A healthy lifestyle strengthens your immune response and decreases the hormone cortisol which suppresses your immune function.

 

 
     Hi there, it’s Elaine Gardner, the founder of DesignYourHealthyLife.com. The last video I sent you was about avoiding the crazy busyness that often picks up and starts to happen this time of year. Everybody gets relaxed during the summer, they have their vacations, they get to spend some wonderful, quality family time. And then kids go back to school and activities pick up, and everybody goes into hyper-speed, pedal to the metal, foot on the gas, crazy busyness through the holiday season. And most people are stressed about this.

     If you’re excited about that, and it jacks you up, and things get done and you love that, then great! Then it’s not going to be so detrimental for you. But if you find it’s stressful and wearing on your body, then that’s when you run into trouble. One of the reasons is that the long-term hormone that your body releases in a stress response is called cortisol. And cortisol suppresses your immune function.

     So in climates like in the Northeast where I live, we’re going into cold and flu season as the doors shut and the microbes come into the air. So if you’re going into cold and flu seasons with a suppressed immune function, that’s a double whammy. You’re setting yourself up for a much higher risk of infection and symptoms and suffering. And that’s the last thing I want for you.

     My mission when I started DesignYourHealthyLife.com was to help you have a proactive, preventative, holistic lifestyle. After suffering for more than two decades with significant health challenges, before I finally figured out how to be healthy, I now understand the importance of daily care. Long-term good health is a lifestyle. It’s not just, “Oh I’m eating right today” or “I got enough sleep last night.” It’s cumulative over time and it’s lots of different pieces that fit together.

     You can be doing lots of different things very well and still have a few missing pieces, and still be falling into the trap of coming down with more colds and flu’s than you should or feeling unwell more often. And case in point, I’m struggling with a cold right now as well. I had already planned on doing this video and it’s even more pressing on my mind right now because I just contracted a cold over the weekend.

     In my newsletters in the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing some of my tried and true and favorite resources for helping to relieve discomfort in a situation like I’m in right now or when you get a cold or a flu. But what I really want to encourage you to do in this video, is to take that proactive, preventative mentality. Strengthen your body, keep your body strong on a daily basis as much as possible, so you significantly decrease your odds of falling into the trap of having illness, especially as we go into the cold and flu season.

     So what does that mean? Getting enough sleep, and enough deep sleep. If you have a million things running through your head when you’re going to bed, you probably aren’t going to sleep very well. So for me, I know even if I’m exhausted at the end of the day, I need a decompression period, a winding down period, before I can fall asleep easily and sleep very deeply. So for me, that’s often reading or watching a Netflix series and things like that. Preferably non-violent. Although sometimes I get very involved in particular stories that have some violence in them, they have to have a good story line.

     Also, eating well on a day to day basis. And that doesn’t mean that you have to have a completely sugar free lifestyle. It means getting some greens into your life, getting vegetables. Eating clean is the most important thing because even healthy food at certain restaurants can be loaded with additives and things you don’t need. Eat organic as much as possible. Keep toxins out of your life, especially things that you put on your skin because they get absorbed directly into your body. So non-toxic personal care products like shampoo and deodorant.

     Don’t bring chemicals into your home for cleaning. Or even, a lot of people do expensive remodeling projects and bring a lot of toxins into their home that way. So you want to do your research. Be aware of those potential risk factors before you do those things, minimize the toxins that you’re bringing into your home, and take measures to clean things up. Something that was on my wish list for many, many years that I finally have now is an air purifier and I couldn’t say enough good things about it. I’m really, really happy with it.

     So there’s lots of tools and techniques, but again, being healthy, staying healthy, is a lifestyle. It encompasses a lot of things, and I’m always trying to share all of my little bits and pieces with you so that you can find the things that you need to live a healthy life as quickly and as easily as possible. It took me a really long time to find all the resources and tools that I now use to maintain my healthy lifestyle.

     And no matter how good you are at taking care of yourself, it doesn’t mean that you’ll never get sick. Microbes are always shifting and changing and when your body hasn’t seen that particular microbe or that particular strain of microbe, it takes time for your body to build its defenses once it’s been exposed to that. You will be symptomatic while your body’s figuring out how to defend itself. But it’s not necessarily bad because it’s actually your body’s learning and getting stronger and developing its immunity; so that’s also a mindset that I really want to encourage you to adapt. You want to get sick as little as possible, but you’re still going to get sick, but if you have a strong healthy body, you won’t feel as bad, you’ll recover a lot faster, and your immune system will stay strong for you long-term.

     So as always, I want you to have the health that you need to live the life that you deserve. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to share all of my knowledge and resources with you, so thank you so much for being here. If there’s anything that I can ever do, if you have any questions for me, I would love to help you. That’s what I’m really passionate about! That’s what I’m here for. So if there’s something that you need to know, please reach out to me. And until next time, I’ll talk to you soon.