Nutritional supplements are best to ‘supplement’ your diet in the short term – particularly at a time where you may be struggling to maintain a healthy diet and where your demands are quite high. If you are working long and stressful hours, you may need more nutritional support at the moment.
In this video, Ciara Wright, a Director of Glenville Nutrition and founder of Wellness for Heroes, chats about supplements which may support your energy, reduce stress and promote relaxation and sleep and of course, how to support your immune system.
Don’t forget about sleep
Sleep deprivation suppresses our immune function, both in terms of our ability to fight off infection and our ability to recover quickly when ill. Getting at least 7, ideally 8 hours sleep every night helps to support immune function.
….and exercise
Exercise can also help and studies show that people who exercise moderately five days a week are less likely to get colds or flus. However intense bouts of exercise, like the marathon coming up next weekend, can temporarily suppress immune cells so if you are planning on participating, think about increasing your intake of immune boosting foods and nutrients.
Ciara will cover supplements in more depth in the video. However, some more information on vitamin D below as we get asked all the time about safe supplementation and testing.
Vitamin D
Food sources of vitamin D include fortified milk, oily fish like salmon and mackerel and egg yolk. However, many people benefit from supplementing. If you are going to supplement chose D3 rather than D2. D3 is more than 80% effective at raising vitamin D levels. But don’t take very high doses without testing your requirement as vitamin D is fat soluble. This means you can store excess in your body and it can cause kidney issues, although toxicity is extremely rare. We offer vitamin D testing via a simple blood sample.
If you would like nutritional support, or advice about testing, call us on 01 4020777 or book online now
