A healthy body has a powerful and efficient immune system to fight most infections, preventing sickness. Here are a few things that you can do to boost your immune system and improve your overall health. I picked the top three based on practicality and effectiveness based on reviews and my experience.
1. Make it Easier to Eat Healthy Foods
This is a no-brainer but regardless of where we live, it is a very common problem. – We don’t eat enough veggies!
Here's an easy thing to do: Make them more visible and accessible. According to a study conducted by researchers from the Netherlands, vegetable intake increased significantly using simple serving techniques in public places such as offices and hospitals. In their experiment, they provided vegetables and cookies in locations such as hospitals and business meetings. They included cookies to analyze any conflict between the two options. Vegetables were served both in porcelain bowls and in 1kg. boxes.
There was a significant average increase in consumption of 97 grams from porcelain bowls, which is almost half the daily recommended vegetable consumption. Placing vegetables in porcelain bowls during business meetings resulted in an increased intake of 80 grams per person. Having cookies on the table as well did not have any negative effect on the increased vegetable consumption. The lesson is that increasing vegetable consumption can be done just by making them easier to access.
We often talk a lot about the benefits of a healthy diet and how eating more vegetables can improve our health. Talk is not enough though. Many of us are already aware of healthy options, so awareness must be topped by commitment and technique. So, let us go further to help others increase their vegetable intake easily. They won't even realize what we are doing.
At home, display nice-looking bowls of vegetables and fruits within easy reach. -Don't stockpile on chips and fries! Bring vegetables to work and family parties. Some people even practice guilt-eating. -Swallowing some vegetables after consuming a lot of meat. We can't eat them if we don’t have them. Lastly, if we eat fewer kinds of veggies than we should, try adding just one more serving of vegetables every day. For the adventurous, try a new fruit or vegetable you haven’t tried before or don’t usually eat.
Veggie Facts
Diets that are low in veg are associated with more than
20,000 premature deaths across the UK (IHME 2015)
and eating one more portion of veg could reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions by almost a fifth.
2. Consider Using Fitness Bands/Digital Assistants
The first and simplest fitness bands were just used to count steps.
Luckily, we no longer have to carry something like this just to count our steps!
Today, there are hundreds of features that can be built into our phones, smartwatches and even placed on our shoes. The irony is that for many people, over the past decades, physical activity has almost been completely removed from every day live and most of us have become pretty much sedentary.
Digital devices of this kind have allowed researchers to take a closer look at the importance of an active lifestyle over a sedentary one. It can affect several aspects of health.
Using accelerometer-based activity trackers, 4,480 US adults were followed for a period of 6.6 years to determine the role of varying degrees of activity versus a sedentary lifestyle on mortality.
Participants in the study initially wore an activity tracker for a period of 7 days to break their time into three categories: sedentary time, time spent in light activity, and time spent in moderate to vigorous activity. On average all participants spent 4.2 hours/day in light activity and 1.7 hours in moderate to vigorous activity.
Over the 6.6 year observation period, a total of 700 deaths occurred. Compared with those who were sedentary 6 hours/day, mortality increased by those who were sedentary 8 hours/day by 14%, and in those who were sedentary 10 hours/day by 29%. On average, each hour of sedentary time was associated with a 12% greater risk of mortality. Inverse to this, physical activity was associated with a decrease in mortality and lessened the effects of an otherwise inactive lifestyle. Replacing just one hour of sedentary time with moderate to vigorous activity reduced the occurrence of mortality by 42%.
Obviously, a fitness tracker on its own will not improve your health, fitness, or make you look any better. However, it can be used to help remind you to be active and help you make sure to meet a minimum daily goal. For those who spend a large portion of their day at a desk or otherwise sedentary, this study shows that an hour of daily exercise can go a long way helping counteract the negative effects of those sedentary hours.
3. Take High-Quality Food Supplements
Today's food quality has been degraded due to preservatives. The use of extenders or fillers has removed the healthy nutrients found in our meals as well.
According to Dr. Myron Wentz,
We now know that optimal nutrition is key to long-term good health. Unfortunately, the high level of nutrition that is necessary to maintain good health is difficult to receive from the typical modern diet. And, the nutritional supplement industry was filled with incomplete, unbalanced products.
High-quality food supplements disintegrate properly and get absorbed by the body easily. I will discuss more information about food supplements on my next blog.
Everybody benefits if we are in good health!
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