Boosting Immunity Before Flu Season - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Cold and flu season is almost here, are you ready, here it comes. We all want to stay healthy, of course, that makes more sense of the world, does not it. It is difficult to do, it is difficult to do in a busy busy world, it difficult to do in a world that has doorknobs. It is difficult to do in a world that has children, those little walking petri dishes that go to preschool and come back. Yeah, I know all about that one. So the best thing you can do to keep yourself health through the cold and flu season is to really make sure your immune system is on high alert. In order to do that there are a couple things, key things that we need to be careful of. Unfortunately what happens at the same time cold and flu season hit? Holidays, what happens at holidays? Sugar right, the key thing that we can do is really reduce sugar and increase those vegetables and fruit. So if you really want something sweet, go for a piece of fruit, start there. Hard to convince the kids to do that I know, particularly with Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and Chanukah and all of these things happening all at the same time. They all have to do with cookies, right, cookies and candy and trick or treating. So, minimize that, if you can find ways to trade out candy with the kids. So I heard this really great option of the Halloween candy fairy who comes during the night of Halloween after everybody is done trick or treating and if the kids leave out a certain amount of candy the Halloween fairy collects that and replaces it with a toy. So you can actually start saving teeth and your sanity so you do not have that sugar woo and crash for the next week after Halloween. Anyway so, immune boosting, what you really want to do, reduce amount of sugar intake, reduce amount of caffeine intake, reduce amount of alcohol intake. I am not saying eliminate it, I am saying reduce it. Package those things with meals so their not held completely separate. It is not something you do by itself in the middle of the day or right before bed. You want to make sure that it is part of a meal so if your going to have that glass of wine, have it with dinner. If your going to have that piece of trick or treat candy, have it right after dinner or have it in the lunch box. So that it is part of that meal or snack, it is not stand alone. Other things you can do are really again, increase your fruit and vegetables which is where a lot of your antioxidants come from. So you want vitamin C, you want vitamin A, you want vitamin D. Vitamin D is really, really important. Make sure you get those blood work, that on your blood work the next time you go to your doctor's office. Really important to know what that level is. Ways, you do not need to spend a lot of money on supplements, not really important, it is important to have a really good foundation though. So if you can take a very high quality, food based multivitamin and mineral that is going to cover 90% of your bases to make sure that all of those little holes are plugged in that you might be missing in a diet, even a diet that is really, really well put together. So think about those little things, make sure you get enough sleep, make sure you get enough water, we talked about water intake in other videos. Make sure that you get some time to relax. If that time to relax has a glass of wine attached to it, make sure it is got a snack attached to it too. Breath, have fun, do not get paranoid, wash your hands, and enjoy your holidays.