How to optimise your immune system

Greg Whyte OBE

Keep your immune system fighting fit with this five-point plan from Professor Greg Whyte, one of the world’s leading authorities in sport and exercise science

Boosting your immune system sounds appealing – but fine-tuning and optimising, rather than boosting, is the name of the game. It’s within your power to look after your immune system as best you can. Eating a little better, moving a little more and taking care in other aspects of your lifestyle will, over time, help to keep your immune system working like a well-oiled machine.

1. FOOD THAT FORTIFIES

Improving your diet can have a profound and rapid impact on your health. We know certain micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) play particularly important roles in the workings of the immune system. These include vitamins A, B6, B12, C, D, copper, folate, selenium and zinc. A healthy diet, high in fruit and vegetables, should provide you with all the micronutrients you need.

Eat fruit and veg

Think in handfuls when it comes to measuring a portion of fruit or vegetables. A handful changes according to body size, and that’s a good thing. The bigger you are, the more fruit and vegetables you need. Use fresh, frozen, canned, dried, or juiced fruit and vegetables – all these count. Crucially, with frozen, they’re picked and frozen on the same day, which helps maintain their goodness. Sprinkling a small handful of nuts and seeds over salads, vegetables or grains also boosts your micronutrient intake.

Do it yourself

As far as possible, prepare your own food. In doing this, you know what’s in it. Immediately, you can eliminate one of the main problems with diet: highly processed foods, especially sugar, which has a profoundly negative impact on immune health.

Plan ahead

It helps to make a meal plan. At the top of the list of people’s reasons for a bad diet is that they don’t have enough time. Planning your menu in advance not only saves you money and keeps you from throwing food in the bin at the end of the week, it’s quicker – when you decide what you’re going to eat day by day, you spend a lot of time having to think about it or going to the shops.

Cook slow

You can also plan around the week’s activities. I have three kids, so mealtimes are a juggling act of what and when to cook. When everyone’s very busy, we’ll use the slow cooker. That way, we can feed people at different times. Try a slow-cooked chilli – a portion of beans (red kidney beans contain iron) or pulses count towards your five-a-day.

Try slow-cooker recipes

YOUR MICRONUTRIENT SHOPPING LIST

Vitamin A

Vitamin B6

brown and wholemeal flours

Vitamin B12

Yeast extracts such as Marmite

Vitamin C

Vitamin D

Copper

Folate

Iron

brown and wholemeal flours

Selenium

Brazil nuts

cashews

sesame and sunflower seeds

Zinc

rye and wholemeal flours

2. KEEP MOVING

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week, plus two strength sessions. As well as walking, running, cycling and swimming, the activities of daily living count. These include walking to the shops, cleaning the car and gardening.

Walking intensity

A great way to think about exercise intensity is in walking terms. If you’re ambling along with small children, that’s low intensity. Your heart rate and your respiratory rate aren’t elevated. If you go for a brisk walk with a friend at a faster pace, your heart rate and breathing rate are elevated. That’s moderate intensity. Aim to walk so you can talk, but you shouldn’t be able to sing.

Everyday strength

When we talk about strength sessions, we’re talking about something that makes movement a little more difficult. There are lots of ways to do that – you don’t need to lift weights or even be a member of a gym. Picking up a child is a strength session. If you can, carry shopping bags rather than using a trolley. Get into the garden – digging requires a considerable amount of strength.

The great outdoors

When you exercise, do it outside if you can. Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on the benefits of being outdoors. From the beginning of the pandemic, we were told that exercising outdoors is safer. This is because the spread of airborne viruses is much lower when you’re outside. It provides all the positives of physical activity, but also elevates them. Plus, even on a cloudy day, you get a vitamin D fix.

A little more, every day

All in all, be more active, more often. Do more today than you did yesterday. If you got up from your chair only once today, do it twice tomorrow. If you maintain that mantra, you’ll get to a point where we know there are significant health benefits.

Warm roast chicken and quinoa salad

Transform your Sunday roast into something more nutritious. This simple recipe is high in essential micronutrients such as vitamins A, B6 and C, as well as folate and copper.

View recipe

Salmon and buckwheat noodle bowls

This speedy midweek meal is packed with micronutrients including vitamins B6, B12 and D, as well as selenium, folate and copper.

View recipe

3. STRIKE A BALANCE

We all like the idea of a quick fix. So many of us combat poor diet and nutrition with processed sugar (a major cause of obesity) because we need an energy hit. After a poor night’s sleep, we might use caffeine to improve our alertness. And many of us are prone to drinking more alcohol when we’re stressed.

A holistic approach

But now we know that obesity increases the risk of severe illness from Covid-19 and alcohol can reduce the body’s ability to fight infections, it’s a good time to find a better solution – moderating your lifestyle with diet, exercise and stress management.

Finding ways to manage stress

Act on your stress and anxiety. See it as a sign to stop, rest and find a better way. We often hope that it will somehow evaporate; then, when it inevitably doesn’t, we reach for those quick fixes, which can negatively affect our immune and overall health. There are lots of healthy, effective ways to try to minimise stress and anxiety. It’s about finding the ones that work for you, whether that’s making lists and creating plans, doing physical activity, meditating or talking with friends and family.

Roasted carrot, beetroot and lentil salad

This vegan salad can be served warm for supper or for lunch the next day. A great source of vitamins A, B6 and C, and high in folate, copper, iron and selenium.

View recipe

4. SLEEP ON IT

You do it every day and yet sleep is probably the most poorly examined area of heath. As long as we get some sleep, we think we’re doing it right, or we don’t care whether we are or not. But with the lives we lead now, people are incredibly stressed. Sleep and recovery are fundamental to optimising our health, particularly our immune health – not just the duration but the quality of it.

Set a routine

Get into a sleeping pattern. Your circadian rhythm (your body’s internal clock) is incredibly important because it fundamentally affects your sleep-wake cycle. It’s what is disrupted when you take long-haul flights, causing jet lag. Try to be consistent in your sleep pattern. I’m not saying don’t have fun evenings when you stay up later, but do try to go to sleep at the same time each night as much as possible.

Get into a rhythm

Prepare for sleep. Have a rhythm for bedtime (caffeine, eating a large meal and drinking too much alcohol all promote an inability to sleep) and you’ll find that starts to dictate the rhythm of other aspects of life – the time at which you finish reading emails, stop drinking tea or coffee, have your supper.

Time to chill

Make sure your preparation for sleep includes time to decompress. We don’t watch a great deal of television in our house, but in that 9-10pm period, my wife and I sit down and watch something, maybe a boxset. It’s a nice hour when we unwind. We’re not answering emails or texts, or using social media, and the kids are in bed, so the house is quiet. We can switch off for an hour.

No screens before sleep

We’re also both readers, so when we do go to bed, we tend to read before sleeping. Electronic devices emit a specific wavelength of light, which can affect your sleep cycle. It’s a personal thing, but I would always recommend paper books rather than screens for this reason. And make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet and cool – these conditions encourage good-quality sleep.

5. GO WITH YOUR GUT

Gut health is a fascinating area. We often talk about bacteria in negative terms, but your microbiome, the community of bacteria (and viruses and fungi) that live on your skin and in your body, is incredibly important and beneficial for your overall health, specifically your immune system, central nervous system, glucose metabolism, heart and body weight, as well as many other aspects of health.

Good bacteria

It’s not solely the number of bacteria in the gut that’s important, but the diversity of bacteria. So eating a wide range of foods could help. Include fermented foods, such as natural yogurt, sauerkraut and kefir, and wholegrains, such as whole oats and brown rice. These foods introduce bacteria to the gut and create an environment in which they can thrive.

Naturally sweet

Reducing processed sugar is also an important step in improving your gut microbiome. Try replacing your go-to sugary snack with one that’s naturally sweet and will support your gut health. For a quick and easy option, whizz natural yogurt or kefir into your smoothie, or enjoy a few spoonfuls with fruit.

Change it up

Getting experimental in the kitchen will help you increase the variety in your diet. My family is no different from any other in that it is sometimes easier to use the same ten menus on repeat. You know children will eat them, so you stick to them. Experiment a bit more: eating a more diverse range of foods will have a positive effect on your gut microbiome.