Keeping your immune system up and healthy is ever so important right now! A healthy immune system is essential in the path to optimized wellness, especially during these times of seasonal affliction. It defends the body from pathogens, provides surveillance by identifying damaged or abnormal cells, and is active in homeostasis by helping the body to remove those cells.  The immune system does all this by providing barriers as a primary defense to keep foreign materials from entering the body. If these barriers fail, a secondary defense system takes over using cell-mediated immunity involving T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes, and macrophage interactions.  To keep these systems functioning properly, nourishing the body with the right nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and herbs from the garden can optimize your chances of staying healthy in any season.

 

Other beneficial ways to keep your immune system running smoothly include:

  • Exercising often
  • Getting consistent and adequate sleep (8 hours)
  • Drinking plenty of water
  • Listening to your body
  • Meditating daily
  • Learning to recognize early signs of illness
  • Eating breakfast
  • Eating a variety of healthy foods
  • Washing hands frequently
  • Limiting alcohol intake
  • Stopping smoking

Whole food nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, herbal extracts, and antioxidants are found in many of Bluebonnet’s immune-boosting formulas.  These products contain nutrients that may help support your body’s natural defense system against foreign invaders to optimize your chances of staying well.

Free Radical Scavengers

Antioxidants like vitamins A and C, as well as the mineral, zinc are nutrients that help to remove potentially damaging oxidizing agents – known as free radicals – from within the body. These harmful substances can damage DNA, as well as proteins and lipids within cells, altering or inhibiting their function, and excessive production can lead to damage of the immune cells. Antioxidant compounds present in the body counteract this free-radical toxicity by providing components to stabilize free radicals and ultimately support the immune system by maintaining the integrity of immune cells.

 

Immune-Boosting Nutrients

Enhancing the immune system also involves the up-regulation of genes that allow for the synthesis and production of Natural Killer (NK) cells, T-lymphocytes, macrophages, and a cascade of other immune defense cells ready to protect the body against foreign invaders. Vitamin D3, N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), and herbs like astragalus and echinacea are immune-stimulating, increasing the activity of any component of the immune system.

 

Immune-Defense Herbs

Effective herbal defense preparations ward off foreign invaders before they have a chance to take over a living cell. Nutrients like andrographis, elderberry, garlic, and olive leaf have a long and successful track record in inhibiting pathogens from attaching, penetrating, replicating, shedding, and affecting other healthy cells by aiding in the disruption of the pathogen’s life cycle.

 

Respiratory and Cellular Health Ingredients

Our nasal passages, sinuses, throat, and bronchial tubes are protected by mucous membranes – moist layers of connective tissue that are the first line of immune defense. Mucous membranes are essential, but when the inflammatory response and the immune system go into overdrive, they can produce too much mucus. Nutrients like bromelain, quercetin, stinging nettle leaf, and turmeric root extracts help support the body’s inflammatory response and take the immune system out of overdrive

 

Wellness. Like life, it is a journey. The journey is filled with internal ups and downs, and unforeseen variables that can take us off-kilter, but Bluebonnet has your back. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure… you’ve heard it a million times! Following a lifestyle that is intended for wellness will go a long way toward taking care of your body, so you feel your very best.  Also, don’t forget about good hygiene ? #washyourhands

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