How to Avoid the Holiday Health Monster

As the holiday season arrives and people start gearing up for all of the festivities, a familiar and unwelcome friend comes along to test our immune systems. So, before you pick up that champagne and coffee for some late night partying, there are some things to remember about your health to avoid any unseen attacks.

Influenza, more commonly referred to as the flu, comes onto the scene this time each year, slipping in just before the holiday hustle and bustle takes off. With there being no cure for the flu, and no guarantees from a yearly flu shot, we should fall back onto the best defense that we have, equipping our own bodies for the fight.

The single best way to prepare our health is to take care of our diet. Valerie Green, from the Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy, has said that some of the best tools for our immune systems are right in the grocery store. A few good choices are in the bright colored fruits and vegetables category. Green said that cranberries, blueberries, tomatoes, carrots, and spinach, to name a few, are all high in antioxidants, which protect immune cells from environmental assaults and speed up the production of white blood cells. Zinc is also very important, and can be found in cheese and legumes. For your necessary beta carotene, eat dark leafy greens, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. And then of course there is the always important vitamin C, which we can find in peppers, tomatoes, leafy greens, citrus fruits, bananas, and berries.

Another dietary recommendation came out of a study conducted by researchers from the University of California at Davis, in which yogurt was shown to have a positive association with preventing colds and the flu. In a group of people who ate a cup of yogurt everyday for a year compared with a group that ate no yogurt, those that consumed it experienced fewer incidences of coughing, colds and wheezing. In another study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the benefits of tomatoes were highlighted when a group of subjects consuming a tomato-rich diet had 38 percent less free radical damage to their white blood cells than when they were consuming no tomatoes.

There are several reasons why we are more prone to getting the flu in the wintertime, and understanding these reasons can help us work through them. Inevitably, as the colder air comes in, we spend more and more time indoors with the heater on. Ellen Potthoff, spokesperson for the California Association of Naturopathic Physicians, said that indoor heaters produce a dry heat that dries out the mucous membranes which line the respiratory tract, nose, mouth, and lungs, thus leaving the body more open to infections. On the flip side, over consumption of dairy foods promote the overproduction of mucous in the respiratory tract, which can support the growth of bacteria and viruses as well. Most of all, it is during the holiday time that diets tend to be worse, leaving people prime targets for sickness.

Potthoff offers the following suggestions for staying healthy: at the first sign of illness, slow down immediately and rest to prevent the illness from taking hold. Be sure to get a full night sleep every night and decrease consumption of alcohol, coffee, and sugar because these weaken the immune defenses, leaving your body less able to fend off invaders. Viruses are passed by touch, so be sure to wash your hands frequently and keep your fat intake low because this will help keep your heart and immune system healthy.