Whether you suffer from a chronic illness, are looking to ward off the sickness of coworkers, or want to improve your average health and wellness, it’s important to know the basic ways to enhance your immune system for good health. All of these tips support natural health, which is to say you can accomplish them on your own incorporating them into your daily routine.
Proper Nutrition
If you’re living a hectic life and have little time to pay attention to how you’re feeling, you may not realize that what you eat can drastically affect how you feel, from general mood to energy, sports performance, and overall health and healing ability.
Generally, a healthy diet consists of a large and varied array of fruits and vegetables, accompanied by whole grains, a portion of lean meat the size of a deck of playing cards (or more of an alternative protein source), and healthy fats that contain omega-3 fatty acids (balanced against the omega-6 fatty acids found in meat). You should eat very little of processed foods that contain preservatives like trans fat, as well as refined sugars and non-food substances like food colorings.
When you eat a healthy diet, you provide your body with the nutritional building blocks it needs to function, regenerate, and thrive, supporting good health. However, it can sometimes be hard to eat a truly varied diet without over-eating, or within seasonal or dietary constraints. For that reason, you should  probably consider taking a daily multivitamin that can provide a layer of protection against holes in your diet for natural health support.
Dietary enzymes can also be a helpful, as they aid in digestion and nutrient absorption.
Exercise
You’ve heard it a million times, and whether you’ve already found a routine to fit 30 minutes of exercise in your day or you are still working that out, exercising for good health doesn’t have  to mean going to the gym and riding a bike.
Exercise can be incorporated into your natural health routine bit by bit-all movement contributes to the circulation of lymph fluid (the lymph system being an important part of your immune system). With exercise it is very much the case that something is better than nothing when it comes to supporting good health. It also helps, too, if when you miss a day in your routine that you do little things (stretching, taking the stairs, parking farther away) that make you feel like you are still actively living a healthy life, so that that day doesn’t turn into a week.
Good Hygiene
Whenever contagious disease prevention is brought up, so is hygiene, to the point that many probably tune it out (statistics certainly show that many Americans don’t wash after using the bathroom), but when it comes to good health, hygiene is critical.
Although exposure to germs can be a good thing, building up the immune system with a learned defense, people need to find a personal line-between washing their hands frequently and eating food off the floor-that their body can handle, and then remember that that line might be different for others.
In general, wash your hands before handling food, touching your face, or after being in germy places like hospitals. Alternatively, human touch has been shown to boost the immune system (possibly through exposure to others’ germs), so consider getting a massage, which has the added benefit of circulating your lymph fluids and triggering the release of toxins from your body.
Fighting Inflammation
Although this could almost be a subheading under nutrition, inflammation deals with how our bodies are balanced, and so deserves its own listing. Inflammation occurs as part of a natural part of our body’s immune system defenses, but can get out of control, causing an excess release of free radicals which can lead to cancer.
Sometimes caused by autoimmune disease, it is more often poor diet–too much Omega-6 from the processed and fried foods that fill American’s diets–that leads to excess inflammation. Decreasing our consumption of these foods, while increasing consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids, which work against Omega-6 to create balance, can reduce inflammation.
Antioxidants are found in fruits and vegetables, and Omega-3 fatty acids are found in walnuts and fish (for starters). You can also take supplements to up your intake of antioxidants or Omega-3 fatty acids.
Besides being a risk for increased cancer, inflammation destroys good health in a number of ways, and is tied to many diseases, including arthritis/joint pain, gastrointestinal diseases, and skin/wound infections.
Working through your lifestyle to accommodate even one of these elements can have a profound effect on your overall wellness. Make sure to talk to your doctor if you are on many medications before taking vitamins or starting a new workout regime.
What do you think is the most important  aspect of natural health? Let us know in the comments.
