10 Easy Ways to Boost Your Immunity

By Mary Ellen Strote

If someone asked you what kind of immune system you wanted, you'd probably say one that's tough as nails, a real fighting machine. But be careful what you wish for. "You don't want to strengthen your immunity as much as you want to optimize it," says Lee Berk, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine.

In other words, your self-defense system needs to be strong enough to keep bacteria and viruses from entering your body and multiplying, and to re-establish health when disease does gain a foothold. But your immune response can be too powerful. When that happens, your immune system can mistake your own tissues for invaders, causing autoimmune illnesses like allergies or lupus. So rather than picturing your immune system as a mighty battalion of warriors fending off disease, picture it instead as a 911 dispatcher whose job is to communicate with your body's other watchdog systems, especially the hormones from your endocrine system and the brain chemicals from your nervous system.

You probably know that avoiding stress can improve immunity, but there are also plenty of less obvious ways. "We're still in the horse-and-buggy era of understanding how the immune system works," Berk says, "but we do have a few pieces of the puzzle. Research shows that when you do simple, everyday activities that make you feel good, you also stay healthier. This is a case of science catching up with intuition." Here are 10 of those ways.

1 Go out and mingle

Your immune system likes it when you spend time with friends. "We have phenomenal data showing the value of nurturing, social support and camaraderie," says neurologist Barry Bittman, M.D., CEO of the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, Pa. In one such study, researchers exposed people to a cold virus and then monitored how many contacts those people had with friends, family, co-workers and members of church and community groups. The more social contacts the people had -- and the more diverse the contacts -- the less likely they were to catch the cold. Touch is important too: Giving or getting hugs or other forms of touch can boost the activity of the natural killer cells that seek out and destroy cancer cells or cells that have been invaded by viruses.