Boosting Your Immune System: Is It Possible?

(CTN News) – Infections, illnesses, and diseases are fought by the immune system, which consists of cells, tissues, and organs. Your immune recognizes and protects you against foreign invaders.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, a healthy immune stops or fights germs or foreign cells that can harm you. It makes sense to want to keep your immune system functioning at its peak.

What can you do to boost your immune system, or is boosting the immune just a concept created to market packaged foods, drinks, and supplements?

Boosting Your Immune System Claims

It’s not uncommon to see ads for products claiming to boost your immune , such as supplements.

Multiple respiratory viruses (think COVID-19, RSV, and the flu) have spread at once, making it tempting to buy into those kinds of claims – especially if they promise you won’t get sick or you’ll recover faster.

The concept of boosting or strengthening the immune  is problematic because it highlights that immunity is like a muscle we can strengthen and train with supplements.

Christine Kingsley, advanced practice registered nurse and health and wellness director at the Lung Institute in Manchester, Connecticut.

Immune System Research in the Scientific Community

The belief that nutritional supplements can strengthen the immune is a key reason why people use them, but some marketing claims are false.

Megan Meyer, PhD, a science communications consultant based in Durham, North Carolina, says it’s difficult for a supplement or food to have a significant effect on the immune system. As well, she says that an overactive system shouldn’t be a goal.

There are several elements in your immune, each of which plays a role in defending the body from harmful invaders. The immune system is composed of the following parts, according to the Cleveland Clinic:

• Cells of the white blood cell

• Nodes of lymph

• Throat

• Adenoids and tonsils

• The thymus

• Marrow of the bone

• Mucous membranes and skin

• The stomach and bowels

Although you want the system to function well, you don’t necessarily need to boost it.

Certain actions or nutrients cannot boost the immune, and there isn’t much evidence to support that claim.

Kingsley prefers to refer to it as nurturing the immune system.

This is more in line with what we currently know about how nutrition and healthy habits impact the immune system.

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