Staying Healthy Through The Holidays

If you ever wonder why you may have gotten sick, look back at what you were doing/ eating/ drinking/ feeling/ sleeping/ your stress level three days earlier.

Our bodies are always trying to adjust and adapt to what we put them through. It’s not that germs are everywhere, because they’re always everywhere all the time, it’s that your immune system can’t catch up so you “get sick.” But WHY can’t our immune systems catch up if they are designed to protect us?

There are a few things that dampen your immune system and wear it out so much, that when a germ comes at you, it takes over. They are:

@ Lack of proper sleep. 

Going to bed after 10pm drains your body, over works your nervous system & weakens your immunity. We rebuild at night when we rest, specifically rebuilding our immune system from 1am to 5am, which means you need to be in actual deep sleep in order to let your body do this. If you wake up the night, stay in REM sleep, or go to bed too late, you aren’t getting into deep sleep or staying in it long enough to let your body rebuild. Lack of deep sleep means no immune system. Optimal sleep is 10pm to 6am, in Ayurveda and in Functional Medicine. The earlier you can get to bed, the better you’ll not only feel over all, but the more balanced your circadian rhythm, your metabolism, the less wrinkles you’ll have and so forth.

@ Food. 

Specifically sugar, alcohol (which is sugar,) dairy and gluten/wheat, food either makes you or breaks you. These four are the big ones that are the hardest on your body and have been studied over and over as being the most damaging. What your body cannot immediately break down and use for making new cells or for energy, it has to figure out what to do with, and this is stressful if the amino acid sequences aren’t useful for making new structures, or if the quality is very poor. In the case of gluten and dairy particularly, the proteins in these compounds are known to produce antibodies in the body, which means our system flags them as pathogens they need to destroy. Unfortunately, these proteins bind to our own tissue which means that as get labeled as foreign invaders that need to be killed, our immune system also kills our own tissues too. Though arguably they may be delicious, everything either makes you stronger or weaker. These make you weaker.

@ Overeating. 

Digestion is everything. What we eat becomes our physical and energetic selves but it also builds our protective immunity. Overeating is stressful and doesn’t leave room for proper flow creating stagnation, and flow is essentially the definition of health. What your body cannot digest it either tries to store (toxins, excess fat,) or it tries to burn (inflammation) so it’s worth it to stop when your belly tells you it’s full. If you stop munching early, you’ll have leftovers and if you’re honest with yourself, leftovers are even more awesome than the actual meal most of the time.

If you do happen to overeat, make a big pot of ginger tea to sip on, lay on your left side when it’s time for bed, and go light for the next few days to let your body catch up. It’s ok to have a big meal, but it’s not ok to do it regularly.

@ Hydration. 

Our cells are made of mostly water and without proper hydration, they don’t communicate well. Our T-cells communicate constantly with each other and with non immune cells as they’re out looking for invaders, so you want cell communication to be easy and flowy. We also excrete ALL of our toxins through our sweat, urine and through our bowels, which means that if you aren’t drinking around 2 liters of water a day, toxins are not leaving your system. And toxins make us sick.

Think about how many of these things we put aside and make exceptions for, and how often we do it. The compound effect of all of these is what gets us, particularly when we think that we are pushing our bodies from Halloween to New Years. It makes sense that Flu season is always in January, every year. We don’t need a flu shot, we need a more balanced life.

We only have so much of a threshold.

Enjoy the holidays but go easy after big events to let your body recalibrate. Balance is the way to health, and for sure happiness is a part of that, so everything in moderation for a healthy holiday season. 🍁 

What are some of your favorite ways to re balance?

xo