How to Stay Sane and Boost Your Immunity Without Supplements During COVID-19

I’ve had many questions from patients about how to support their immune system to resist COVID-19. A healthy, low sugar, nutrient dense diet and regular exercise are obvious. However, many of my supplement recommendations are sold out because they’re well known immune supports or anti-virals. So, what is one to do if supplements aren’t accessible (or even if they are) to boost your immune system’s resistance to COVID-19?

This dovetails into the question about how to stay sane during all the changes that COVID-19 has brought to our lives.   The reason these two questions are related is that stress hormones suppress our immune system’s ability to fight foreign invaders, like viruses. If you’ve been feeling anxious, stressed, worried, or afraid of COVID-19 or of how this will impact your life and society, you’ve likely been pumping out some excess cortisol and adrenaline, even if you’re not aware of it.  Elevated stress hormones suppress the immune system, plain and simple. Why? Because if your body thinks you’re running from a tiger (the original intent of stress hormones), then all non-essential processes are shut down (the immune system, detoxification, digestion, and certain brain functions). All the body’s blood, energy, and nutrients are reserved for your muscles to help you run from that tiger.   My point is, your utmost priority in keeping your immune system healthy, should be to manage your stress level and negative emotions, not taking supplements. 

You may be thinking, how in the world can I do that amidst everything that’s going on?  It’s doable, and if you put one or more of the below practices in place, you may even come out of this chaos healthier, and with a new habit to sustain you through other life stressors.  Below are my favorite stress and emotional relief strategies. Some of them can even be used to rewire your brain, so that it’s less likely to go into a stress response in the first place! If you have chronic illness of any kind, that should be a major goal of yours!

1. FasterEFT: This is a system that utilizes tapping and other ways of interrupting the negative emotional patterns we get into whether they be fear, anger, depression, guilt, shame, you name it.  You can use it for anything you’re experiencing that’s not pleasant, physical symptoms too. Here are some free guided sessions designed to help you with the thoughts and emotions you’re experiencing around COVID-19.  These sessions use tapping and talking to interrupt your emotional patterning, but there are LOTS of other ways to do this if tapping and talking don’t work for you! If you need help using this technique, whether for COVID-19-related stress or for something else going on in your life, I can help! If you have questions about this technique, or how it’s more effective than regular EFT, let me know! If you have a chronic illness, and want to know how to use this technique for that, please reach out to me!

   Here are the free, guided sessions:

   • With Pat Studstill 

   • With Pat Wright: general emotion from COVID-19 

   • With Pam Wright: fear of financial instability from COVID-19 

2. Meditation: I highly recommend you spend at least an hour daily (or two!) with a guided meditation for the most effective results in shifting your emotional state and stress hormones. 

   • My favorite guided meditations are by Dr. Joe Dispenza*.  His “Morning and Evening Meditations” are a great introduction as they’re short, and are a great way to start and end your day in a calm state.  However, I also strongly suggest his longer meditations: “Tuning Into New Potentials” and “Blessing of the Energy Centers 1”. Each of them encourages you to access a POSITIVE emotional state, and fully shift your brain wave state and thus your biochemistry (including lowering stress hormones!)  

     1. If you’re confused about any aspect of his guided meditations, I HIGHLY recommend you read these two books of his, to learn how the brain-body connection really works, and how to harness this for your health and wellbeing.

        1. You Are the Placebo Effect

        2. Becoming Supernatural

   • Other meditation resources that I recommend for guided meditations: 

     1. Balance App (free for a year right now)

     2. Calm App

     3. Headspace App

3. Start a gratitude practice: 

   • A gratitude practice is to be utilized EVERY day, at least once daily, AND every time you find yourself spinning out or in a negative emotional state about something. 

   • The key to doing this effectively is to FEEL the gratitude in your body when you practice.  That’s how you know that the biochemical changes are occurring and calming down your nervous system. 

   • To implement this practice, make a list of at least 5 things that you’re really grateful for right now. Close your eyes and envision all the wonderful things about each of these aspects of your life, and truly feel how happy you are about those things in your body (maybe you feel warm, fuzzy sensations, or a peace come over your body).   Try to maintain the positive emotions & sensations for a few minutes, for each of the 5 things you’re grateful for.

   • If you’re really struggling to think of things in your present life to be grateful for, then in your mind’s eye revisit a really happy or peaceful memory.  Make it as real as you can in your mind, as if you’re there now. Feel how you felt then emotionally, and in your body. Stay with that vision and feeling for 5 minutes if you can.  You can also envision a really positive future reality that you would like to come true, as if it has already come true! Picture that you’re there in your mind, and feel the emotions you’re feeling in that moment and how it makes you feel in your body.

4. Have FUN every day (and every time you find yourself in a negative state):

   • Have a dance party in your living room to your favorite playlist!

     1. Or here’s a group that does dance/exercise group classes.

   • Have a Facetime call with your best friends or family

   • Do laughter yoga! Or watch a video of babies laughing on Youtube and laugh along!

     1. Bianca Spears Session 1

     2. Bianca Spears Session 2 

   • Watch funny YouTube videos that make you laugh out loud

   • Play a board game or card game with your family

   • Play with your kids or pets

   • Take a walk and smell all the flowers in bloom!

I hope this helps you to find some grounding, peace, and even joy during this time of change and uncertainty. If you have any questions or would like more guidance with any of these practices, please reach out to me or Alder Family Medicine, and book a telemedicine visit. I’m here to help.

*While I use Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations myself, and find them very beneficial, I do not benefit financially in any way by recommending them to you. I also have no financial relationship with any of the meditation apps recommended. All other linked recommended resources are free!