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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Winter Wellness: Strengthening Immunity and Embracing Fitness for a Healthier You
Ever wondered why the winter months bring a higher chance of catching a cold or the flu? Discover the hidden reasons behind increased winter illnesses and arm yourself with practical tips to fortify your immune system. From the effects of spending more time indoors and reduced sunlight exposure to the role of diet, sleep, and stress, we dive deep into the factors that compromise your health during colder weather. Tune in for actionable advice on maintaining a balanced diet, staying hydrated, getting enough rest, managing stress, practicing good hygiene, and staying active. Plus, learn why supplementing with vitamin D3 can be a game-changer for your immune health.
Fitness isn't just about looking good; it’s about feeling energetic and mentally sharp. In this episode, we reflect on our own journey of transforming from feeling unwell and defeated to becoming motivated, confident, and full of life through regular exercise. With the holiday season upon us, we also share our heartfelt wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and announce a brief pause in our Quick Tip episodes. Get inspired to make fitness a cornerstone of your life and experience the profound impact it can have on both your physical and mental well-being. Join us as we prepare to kick off the new year with renewed dedication to health and fitness!
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined and another quick tip episode episode. Before we go into this episode, guys, I just want to let you know we won't be doing a Quick Tip episode on the 26th, so we will see you in the new year on January 9th. Looking forward to it. We will not have an episode at all that week, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody listening. So when we hop into this episode, a lot of people ask me about what do I take to help prevent getting sick? Why do I get sick so much in the winter as opposed to the summer? And it's really like big multiple answer and everyone thinks they have the correct one, but most people are just wrong. So we're going to dive into two separate things. One is preventing getting sick and the other one would be what to do when you already are sick, because they're both completely different answers. So we're just going to separate those out right now. The first one is preventing, and I think it's important to note why people are more susceptible to getting sick in the winter. A couple of big reasons. One is you are indoors, you are surrounding yourself with a lot of people, so the more people you're around, they bring sickness in. You can expose yourself to colds, flus, whatever without even knowing you're sick, and you can spread it because usually you're contagious right before you start feeling symptoms. The symptoms themselves aren't necessarily the virus in most cases, but it's your body's response to it. So once it hits a certain threshold of having that much of that virus in you, then your body starts reacting to it, so you can already spread it before you even start showing symptoms, which is why you're going to get sick from people. The second thing would be something that I think a little more research needs to be done on, but it relates to the supplementing side, and it's sunlight. It's exposure to sunlight. As we all know, sunlight is the base exposure force for vitamin D3. That is what we naturally get from being outside in the sun, and we don't get any. I mean, if you live in the Northeast, like we do, you're inside, you're not getting enough sunlight because the sun's just not up that much and it's really cold this time of year.
Speaker 1:Another big reason would be diets, and a lot of us, holiday season, don't have nutrient-dense diets anymore. We're like pies, beer I get it. Sleep would be another big role. We stress a lot. Therefore, we don't sleep. Sleeping causes you to get sick, and then stress, having higher levels of cortisol, it's going to actually make your body more susceptible to getting sick. So I'm just going to go ahead and pull this up real quick and I'll explain it for those listening on audio.
Speaker 1:So how can you reach your chances of falling sick? Pretty simply eat a healthy diet. Reset, minimize your exposure to sick people. That's pretty common sense. Drink plenty of fluids. Just a little bit of a note if you're in somewhere that uses heat, heat dries the air out around you and you're going to be more dehydrated without realizing it. So it's important to make sure you're drinking enough fluids if you use your heating system in your house, especially the drier winters that we do experience here in the Northeast. So make sure you're getting a lot of fluids.
Speaker 1:Next would be sleep. I really want to do an episode with the sleep expert because I think sleep is the most important when it comes to a lot of different things. It really helps prevent. Let's talk about sleep for just a couple of seconds. So I'm going to pull up a study here, and I mean this is pretty much common sense according to PubMed, which is medical journals, is all we listen to here. Poor sleep efficiency and shorter sleep duration in the weeks preceding to an exposure to the rhinovirus, which is one of the forms of common colds, are associated with lower resistance to illness. I mean, that's pretty much common sense. If you don't sleep, you don't give yourself enough time to rejuvenate yourself throughout the night. You're going to be more exposed to getting sick. So that's an obvious one.
Speaker 1:Stress we talked about with cortisol level. Wash your hands. Common sense, guys, is make sure you're washing your hands, get those germs off, because the last thing you want to do is touch a bunch of different things and then put it into your eyes, ears, nose and mouth. So just be careful of that. Another one is exercise. Exercise is something a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to boosting your immune system, but in a meta-analysis, regular, moderate, intense exercise may have an effect for prevention of the common cold. Of course, these studies were too small. I do personally believe that exercise does in fact help boost your immune system. Those that exercise regularly are less likely to get sick. I see it a lot with those that are regularly are less likely to get sick. I see it a lot with those that are trainers in my field, but of course, it just depends on the stress associated with it. So you want to stay healthy.
Speaker 1:Those are some quick tips, but this is about supplements. Anthony, let's dive into supplements. That's all I see here and read about is what supplements to take. So we talked about vitamin D, which I'll scroll down for those watching on visually here. Vitamin D is a great fat soluble, so you can take too much of it. Vitamin that really does a lot for us. Not only does it help with bones, it helps with immunity. It plays many functions inside of our body and we always end up vitamin D deficient in the winter because we're not getting outside, we're not getting that sun exposure. So when you're looking to supplement, make sure when you're buying things like my little vitamin D here, vitamin D3. D3 is the one that's absorbed in our bodies. If you're not taking vitamin D3, you're probably not efficiently using it. Probably not efficiently using it, but a lot of reviews have showed that it does help prevent upper respiratory infections and can help things like the common cold. So this is preventive. This is how you prevent yourself from getting sick.
Speaker 1:The next one is the one everyone assumes but doesn't know why, and that would be vitamin C. Vitamin C guys, you don't even need to supplement unless you really want higher dosages of it, like you're spending a lot of time out on the holidays. A piece of fruit has 100% of your daily dose of vitamin C. So if you really want the higher amounts, you're more than welcome to. It is water soluble, so you really don't have to worry about having too much of it. But according to an exam and a bunch of studies done with it, I think the biggest thing with vitamin C is especially those, like this says here if you're athletic or if you do work out already, vitamin C helps ward off.
Speaker 1:And that's the kicker. If you're already sick and you start taking vitamin C, it's not going to do anything. That's such a common misnomer. It's not going to help whatsoever. It does help reduce the duration of colds. If you were supplementing pre-getting sick, because, like we talked about, that, when a virus comes in, you don't start showing symptoms until you hit a certain threshold of that virus. I'm not a meteorologist so I don't know the thresholds of the colds, but I'm sure someone on here does, so just keep that in mind when you're looking at vitamin C. You need to supplement prior getting to getting sick to one, help prevent yourself from getting sick, especially those with athletes, and you can experience shorter colds. Up here it says 8%, so I mean, if you want an 8% shorter cold, who doesn't Something to definitely look into. So those are a couple of really good ones for preventative Now we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm already sick. What do I do, anthony? Because I already have a cold. I already have the flu. I feel run down, I have COVID. Whatever it may be that you have, what can I do? First, you need to realize is this bacterial or is this viral? This is the most important thing, guys. Is it a bacterial infection? Is it something like a strep throat, or is it a virus, which would be your COVID, flu and common cold? So bacterial infections you treat with antibiotics, but you never treat viruses with antibiotics. You actually do yourself way more damage than good. So keep that in mind and make sure you talk to your doctor on this. Do I have a bacterial or do I have a viral? We're going to stay with viral for now, because that's what everyone wants to talk about on here.
Speaker 1:Zinc is a really, really good one for viruses, so especially the throat lozenges that you take. The key with those is they need to sit in the back of your throat, because that's where you build a lot of that mucous membrane in the back of your throat, and that will help reduce the effects of the cold flu and COVID, I think. With zinc, though, it can cause some nausea and you can easily get too high of amounts of it. So it's important, guys, that you really don't go above a hundred milligrams a day for more than two weeks, because then you're going to start doing vomiting, loss of appetite, stomach cramps, diarrhea, headaches. It's not good. They're trying to prevent all that. So make sure when you're having zinc, you have between 75 and 95 milligrams per day, and when you're doing it, you really want to make sure it sits on the back of your throat. But it has shown to help with, uh, shortening the common cold or anything like that. Uh, some supplements that some people try, or echinacea is one of them. It just says it might reduce, but there's really no studies on it.
Speaker 1:Another big one now is elderberry. Elderberry has been all over. There's so many elderberry gems. There's elderberry, this elderberry, this elderberry. That Elderberry needs to be studied more in my personal opinion. But it can't help as long as it's prepped right. I would never recommend prepping it yourself. It is toxic to the human body. Yet again would defeat the purpose of trying to get healthy. So maybe talk to somebody who is an expert in breaking down elderberry, so that's that it can help. I mean it doesn't hurt. So if you're just taking it and you're not having obscene amounts of it, it may shorten it. There needs to be more study.
Speaker 1:Another one is pelargonic sinus, which screw me for butchering that one. But the tinnins can help prevent bacteria from attaching to the throat and lungs. Remember I talked about the difference between viral and bacterial. This can help with bacterial infections such as strep, because it will help prevent the attaching and sitting behind the throat. It can also help reduce the duration of cold. So it does help with viruses. And then it goes into probiotics, which basically just says that probiotics do not help whatsoever because there's millions of strands and it's really hard to predict While you're sick.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you some personal tips and tricks. So this is where we can get. We're going to brainstorm here a little bit. Let's just leave it at that. We're going to brainstorm. So when you're already sick. Obviously, we talked about the supplements you're taking. Obviously, you want to stay hydrated. Your body needs water. Obviously, you want to eat. You never want to starve yourself. It's not true to starve a cold or fever or whatever acronym they use. Your brain needs fuel. Your brain needs carbs. It needs to heal itself. So eat, try to eat nutrient-dense foods, but please eat. And then, of course, sleep is the best thing you can do for yourself. So make sure you're getting enough sleep.
Speaker 1:The one that's up in the air is exercise, and I'm going to talk about this because I get this question a lot. Anthony, should I exercise while I'm sick? The answer is maybe, and I know that's not what you wanted to hear. I want to say no. If you have a high fever, if you're throwing up, anything like that, I definitely would not exercise. But here's where I'm going to draw a line for those watching. There is no studies on this, but I personally believe our bodies heal in motion and I've seen this a lot and I'll give some examples, obviously to back myself up, so you have some receipts for it. And I'll give some examples, obviously to back myself up, so you have some receipts for it.
Speaker 1:If you have something like a common cold. Moderate exercise, not high intensity exercise. Moderate exercise has been shown, at least a little bit, to help with the symptoms of it. I personally know the second I start exercising, sick or not, my sinuses start draining. When my sinuses start draining, blow my nose, I feel like I can breathe better. So it's at least symptomatic relief that you will experience from moderate exercise with something like a cold or approaching the tail end of a flu.
Speaker 1:On top of that, going out for a walk the worst thing you can do, especially with the flu and COVID is lay in bed all day. That's because you'll have all the phlegm build up in your lungs. That will cause some kind of pneumonia and we don't want that. So you're going to feel a lot worse if you lay down all day. This is why quarantining was so bad is, if you trap people inside a room and keep them forced to lay down, all that fluid is going to build up in their lungs. So they're just going to get sicker and sicker and start hacking, get a horrible cough and with pneumonia. So please do not do that.
Speaker 1:Instead, get up, move, move around, do light activities, force yourself just to even walk across the side of the house. Stand up more, sit upright, make sure you're being able to drain all your sinuses straight down so they don't build up inside your chest cavity, and I do believe that going for at least shorter walks, making sure you're staying hydrated, making sure you eat, will actually help lengthen the duration of it, as well as be very, uh, symptomatic relief for you. It's something I personally do when I'm sick and I don't stay sick that often, especially with the cold or when I had COVID it was a couple of days. So please make sure, guys, you get up, you move, you don't wanna lay down. This is why nurses and my wife will tell everybody do not lay in bed all day, because then you're just gonna get a lot of famine, you're gonna get sicker. This is why the nurses go and get up and move. So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this week's quick tip episode talking all about how to prevent getting sick, what to do when you're getting sick, what kind of supplements you could take. If you have any suggestions for us, please reach out.
Speaker 1:Health Fitness Redefined podcast at gmailcom. It is Health Fitness Redefined the D at the end podcast at gmailcom. It is health fitness redefined the D at the end podcast at gmailcom. We will see you next week with a guest interview, but we will not have a quick tip episode after that for the holidays. So Merry Christmas everybody. Happy holidays until next time For us. We know what it's like to feel unhealthy, depressed and downright defeated. We want to show others there is a right way and through fitness you can do anything you set your mind to. Fitness can give you that motivation, confidence, energy you need to bridge that mental gap and prevent you from missing important life events. We understand it's about feeling better, living longer and being good examples for our kids. We understand this because we live it, and for us that's the Redefined Difference.
