How to improve immunity?

[Runum]

I've lost count of how many times I was sick last year. Over the last few months, it felt like every couple of weeks or months I came down with flu like symptoms such as a sore throat and runny nose, along with the usual fatigue.

I workout several times a week, have a visible 6-pack, eat clean, don't smoke or drink. Yet I find myself falling sick more often than people who don't even do 1/10 of the stuff I do for health and fitness.

I saw in MJ's GoalSumo.com list, one of his daily tasks is to drink a Health Elixer. Could you guys share any tips or habits that have helped you improve your overall immunity?

Right now I've started drinking lemon water first thing in the morning and taking a Centrum multivitamin with zinc tablet daily before bed.

Do you use a health tracker? It can track stress, sleep cycles, steps, training levels, HRV, etc. You my be able to identify a pattern leading you to illness.

I was having trouble with recovery after workouts. My sleep routine was in the toilet, inconsistent an ineffective. I now shut off all screen time 2 hours before bed, journal and read then bed at the same time each night. I sleep with an air filter machine on and I added flat grounding sheet to sleep on. My sleep scores and other health stats have shown a measurable improvement.

 

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[wade1mil]

Consistent micro exposure to what gets you sick. When I worked at a grocery store, I didn't get sick for a decade. I stopped working at a grocery store and I got sick a few times a year like everyone else.

 

[socaldude]

https://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/immune-support

Life Extension supplements are very good. Bryan Johnson uses them as well. Supplements are not usually touted as effective as drugs because there isn’t money to be made in supplements because you can’t patent natural substances. But there are supplements that are proprietary.

 

[Borderless CLTV]

Sleep (proper sleep - no noise, coldish environment, no blue light before bed, limited EMF near the bed, no food within a few hours), weight training, meditation, clean diet. This all helped me a lot. Then we can get into the Wim Hof stuff but that's a bit extreme for many, given how the basics are usually missed.

 

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[Xeon]

There needs to be a thread here where everyone posts their supplement stack here so that everyone can refer to it and add to their existing stack.

I'm currently taking only multivitamin and matcha tea in the morning, and protein powder (with oats and chia seeds) throughout the day. I'm looking for more stuff that can make me even stronger, healthier and more immune (excluding PEDs and steroids).

Oh, and if anyone is looking to start a multivitamin or any kind of supplement company, there seems to be a hole in the existing market : small, easy-to-swallow pills (preferably small soft gels smaller than 0.4 inches in size). Current offerings on the market are either

i) large, hard horsepills which are hard to swallow without chewing them (yucks)

ii) multivitamin gummies which has lots of sugar per gummy (and the amount of vitamins/minerals are pathetic and way fewer than normal tablets)

iii) effervescent tablets which are similar to ii) above

So many dietary suggestions have been made so far and nobody has mentioned the sun.

No thanks, because of stuff like this:

and fast-aging due to the sun.
Taking lots of Vitamin Ds will make up for lack of sun exposure.

 

[Roli]

I've lost count of how many times I was sick last year. Over the last few months, it felt like every couple of weeks or months I came down with flu like symptoms such as a sore throat and runny nose, along with the usual fatigue.

I workout several times a week, have a visible 6-pack, eat clean, don't smoke or drink. Yet I find myself falling sick more often than people who don't even do 1/10 of the stuff I do for health and fitness.

I saw in MJ's GoalSumo.com list, one of his daily tasks is to drink a Health Elixer. Could you guys share any tips or habits that have helped you improve your overall immunity?

Right now I've started drinking lemon water first thing in the morning and taking a Centrum multivitamin with zinc tablet daily before bed.

Cold works for me. If I get into a cold bath every morning I don't get sick. I started last year around August or so, I did it right through the winter. Even though my wife and daughter caught several colds and such in that period, I never once got sick. (I do smoke and drink by the way).

As soon as I slacked off, I got a sore throat and was coughing and sneezing for a week.

I'm not so regular now, but I try and do at least three times a week.

Science:

Various studies have been done, notably by a Norwegian researcher (can't remember her name), showing that the cold triggers an adipose tissue response and fires up the immune system. A similar thing was found in a Wim Hof study, whereby they found that subjects who had been exposed to the cold water techniques were able to fight of a simple virus injected into them.

Give it a try!

 

[srodrigo]

It might sound oversimplistic, but what I've found/seen mess up with immunity for people without a particular disease/auto-immune disorder is:

1. Unbalanced diet lacking vitamins, minerals, etc and featuring fat. - Nothing like a Mediterranean (or similar) diet, despite mainstream influencers trying to make bank from making people unhealthy giving BS diet advice. Just observe and see who lives 85+ with good overall health, people who it this way, or Keto bros eating greasy ribs.
2. Lack of exercise - It's proven that exercise boosts the immune system.
3. Stress - I see people getting sick all the time when they are over-stressed. Stress hormones mess up with the immune system badly.

Avoid all 3 and you should have an edge. #NotMedicalAdvice

 

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[Borderless CLTV]

It might sound oversimplistic, but what I've found/seen mess up with immunity for people without a particular disease/auto-immune disorder is:

1. Unbalanced diet lacking vitamins, minerals, etc and featuring fat. - Nothing like a Mediterranean (or similar) diet, despite mainstream influencers trying to make bank from making people unhealthy giving BS diet advice. Just observe and see who lives 85+ with good overall health, people who it this way, or Keto bros eating greasy ribs.
2. Lack of exercise - It's proven that exercise boosts the immune system.
3. Stress - I see people getting sick all the time when they are over-stressed. Stress hormones mess up with the immune system badly.

Avoid all 3 and you should have an edge. #NotMedicalAdvice

#3 is the hardest though. Stress is this ethereal thing that we can't quite measure like the other two. I suffer from it as well.

 

[The Racing Driver]

My daily drink...

Tumeric
Black pepper
Soluble fiber (acacia usually)
Resveratrol
Spirulina (the biggest ingredient)
Ashwaganda
Vitamin D drops
Fisetin

I continue to add to it as long as I can stomach it.

All of this is mixed up in a base of prebiotic dragon-fruit, pomegranate juice and electrolytes with water-- one hellish taste! Actually I don't mind it, although it makes my wife want to vomit.

Thanks for the ingredients MJ!

Turmeric, Black Pepper and Vitamin D have been a staple part of my diet. I've recently started taking Ashwaganda on @socaldude's recommendation and am feeling some improvements. I'll admit I've never even heard of some of the other ingredients, but they sound interesting and I'm going to check them out.

 

[socaldude]

Turmeric, Black Pepper and Vitamin D have been a staple part of my diet. I've recently started taking Ashwaganda on @socaldude's recommendation and am feeling some improvements. I'll admit I've never even heard of some of the other ingredients, but they sound interesting and I'm going to check them out.

I take the proprietary version of Ashwaganda, which is KSM-66. It's not even expensive, I paid like $10 for a bottle on sale for a 2 month supply. I take 600mg a day.

According to Ayurvedic medicine, the root(rhizome) is the beneficial part of the plant.

SHR-5 is the proprietary version of Rhodiola. Although I've never seen it for sale anywhere.

Clinical trial of Rhodiola rosea L. extract SHR-5 in the treatment of mild to moderate depression - PubMed

#3 is the hardest though. Stress is this ethereal thing that we can't quite measure like the other two. I suffer from it as well.

I would notice that if I felt stress, I would crave sugar, alcohol or a cigarette. Now my patience, self-control, focus and tranquility is astronomical.

Depression and ADHD is probably just neuro-inflammation/neuro-degeneration damage from the high cortisol and self-destruction.

 

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[socaldude]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_YR0lgsLY&t=170s


Quercetin is also a very good supplement for immune.

 

[Simon Angel]

I usually get sick if I'm really stressed and lacking in sleep.

However, I also used to have a lower-than-average WBC (white blood cell count), which is pretty much the biggest factor in how often you get sick and how you handle infections.

But after recovering from covid in March 2022, I've been taking cold showers every single day and my WBC is nearly DOUBLE what it used to be. For context, my WBC was lowish for quite a few years, so that was my normal AND I've made no other changes.

Last week was the first time I'd been sick since covid – because both my girlfriend and my mother, whom I was visiting, were coughing and sneezing all over the place.

There IS scientific evidence that cold showers boost your white blood cell count. Google "cold showers white blood cell count" and "cold showers lymphocytes".

But there's also an interesting story...

Many, many years ago a famous Roman botanist called Antonius Musa helped a very young and very ill Augustus Caesar recover with cold compresses and baths.

Augustus Caesar, plagued by chronic illnesses throughout his childhood and early adulthood, used to be so ill at the time that Rome's enemies mocked him and did not take him seriously at all – probably because their spies told them things were looking dire for the young emperor.

He recovered, obviously, and ordered a statue to be erected in the center of Rome to honor the healer. He also promoted him to "equities" or "knight" which was only second to the Senate in the Roman hierarchy.

Oh, and he made all Roman doctors exempt from taxes.

A friend of mine got this from a book, but there's some info online, too:

Antonius Musa was a Greek botanist and the Roman Emperor Augustus's physician; Antonius was a freedman who received freeborn status along with other honours.

When the emperor was seriously ill, and had been made worse by a hot regimen and treatment, B. C. 23, Antonins Musa succeeded in restoring him to health by means of cold bathing and cooling drinks, for which service he received from Augustus and the senate a large sum of money and the permission to wear a gold ring, and also had a statue erected in his honour near that of Aesculapius by public subscription. (Dio Cass. l.c. ; Schol. ad Horat. Epist. 1.15. 3; Sneton. August. 59, 81; Plin. Nat. 19.38, 25.38, 29.5.) He seems to have been attached to this mode of treatment, to which Horace alludes l.c.), but failed when he applied it to the case of M. Marcellus, who died under his care a few months after the recovery of Augustus, B. C. 23. (Dio Cass. l.c.)

The emperor likely suffered from a liver abscess or typhoid fever.

So Augustus recovered with cold therapy but his nephew didn't.

Unexpectedly, Marcellus fell ill and died in Baiae in 23 BCE. As often happens in such unexpected situations, there were voices about the assassination. There were rumors that Livia had poisoned Marcellus. This version of events was supported by the boy’s mother, Octavia. Most likely, however, the reason for the death was natural. Marcellus became ill with an infection of the upper respiratory tract, which was unskilfully tried to heal. Hydrotherapy (cold baths) was fashionable at that time, which only accelerated the development of the disease and led to death. Octavian, despite his family tragedy, kept searching for his successor.

Interestingly, there are quite a few disagreements when it comes to what they were actually afflicted by. Some sources state that Augustus Caesar likely had a liver abscess or typhoid fever while in the paragraph above it's stated that Marcellus, his nephew, suffered from an upper respiratory infection.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, has this to say:

That year, an illness was spreading in Rome which afflicted both Augustus and Marcellus. Augustus caught it earlier in the year, while Marcellus caught it later, after the emperor had already recovered. The illness proved fatal and killed Marcellus at Baiae, in Campania, Italy.

So what's the truth? Who knows, this happened 2000 years ago, lol.

But it looks like cold therapy isn't as novel as people perceive it to be.

Medician Antonius Musa « IMPERIUM ROMANUM

In the times of the first emperor - Octavian Augustus, the princeps himself was highly appreciated by a medic, a certain Antonius Musa.

imperiumromanum.pl

Marcellus (nephew of Augustus) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Marcellus - Augustus' nephew « IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Marcus Claudius Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus. The emperor saw in the boy his successor, whom he carefully prepared for the future role.

imperiumromanum.pl

 

[Tyrhanosis]

I've lost count of how many times I was sick last year. Over the last few months, it felt like every couple of weeks or months I came down with flu like symptoms such as a sore throat and runny nose, along with the usual fatigue.

I workout several times a week, have a visible 6-pack, eat clean, don't smoke or drink. Yet I find myself falling sick more often than people who don't even do 1/10 of the stuff I do for health and fitness.

I saw in MJ's GoalSumo.com list, one of his daily tasks is to drink a Health Elixer. Could you guys share any tips or habits that have helped you improve your overall immunity?

Right now I've started drinking lemon water first thing in the morning and taking a Centrum multivitamin with zinc tablet daily before bed.

I was in your situation last year.

I currently follow the works by someone whom many deride as a quack - Medical Medium. Whether he is a quack or not is up to you to decide. From my experience he is legitimate.

He says that many pathogens like hidden, unidentified variants of Epstein-Barr virus are responsible for making us ill. Doctors are unable to cure patients for many conditions because they have no idea what is actually going on in your body (even alternative ones in many events are clueless).

I suggest you check him out. (Just google "Medical Medium")

Since the Internet is full of these types of people these days, I'll say this preemptively: I'm not a shill for him. You'll notice no affiliate link. I am speaking from experience as I had a very serious episode of illness that lasted 5 months in 2023, and it was his advice that helped restore me to health. I've been on the alternative health treadmill for over ~4 years, gone through countless books about "what to do," and he is, by far, a cut above the rest.

As for immunity boosts, a combination of Vitamin C (with rose hips - don't take the pure ascorbic acid version) with honey and squeezed lemon, zinc, quercetin, cat's claw, curcumin, elderberry, and some other ones I can't remember off the top of my head.

If you have the time, I would suggest reading at least one of his books. There, you will learn why certain foods will make you more ill - eggs, gluten, soy, dairy, etc. just to name a few. (Ever wonder why there's been an explosion in "food sensitivity" in the past 50 years?)

You will learn the true reason why so many people tend to "feel better" once they eliminate problem foods - it's not because they have an inherent/inborn allergic reaction. It's a much more insidious reason.

Yes these supplements are all very expensive...but so is losing your health. Choose wisely.

 

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[FierceRacoon]

Had a period like that and spoke to a couple doctors.

It turned out, immunity is a very complex topic. For example, if I understood correctly, there was some recent research how a certain vitamin B (forgot which one) is used to make a marker to mark the invading bacteria to be later destroyed by the leicocytes. Then the deficiency in this vitamin B can lead to the body being unable to produce enough markers and mark the invaders quickly enough to destroy them, even if the body is otherwise perfectly capable of destroying them.

In other words, if a person is getting sick frequently, a zillion different things can be going on, and without conducting a thorough investigation it's impossible to say if, in fact, there's anything wrong with the immune system per se, and if so, what it is. I also learned that lots of people can be getting a cold 6, 9 or 12 times a year and/or have colds for 1 or 2 or 3 weeks, even if they used to have a lower number, and it doesn't always mean there's something awfully wrong with them; there's some variation in how the viruses mutate, etc.

Some things I learned from advice/experience:
- you can't build up the immunity when you are in the middle of a sickness. Definitely not by stressing yourself. That is, don't start doing cold showers while you have a cold unless you are an ultra-athlete and know what you are doing.

- if after a year you reduce the length of your colds from 2 weeks to 1 week or from 15/year to 7/year, whether you do it by exercise, supplements, or it happens naturally, this is great progress. Even if it took less time for things to get worse. And especially don't interpret it as "immunodeficiency" and don't do anything drastic; it's just frequent colds (or flus, or sinus infections).
A real problem would be if every time you have a flu you end up in the emergency room because you can't recover.

- sometimes disease is opportunistic: the body is weakened by something. Then you can get sick more often. Getting enough sleep, eating enough food (!) and drinking enough water are the first things to fix. Before worrying about diet ensure you plainly eat enough calories. Then you can check stress and air quality.

And if you keep getting stressed while you are sick, then sometimes you may get a secondary infection at the same time. (And, by the way, you can get vaxinated from things like pneumonia.)

- people in certain professions including entrepreneurship can sometimes wear themselves out to the point that the immune system does get compromised and you need special shots, but that is uncommon, and a good period of rest (a couple months?) should fix most problems.

- sometimes disease is environmental to some extent. It can be mold in a house, or it can be a certain personal anatomy leading to frequent sinus infections. Certain environments can make everyone sick. Try to look for patterns. Sometimes people make themselves sick by their health practices: using and not cleaning a humidifier, using a neti pot with unclean water (search about brain-eating amoebas in neti pots), adopting an exercise routine that is not appropriate for the person's fitness level.

If you are staying sick at home, ventilating the room and letting some fresh air in reduces the concentration of pathogens in the air. If you are not doing it, that's an environmental issue, not the problem of the body's resistance. Gargling a saline solution (or another agent) to prevent an inflection (of the throat/ear) is, in a way, also an environmental intervention. (And there are more effective things like miramistine.)

- you can certainly do a blood panel and see if there's something terribly wrong or if you have some acute vitamin deficiency. (Vitamin deficiencies aren't always easily solved by supplements as sometimes they are caused by the body not absorbing some substances.)

- there's some evidence you can build up immunity, but again, first get well from the current stretch. Which generally just means, eat well (and enough of it), sleep well, take it easy for some time.

 

[Subsonic]

Reading this I see lots of people reccomending lots of different things based on anecdotal evidence.
That's fine and a legitimate way to present evidence for someone who can't conduct actual studies.

However the only common threads I've noticed are
1. Cold exposure
2. Vitamin D
3. Exercise

To me that's a green flag for those. If several different people from all over the world have anecdotal evidence for something and nothing to gain by recommending it, it's likely there's something to it.

 

[The Racing Driver]

Reading this I see lots of people reccomending lots of different things based on anecdotal evidence.
That's fine and a legitimate way to present evidence for someone who can't conduct actual studies.

However the only common threads I've noticed are
1. Cold exposure
2. Vitamin D
3. Exercise

To me that's a green flag for those. If several different people from all over the world have anecdotal evidence for something and nothing to gain by recommending it, it's likely there's something to it.

I get a reasonably good amount of #2 and #3. With cold exposure are you talking about cold showers or even exposure to cold weather?

For me, exposure to cold weather has gotten me sick, especially when I last walked in cold rain, I woke up the next day with cold symptoms and became more sick in the days after.

I used to be deficient in Vitamin D, until I did a blood test nearly 8 years ago for something. The Doctor gave me a course of medicines to increase my Vitamin D levels. Since then I've fallen sick way less, and blood tests I've done years later show no deficiency. I would add that getting blood test done can reveal a lot of underlying issues.

 

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[Visida]

Moderate physical activity can help improve overall health and strengthen the immune system. Try adding more intense exercise or sports, such as running, swimming or yoga, to your daily routine. Regular and quality sleep plays a key role in maintaining immunity. Try to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night, create a cozy bedroom environment, and avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed.

 

[Visida]

Include more fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs and protein foods in your diet. Eating a diet rich in vitamins and minerals helps support the immune system.
Continue to exercise, but be sure to ensure adequate recovery after exercise. Regular moderate physical activity helps strengthen the immune system.