to the previous episodes, go back and do so, so that you can capture all of the information in regards to the importance of your gut when it comes to your health. And today I'm talking about the gut immune system connection. And as I've said several times over throughout this series, 70% in fact, it's even more than that. 70 to 80% of your immune system is housed in your gut. And of course, you want your immune system. Your immune system is charged with fighting off the bad bacteria that gets into your body, the microbes, the parasites, the H Pylori, whatever it is that's getting into your body that isn't supposed to be there. Your immune system is charged with fending it off so that you don't get very sick, and sometimes you might get a cold or a flu, or some, you know, common illness that is helping to charge up your body as it learns from the microbes that do get into your body, and it starts to build immunity to, You know, new versions of the flu each year, etc, etc, and your body is designed to do this all on its own, and it is incredibly powerful in its ability to learn and adapt in order to help US fend off illnesses that we don't want, we don't want to be slowed down when Nobody enjoys being sick. And so focusing on your gut health and supporting your immune system is absolutely key to you being able to show up every day in life the way that you want to. So when it comes to supporting your immune system. Obviously, you need to support your gut, and that means you need to be supporting the balance in your gut, and when we do that, we can fight off chronic inflammation. When we have imbalances in our gut, it can lead to chronic inflammation. It can lead to problems with allergies and autoimmune conditions, and if you are someone that struggles with allergies, then rather than just taking medication to get you through allergy season, I highly recommend that you actually take a look at what is going on in the health of your gut, and what imbalances in your gut are triggering those allergies. Because when you heal your gut, then those allergies will go away, and we certainly don't want to be living in a place of chronic inflammation, because it's chronic inflammation that allows the switch to turn on to any genes that you're predisposed to that can cause disease of the body. Just because your parent had a certain disease doesn't mean you're automatically going to get it genetically only five to 10% of diseases are genetically linked. The rest of it is literally comes about based on your thoughts and the environment in which you live. And so that environment that you create, the lifestyle that you create for yourself, your sleep, your stress levels, your nutrition, etc, etc, all impact the health of your gut and the amount of inflammation that you have in your body. And when we choose to live that healthier lifestyle, and we have healthy levels of inflammation, then the switch that would turn on the genetics to the disease that you may be predisposed to will never actually turn on. And so just because your mother had breast cancer or your father had heart disease, it doesn't mean you will get it automatically. It all comes down to the level of inflammation in your body and your lifestyle choices. So our gut is so important in the health of our gut is so important in terms of our ability to manage and profound illness, because it houses our immune system. And the stronger our immune system, the better off that it can fight off infection, as well as it impacts how quickly we recover from infection. And supporting our immune system can also be done through supplementation to just help give our immune system the nutrients that it needs. And a very powerful and very simple way to support the immune system, aside from looking at the health of your gut, is to combine Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc. So vitamin D, about 5000 I use per day in the winter season, especially if you feel like you're coming down with something, and especially if you live in the northern us and in Canada, because we don't get enough natural sunlight on our BareNaked skin for. Half hours of the day. Combine that with some vitamin C. On a maintenance level, I like to take 2000 milligrams a day, 1000 in the morning and 1000 in the evening. It's water soluble, so the body will burn through it. You don't want to take too much at once. If I feel like I'm getting sick, I will actually increase that and take quite a bit more. Because you can't OD on vitamin C, it will just cause you to have loose stool if you have too much. And when I feel like I'm getting sick, and I do increase it significantly, I actually have never had loose stool. Excuse me, because my body's needed everything that I'm giving it and then zinc, about 15 milligrams per day. I'll take some with dinner. It's really helpful to have it with vitamin C, because that helps the vitamin it helps the zinc get into the cells. And so that's a really quick and easy little immune boosting supplement regime that you can implement. It's literally Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc. And if you would like to know more about that, or more about your gut immune system and how you can support your immune system while also supporting your gut. Feel free to reach out to me, at Melissa, at your guided health journey.com.