I’m going to get a few top tips when it comes to boosting your kid’s immune system. If we’re sending our kids to daycare or school, and they’re coming back with colds it cycles around the whole family and who has time for that! Here are six tips to really boost you and your family’s immune system to make sure that you stay on top of it.

Number one comes back to sleep. Everyone knows sleep is important, but how important is it really? we know that our body has time to heal, re-energize and recharge for the next day. If you’re not getting at least six hours of sleep at night, your body does not have time to actually recharge and repair.

Newborn babies start sleeping like 20 hours a day, and then slowly it drops as we age. As much as sometimes we feel like we need 20 hours after running around after the kids, the truth is we as adults need a lot less sleep than children to function optimally, as long as we are getting good quality sleep and not carrying around sleep debt. It’s really important to make sure that the little ones are getting age-appropriate sleep so their body can re-energize, heal and grow the way that our body was designed.

The second tip is exercise. Exercise is important in so many ways, not just to keep us healthy and keep our weight down. But more importantly, it helps regulate our sleep patterns and helps our hormones regulate so that they actually growing and thriving especially for kids, they need a hell of a lot of exercises or movement. Unfortunately with a modern society that is making us sit, stand, and stay still more than ever. Kids were designed to move, play and have fun. So making sure that we get our kids outside playing and exploring will boost their vitamin D levels as well.

The third thing you can do is diet. Diet is important in all ages and what are the things that ruin your immune system? Well, we’ll start with two, sugar and processed foods, these two hugly down-regulate the immune system. Because as sugar increases stress hormones, it actually drops our immune system. If our stress levels go up whether its chemical, emotional or physical stress the response is the same, our immune system goes down.

Making sure that we’re drinking enough water and not eating sugar at high levels is important because sugar creates inflammation throughout the body. It’s really important that we keep our diet well so that our immune system thrives, especially when it comes to the little ones. There are a few things you can do to really boost the immune system and these are cut down on sugar and on ultra-processed food. These two actually create inflammation in the body and this can disturb the immune system.

The last one is dairy if your child is complaining of bloating or aches and pains in the tummy. The first point of call is removing cow’s milk from their diet because this can create inflammation in their gut, which can be transferred all over the body, can present in rashes and constant immune issues like middle ear infections and colds due to the body fighting to remove the inflammation from the cows milk protein.

The fourth one is supplements. There are a few key supplements that can really boost our immune system including these two supplements which are known as immune modulators. These regulate how well and effectively the immune system work. The first one is Vitamin C, it is super important for how our immune system works, so making sure that we’re getting lots of fresh fruit, or even taking a supplement to really boost our immune system in those more stressful times. The second one is zinc. It is a mineral and it’s really important to make sure that we have adequate levels of zinc because it modulates the immune system. We can notice if our zinc is deficient if we’re seeing little white flecks in our fingernails, so be sure to check your kid’s fingernails because if they have little white flecks there, that means that they potentially have low levels of zinc.

The next one is Sunshine. This is so important and it comes back to vitamin D. Now, in modern society, we’re inside at our desks and computers more than ever, so we are slowly becoming more and more deficient as a society and vitamin D especially when it comes to our kids. Vitamin D boosts the immune system and is important for regulating calcium. Calcium is really important for growing strong and healthy bones. Its vital that we are seeing morning sun daily and are out in the sun multiple times per day as kids or we are having a good quality vitamin D supplement. You can pop some in their dinner if needed, but of course the real deal is best!

The last thing we can do is chiropractic care. It’s really important that we check their spine and make sure their nervous system is working well. The spine and the nerves are the only links between the brain and the body. As we grow, we have lots of falls, trips and accidents as all kids do. This puts the body under physical stress and it’s important that we get them checked. Make sure that that’s keeping their bodies growing and healthy because we’ve all been stuck at a score desk at one point in our lives and we can understand how much stress that puts on our bodies. So feel free to contact us here at unlock health to book your family check and make sure that your kid’s immune system is at an all-time high as we head into winter.

We hope you have enjoyed our top tips on how to stay healthy during this stressful time. There is a lot going on in the world right now, and the stress of these events can affect everybody.

Add in the fact that we are in the winter season, and it becomes extra critical that we keep a close eye on the health of all members of our family, especially the little ones who have vulnerable or weakened immune systems.