Podcast Transcript:
Hello and welcome. This is Dr Alison with Little Black Bag Medicine, and today’s podcast slash YouTube video is going to be talking about supporting your immune system. Now of course, you know that the CDC says nothing can prevent, cure, treat or heal except for drugs and surgery. So I’m not going to sit here and say that anything is going to heal you. I see a lot of my favorite essential oil memes like Becky, shut up. Oils aren’t going to protect us or heal us. And you know what, that’s absolutely true.
But we can talk about using food and nutrition supplements and even oils to support our body’s innate healing processes. So think about when you get a cut or you scrape your arm. You could tell I’m home with the kids because I’m like, everybody’s getting cut. Everybody’s falling down right now. We’re using a lot of things to support the body’s ability to heal.
Your skin heals. Our body can heal, but it has to have the proper tools, the ability to do that. And my main concern right now for you, for me, for my health, for your health, is those who are immune-compromised, those who have autoimmune conditions, members of our family, those who have gut health compromised because we are at risk. We can go into the list of everybody who’s at risk right now. And that’s a lot of people.
So how can we best prepare our bodies to be able to handle whatever comes at us? Right? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
The first thing I want to start with is gut health because it is one of our main protection lines against foreign invaders. So our mouth, all of our intestines and our stomach, has its own immune system and defense line, which is secretory IGA.
And we can actually test for that with the stool tests through diagnostic solutions, which is the GI map, which is wonderful because we can say, here’s why you’re getting constant infections because we can really figure out, and even saliva tests, we’ll test that in the mouth as well.
Where do we start with gut health? Number one is always food, right? So what can you do right now is actually make a lot of soups, a lot of bone broth, a lot of healing foods, a lot of vegetables, and really freeze your foods. And that way you can make large batches, small batches and have it left over because I know things are going down at the grocery store. So we need to make sure that we are prepared and soups are a great way to do that. And they’re easier type day just so it won’t inflame your gut as much.
And it’s also going to be supportive for that Secretory IgA. Now when you can, watch for food sensitivities, so I don’t know about you, but when I get stuck home, snow days or we’re out on vacation, I’m like screw it. We’re going to get all of the things. Let’s have French toast with bread. Let’s have all of the chocolate. Let’s go out and eat all the Oreos, right? This is my time. And it’s really hard when you are sitting at home, not snap constantly. So we have to watch for those food sensitivities. So while you’re out, really remember what your body is sensitive to do your best because we don’t want to inflame your gut anymore because we want to be protective.
Now we, like a lot of people are reading down on sugar right now and that’s true, but I really want to talk about food sensitivities because it’s going to inflame your immune system. It’s going to take up a lot of its attention instead of being able to focus on what it needs to do, which is supporting the rest of your body against foreign invaders.
Okay, now probiotics, awesome, right? This is absolutely what we need right now. So I like doTERRA’s PB Assist and they have their capsules for adults, but they also have PB Assist jr. And I’m opening the pack right now. And what it is is a pixie stick essentially, and it dissolves in your mouth, but it’s also encapsulated so that way it does make it to your large intestine.
Now remember, if you do have a problem with probiotics that you might have SIBO and you might need to take something that doesn’t have prebiotic or inulin in it. So always just make sure if what’s going on with your body.
The other thing that I really like for gut health is called RepairVite by Apex. And what I like about it, it has enzymes in it for digestion but it also has glutamine, licorice, and aloe Vera gel because that’s going to slow down inflammation. It’s going to quelch it, it is going to help your body recover and it’s going to help with if you have pain, digestive issues, things like that. It also has marshmallow extract, slippery Elm, Spanish Moss extract and calendula. And those are my favorite herbs to help soothe irritation to support digestion. And this is a powder so you can put this in water.
My favorite thing that happened with this product, cause I was actually at a seminar, I was in a lot of pain because I was having a colitis flare up and I was trying to decide if I was going to leave or not. And my good friend Victor said, here, take this, take this repair, buy it, put four scoops in your water and drink it down right now.
And it took a few minutes, but the pain went away. I was able to sit, I was not running to the bathroom all the time and it was so supportive. That is something that I incorporated every day and I want my patients to do every day as well.
Collagen is also very good for supporting the immune system. A lot of people put it in their shakes, some people will put it in their copy. I don’t care how you do it, just get it in your body. And if you struggle with digestion, you struggle breaking things down. Choosing a protein powder that has the amino acids already broken down might be better for you. So there’s lots of different proteins, there’s lots of different supplements. You might be the person who needs things already broken down into the smallest available protein so that way you can digest and absorb it without increasing pain. So that’s just something for you to think about as we’re talking about your immune system and how your digestive system is able to function.
Okay. I want to talk about stress and sleep because those are super important. For the immune system because if you’re not sleeping, you’re going to flare up your cortisol, which is going to affect your immune system. And then, of course, you’re going to grab sugar and coffee, which is going to hurt you more. So I want you to eat consistently throughout the day. If you’re not already doing this. But there’s been a lot of my patients that I’ve been talking to who feel bad about eating cause they don’t want to waste food right now. They’re worried about being in isolation. Don’t do that. There are plenty of stores, there’s plenty of groceries. They’re still shipping food to your house if you need to do that.
So eat your breakfast, lunch, dinner, have your snacks because eating consistently will help maintain your blood sugar, which will support your cortisol, which means you’re going to sleep through the night. Okay.
The other thing is that we need to cut way back on alcohol because it’s also going to affect your sleep, your liver, cortisol, and your immune system. We want to make sure that everything is functioning well so your immune system has a chance to be healthy.
The other thing that I really like to use for stress is doTERRA’s new calming blend capsules, which is the Adaptiv line. If you take two of them before that letter, even with dinner, it helps support the brain and its ability to create neurotransmitters and calming ones as well. And it has saffi flower and GABAA in it as well. And a couple other herbs and oils so that way you can get the rest calm your brain, quiet.
Those thoughts, especially if you’re in fear, panic, worry, uncertainty, certainty mode, which is okay. That’s all right to feel that way. But we also need to sleep. So using oils, even in the diffuser, talk out my Pinterest boards. I have a ton of how to get some good night’s sleep diffuser recipes. I love like black spruce, vetiver, wild orange, balance oil, whisper. There’s so many. And when it comes to sleep and oils, don’t hesitate to try different ones because it takes kind of a while, not a long time, but it might take awhile for you to figure out what oils and what blends work best for you in your body. Let’s talk a little bit more about essential oils because we can talk about how they support the immune system. I have been diffusing a lot of cinnamon, eucalyptus, clove. A lot of people are reaching for their on guard blend as well to diffuse that is awesome.
You can take the on guard capsules to support as a daily immune defense. And also I love putting oils in my washing machine for my clothes because we’re doing a lot of sanitation and we also to make sure that our clothes are clean or coats are clean, backpacks are cleaned, shoes are clean. There’s so much to think about. And we definitely clean with essential oils. And I have been spraying all of the doorknobs and all of the everything that we touch a lot like the sinks and the counters and things. And just leaving it on there because we can show that even like with bleach and sanitizing wipes that the longer that those cleaning agents, they on the surfaces, the longer it has to clean and keep it clean. So I’m doing that consistently throughout the day. I’m just leaving it on there.
You don’t even have to wipe them down. Just keep spraying everything down will be really, really helpful for you.
So lastly, let’s talk about nutrition. Because I went to Target to pick up some additional support and the end, all of the supplements were gone. I couldn’t believe it. The very specific ones, which tells me that people are kind of knowing what they’re doing but also just super stressed out and grabbing the first thing that they see.
So when it comes to nutrition supplements, nothing is going to beat food. We have to go back to talking about vegetables. And I know it’s super annoying, but check out the podcast that I did this week as well with Adrienne Swanson with Tastefully Simple, because we talked a lot about planning, prepping meals, incorporating vegetables, adding your kid’s involvement into cooking to make it fun. So if you’re used to eating out, you’re not sure about cooking.
If you’re like my daughter who makes tik tok’s complaining that Oh, she has to eat chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes and broccoli, again, she’s gonna lose her mind. We can incorporate different foods, we can have a lot of fun with us. So food is most important. Supplements are second.
You cannot supplement a bad diet.
And I know we all wish we could just eat junk food all day and take our pills, but we can’t. So food number one, number two, don’t forget to freeze your food and soup. So whatever you get. We overbought oranges cause that was my son’s favorite food right now. And so we just actually sealed them and put them in the freezer and they’re actually turning out really good. So they’re lasting a lot longer and they’re not going bad. All right. So as far as supplements go, I really liked doTERRA’s lifelong vitality, which you can see right behind me here if you’re watching the video because it has everything from whole food has vitamins, minerals, Omega, those healthy fats plus essential oils plus antioxidants.
So you’re getting everything in one package.
And what I loved about it is that when you look at all the ingredients and usually when I have someone show me their medicine cabinet or supplement cabinet, they have 800 different bottles in there. They’re not sure what they’re taking. Well this combines it down to three bottles and it’s so much cheaper, but it’s also more effective. It’s effective immune effective. Okay. So that’s my number one favorite supplement. If you’re going to do anything, do that because that way you’re not taking 500 different things that are from different companies. It might not work together and they money, you might even not be whole food. Right?
When we’re talking about specific nutrition, vitamins or minerals vitamin D and a are really, really supportive obviously for the immune system. For lung health Vitamin a is incredibly important for respiratory health.
Now I hate saying that because everybody’s instinct is, Oh, I’ll just go out and grab a bottle of A and I’ll be just fine when that’s not necessarily true because all of our vitamins have cofactors to them that are found in food. And just taking out one cofactor, like vitamin a does not mean that you’re going to get all the support you need from it. So like vitamin C is awesome and that’s the number one thing flying off the shelves right now is that’s great because it is awesome for our immune system, right?
But when you look at vitamin C in nature, it is surrounded by cofactors like bioflavonoids and vitamin K. And that’s why it’s really important to first get your nutrition from food and second, get your supplements from whole foods. And so when you look at these vitamin C bottles, make sure that it has bioflavonoids or Rose hips with it so you’re getting the cofactors because your body will see a score, big acid and not know exactly what to do with it.
It needs all of the things that would be in food. Right?
And the same thing with zinc and chromium are my other ones that are great at this time for support. But again, it needs to be in a whole food package. So when we look at it, it should say all of the foods that you don’t want to eat like broccoli and kale and mushrooms and all of these other things because it’s packaged correctly. You’re not going to be missing key nutrients that are keeping you healthy and safe. All right, so that is how we can start to support our immune system. I hope this was helpful for you. If you have any questions you need any help, I would be happy to talk to you.