How to support your immune system through cold and flu season
By Dr. Sean Olenek, D.C. · Insight Chiropractic Health and Wellness Center, Maitland, FL
Halloween is almost here. The costumes are picked out, the candy bowl is full (and getting emptier by the day), and somewhere in your house, someone just sneezed.
When the sniffles or a small cough show up, many of us head straight to the primary care doctor and leave with antibiotics and/or steroids, plus a decongestant. Or we skip the doctor and grab a cold-and-flu combo off the drugstore shelf. Every one of those ingredients has to be processed by your liver and kidneys while your body is already busy fighting.
So I want to ask a question I think about a lot: when did we stop trusting our immune system? And have we forgotten nature’s gifts, the herbs and remedies people have used to support the body for thousands of years?
Your body knows how to find its balance
Your body is a self-regulating organism. It’s always working to restore homeostasis, its natural state of balance, and that balance isn’t a fixed point. It shifts with the seasons, your sleep, your stress, and whatever’s going around.
A cough, a runny nose, a fever, fatigue: none of these mean you’re weak, vulnerable, or broken. They’re messages from a body that’s working to find its balance again. Think of your immune system as an army that’s trained, organized, and on duty around the clock. When a cold shows up, the stuffy nose and sore throat are often signs that it’s responding, not signs that it’s losing.
We’ve been conditioned to suppress symptoms. Maybe it’s fear, maybe we’re just uncomfortable, or maybe we feel we have to push through and keep going, without ever giving our body the opportunity to fully recover and come back stronger.
Symptoms aren’t something to fear or simply silence. Learn to listen to your body calmly, not from a place of fear, and let’s teach our kids to do the same. When symptoms are uncomfortable, there are gentle ways to ease them that support your body through the process.
That’s where we focus at Insight Chiropractic Health and Wellness Center. We support your body in finding its balance and regulation, so your immune system can do its job and you can reach optimal health.
Four ways to support your body this season
You don’t need anything fancy to start. These are the things I tell patients every fall:
- Protect your sleep. Your body does a lot of its repair work while you sleep. Most adults need 7 to 9 hours.
- Move every day. Your lymphatic system, the network that carries immune cells around your body, has no pump of its own. It relies on your muscles moving. A 20-minute walk keeps things flowing, and now that Florida is finally cooling off, it’s the best time of year for it.
- Eat color. Fruits and vegetables bring the vitamins your body uses to keep its defenses ready. Aim for a few different colors on your plate every day.
- Go easy on the sugar. I’m not going to tell you to skip Halloween candy. Just don’t let the leftover bowl turn into a two-week habit.
When you do feel something coming on, rest. Taking a day to let your body work is often smarter than pushing through. And if you reach for something from the drugstore, read the labels: acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) is in many cold-and-flu combos, so it’s easy to double up without realizing it.
When to see your doctor
Listening to your body also means noticing real warning signs. Call your doctor or get care right away if you have trouble breathing, chest pain, a high fever, or symptoms that keep getting worse or last more than about 10 days.
The tools we use at Insight
Beyond the basics, these are the tools I reach for to support patients this season. Not every tool is right for every person, so we always start with a conversation.
Injectable vitamins. Given right here in the office. The menu includes Vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin, $35), Vitamin B Complex ($25), NAD⁺ ($45), and Taurine ($35).
Injectable homeopathics. Homeopathic remedies are highly diluted natural substances. Our homeopathic injections include Vitamin C ($20), Engystol ($30), and Lymphomyosot ($25), along with several others.
Herbal remedies. In a Chinese Herbal Therapy Consultation ($120), we go over your health history and put together an herbal plan that fits you.
Supplements. The ones I recommend most this time of year are vitamin C, echinacea with elderberry, and vitamin D/K2 with zinc. The research on them is encouraging but modest: vitamin C may shorten colds a little, zinc lozenges started early can help shorten a cold in adults, and echinacea and elderberry show promise in smaller studies. Supplements aren’t one-size-fits-all, especially if you’re pregnant or take other medications, so ask us before you start something new.
The boogeyman of cold and flu season shows up every year. Your body is ready for it. Let’s give it some support.
Insight Chiropractic Health and Wellness Center · 1551 Sandspur Rd, STE 101, Maitland, FL 32751 · (321) 926-2997