In anxious times like these, the most important question you want answered is what you can do to avoid getting sick. Isolation is crucial, and good hygiene are crucial, but let’s face it, even the most vigilant will come in contact with people at the market or doctor's office, and many of us live with family members who leave the house or are part of essential services.

The stronger your immune system is, the greater your chance of not getting sick. A strong immune system may also shorten the duration or severity of any illness if you get infected. Your immune system protects you all day and every day by fighting off diseases and neutralizing invading germs. It also regulates how long you are sick, and how serious the sickness gets. Specific supplements combined with certain lifestyle changes can strengthen your immune system – and tip the scales of protection in your favor.

While many people take well-known immune support supplements, like vitamin c, others are using trusted remedies like elderberry, zinc, probiotics, and colloidal silver. Unfortunately, it's becoming apparent that they're missing several basic steps that can naturally strengthen their immune system and make these products work better. In fact, if you overlook any of these steps, you can impair cause many of these immune-boosting supplements to be less effective (or to not work at all).

Good sleep is the most important thing you can do to strengthen your immune strength. Without a good night’s sleep, you wear down your body and impair your immune system. Lack of sleep sabotages your efforts to lose weight, relieve pain, be mentally sharp, have abundant energy during the day, and reduce inflammation in the body. As you sleep, your entire body - your cells, muscles, organs, bones, brain, tissues all rebuild themselves. Sleep produces proteins that regulate immunity and inflammation in the body. It’s also the time when your body generates antibodies and builds new blood cells. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Studies show that people who don't get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus.” Without “quality” sleep your immune system falters.

Feeling constantly overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted, and “not yourself anymore” isn’t normal, nor is it a sign of aging – it’s caused by stress. Reducing stress levels is the second most important thing you can do to strengthen your immune system. Just like sleep, continual exposure to stress also worsens your energy levels, mood, libido, weight, memory and much more. It causes irritability, anxiousness, feeling overwhelmed – and it can literally kill you. Stress causes the overproduction of our “stress hormone,” cortisol, as well as other hormones. Stress also uses up your body’s energy and nutritional resources (leading to nutritional deficiencies), and destroys lean body mass, including your body’s collagen.

Chronic stress also triggers your immune system to create inflammation throughout your entire body. It lowers the number of lymphocytes you produce (white blood cells critical to your body’s natural immunity), which suppresses your immune system.High levels of stress can also make you sleep poorly. As we previously discussed, deep, restful sleep is the first step in lowering stress, and in return, lower stress produces better sleep. Lower stress and good sleep are the foundation of a healthy, strong immune system, so if you can improve both, it’s ideal.If you don’t get these two right, you are undermining your overall wellness, and you will get sick more easily. And, it won’t matter how many immune-boosting supplements you take, how cleanly you eat or how you exercise.

Many people don’t know that having a weak immune system – and a lack of energy and other health problems – is not really due to your age, but rather, the first sign of a nutritional deficiency. Without a healthy, nourishing diet that provides all of the basic vitamins, minerals and antioxidants to support your immune system, you’re at a greater risk of getting sick. Compounding matters, when you do get sick, your body requires even more of these basic nutrients, which can lead to even greater deficiencies if you’re not prepared. If you lack even one nutrient, it can impair your entire immune system from working properly. It can also ruin the effectiveness of other immune supplements you’re taking. Viral and bacterial infections are often associated with deficiencies in these vital nutrients.

The numbers don’t lie. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture report that: And with Vitamin D, which is the most important vitamin for immunity:

• 80% of Americans are deficient in Vitamin E

• 50% of Americans are deficient in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Magnesium

Vitamin D researchers also report that 75% of all Americans are below the optimal levels of Vitamin D for proper immune function (this is higher than the current RDA). Even worse, it's heart-breaking to know that over one billion people world-wide are deficient in this essential nutrient.

You’re most likely nutrient deficient right now. And, if you’re stressed, overworked, sleeping poorly, or sick, your body will require more than the normal doses of vitamins, minerals, and other essential co-factors. To correct any deficiency (and to strengthen your immune system) it makes sense to guarantee your body gets every basic nutrient it needs, including the ones most people lack and are deficient in, especially before you get sick. The most important nutrients for immune health are:

• Vitamins A, C, E and especially, Vitamin D

• Zinc, Selenium and Magnesium

• B Complex Vitamins (especially in their Methylated form)

• Antioxidants (in high doses to fight off free radicals)

Whoever thought having a bowel movement every day would be on a list for improving the strength of your immune system? And, even if you’re already regular, it still may not be enough…

Even with the best diet, most people don’t realize that many of the everyday foods they eat, water they drink, and air they breathe all contain some level of toxins, preservatives, chemicals, and pollutants that build-up in their bodies. The problem is your body can’t properly digest and eliminate some of these, and they build up in your intestinal track in the form of old dried fecal matter and mucus. The undesired result is that they contain and create more toxins that are re-absorbed into the blood stream, and then circulated throughout the body. Besides negatively affecting your immune system, these toxins can also cause weight gain, bloating, constipation, as well as other health problems. This is where your immune system takes a hit...

Not only does your immune system get damaged from the toxins, it spends valuable resources having to fight them. This distracts and weakens your immune system’s ability handle outside bacterial and viral invaders. The most effective way to rid your body of this toxic build-up is to use a cleansing supplement (which is very different from fiber) to trap and remove toxins.

Most people equate “lean body mass” with big muscles and athletes, but it's also a critical part of a healthy immune system. Simplified, your lean body mass is your body’s protein (heart, lungs, other organs, muscles, bones, skin and more). It’s everything that’s not water and fat. This “protein reservoir” is what your body's immune system draws on to heal itself during illness and injury. When you’re sick your body needs even more protein than usual – more than your diet can provide. This is when your body draws on your lean body mass.

The more lean body mass you have for your body to use, the stronger your immune system is. The problem is we start to lose our lean body mass in our twenties. By the time you're 50, you've lost 10% of this critical resource. From ages 50 - 80, we lose an additional 40%. Also, stay-at-home “cocooning” reduces physical activity. This can reduce muscle rapidly. Building lean body mass (as well as increasing Vitamin D levels) helps to preserve and build muscle to stay strong when you need it most. Besides strength-training exercises (weights, yoga, pilates), the best way to build your lean body mass is to take liquid collagen protein, since collagen is the most common protein in your body.