There are four seasons in a year - Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall – “flu season” is not one of them! As we all know, it is true that there is a time of year when you become surrounded by colleagues, friends and family who contract the flu, but that does not mean that you need to follow suit. Here are my top 5 health promoting efforts to battle “Flu Season”.

1. Keeping it simple – Wash your hands until they twinkle!
2. Hands down (no pun intended!), hand washing is one of the most effective ways to prevent cold and flu. Make sure you scrub for at least 20 seconds as it has been shown it takes that long for the soap and scrubbing action to dislodge and remove stubborn germs. Imagine singing “Happy Birthday” twice to a friend. The most common places for germs to hide are between the fingers and thumb as well as under your fingernails, so be sure to spend extra time on those places!
3. Hand washing can be harsh on your skin during the dry months of the winter. My top two hand moisturizers to counteract the drying effect of frequent hand washing are Burt’s Bees Hand Repair Cream and SKINFIX Hand Repair Cream.
4. How about hand sanitizers? I highly encourage you to avoid using them as a substitute to hand washing. Not only have they been shown to breed resistant germs, but also some contain chemicals that act as endocrine (hormone) disruptors.
5. Eat well – Be well!
6. Although seemingly basic, our food choices can make a significant impact on our ability to heal. When our body is fending off bacteria and viruses, there is an increased energy demand that can become insufficient if it is redirected to the digestive system inappropriately.
7. A quick list of foods to avoid includes:
8. Alcohol (minimize strain on the liver to enhance your ability to detoxify)
9. Dairy (can contribute and promote mucous production)
10. Sugar (after two 12oz sodas, your white bloods cells are 40% less effective at killing germs!)
11. Processed foods (avoid chemical additives and increased toxic load)
12. Packaged fruit juice (enormous amount of hidden sugar!)
13. Check for food sensitivities! This is an entire article on its own; however in short, if your immune system is challenged by an unidentified food intolerance – this will make you more susceptible to infection because the chronic inflammation makes the immune system more vulnerable to becoming overloaded.
14. Permission to Rest!
15. In today’s competitive society, most of us are expected to show up at work (or school) even if we are battling a cold/flu and sometimes are even praised for our perseverance! We need to start shifting this paradigm to help prevent illness from spreading, but also enhance our ability to recover!
16. Take your vitamins!
17. Provide your body with the basic building blocks to strengthen your immunity. I often recommend starting to take these when travelling (with increased exposure to germs) and when “cold and flu season” starts. If you are someone who is getting sick continuously, you may be deficient in one or more of the following.
18. My top 5 immune boosters are vitamin D, zinc, buffered vitamin C (“buffered” is easier on your stomach for absorption), probiotics and cod liver oil which contains vitamin A. I highly recommend getting tested to determine the doses required by your body to be therapeutic and place importance on using high quality brands as pure sources for supplementation. Probiotics in the literature: Lactobacillus and Acidophillus strains have shown a 51% reduction in days experiencing cold/flu symptoms, 33% reduction in catching a cold/flu and 30% reduction in number of days absent from work/school.
19. NOTE: do not take vitamin A or cod liver oil during pregnancy.
20. Stay healthy with herbs
21. Botanical medicine is extremely effective at not only reducing cold and flu symptoms to improve your quality of life but also helps your body battle the virus and/or bacterial infection. Herbs can be dangerous if taken inappropriately and I would encourage you to seek a naturopathic doctor’s guidance. I find Andrographis and goldenseal highly effective for acute infections and astragalus is beneficial to prevent recurrence after recovery.