Tag Archives: immunity

Supporting the Immune System through Diet

Here’s the link for my blog post on the Physio & Therapies website. It focuses on the changes you can make to your diet to help support your health through the COVID pandemic and beyond.

Healthy Eating Helps
Healthy plant foods are colourful. These colours are created by polyphenols – important inflammation-fighting compounds that are part of the immune system’s toolbox.

Microbial Diversity and The Sun

We all know the benefits of being out in the sun. It gives us a high dose of (crucial-to-our-health) vitamin D, which is important for our mood, energy, sleep, bone health, immunity, etc, etc. It’s such a vital vitamin that if we don’t get enough of it, we really feel the consequences. Sadly, these days, it’s known that just about everyone in the UK is vitamin D deficient (or has suboptimal levels), probably a consequence of the amount of time we spend indoors, but also our diet and lifetstyles.

What I didn’t know is, vitamin D status is also related to the balance of the microbiome. Three exposures to outdoor light per week significantly increased serum vitamin D levels, but additionally, microbiome diversity. And in the winter, vitamin D supplementation worked as a good alternative to outdoor exposure.

This is great news, because microbiome diversity, like good vitamin D status, is connected with better health outcomes.

You can learn more about the study here:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.02410/full

It’s important, however, to check your vitamin D status before supplementing. Vitamin D at too high levels can be toxic.

Get in touch with your GP, or a health practitioner qualified in nutrition, who will be able to help advise you on testing and correct dosing.