Ben Greenfield's 4 Tips to Naturally Build Immunity

There's this old tale of four thieves back in the 15th century. These guys may have been grave robbers, they may have been house robbers. We don't really know. The tale kind of changes depending on where you read it. But the idea is that these guys traveled all over the place robbing houses, as professional thieves do. But they never got sick. They had what seemed to be bulletproof immune systems. And it turns out that they actually had a habit of putting into their bodies specific herbs and spices that help to stabilize and support the immune system. We're talking about things like cinnamon, cloves, rosemary, eucalyptus. You can actually find different essential oils blends that are called thieves essential oils made by a variety of different companies out there. And. And these are actually designed specifically to make your immune system work better, to enhance the activity of your white blood cells and to enhance the strength of your lymph fluid and your lymph circulation. It's just one very, very simple example of how ancient lore can help us in our uphill battle in modern society to fight against all these different diseases or colds or flus that tend to come at us seemingly all day long on the bus, the airports, the subways, the cars our kids bring home from schools, et cetera. So I personally travel with a little bottle of thieves essential oil just about everywhere I go. And the reason I'm telling you this is because my immune system is really dang important to me. I don't like to get sick. I used to get sick all the time as a kid because I had poor lymph fluid circulation. For me, it was actually because when I was a child, I used to drink about a half gallon to a full gallon of 2% milk every day from pasteurized, homogenized dairy sources. And it was filling my body with all these proteins that I later found out I was actually allergic to. So my immune system was constantly in this hypersensitive state. I also had things like acne and eczema and poor sleep and bloating and gas and indigestion, all related to the fact that every single day I was assailing my immune system with the wrong kind of food. Now, once I figured that out, and I cleaned up my diet and began to introduce some of the strategies that I'm going to outline for you in this video, I begin to get sick very, very infrequently. It's about once a year now that I'll come down with something. And when I do come down with something, like, let's say, a head cold, it only lasts about two to three days rather than the six to 10 days that a lot of those upper respiratory infections used to knock me out for. So what are some other tips for you to enhance your immune system? Well, I'll give you one very simple full body move that you can do to enhance your lymph fluid and your lymph flow at the end of this video. But in addition to those four thieves, there are a couple of things that I have on hand all the time to help keep my immune system in top condition. One is echinacea. It's another herb very similar to some of those herbs in the four spices blend that that not only helps with your immune system, but it actually helps quite a bit, surprisingly, with the number of your red blood cells. So if you're an athlete or you're an exerciser, you can actually build up more red blood cells and better oxygen utilization with something like echinacea. Another is elderberry. Now, I'm lucky. There's actually an old elderberry tree growing on the edge of my property. And my wife goes out there every summer, takes the elderberry berries off of that tree, ferments it, and makes this fantastic wine that I drink just about every night. Now, you might not have an old elderberry tree and a vat of elderberry wine in your garage, but there's many places where you can find elderberry tinctures. And when I know that I've been exposed to a cold or a flu or some other immune system assailant, I'll do thieves, echinacea and elderberry as one of my holy trilogies for supporting the immune system. Now, interestingly, there was some recent research that shows that if you do get sick, you. You can significantly decrease the duration of any type of upper respiratory infection with the use of something that you can find just about anywhere, and that's a zinc lozenge. When zinc dissolves in your mouth and makes its way up into your nasal cavities, there's actually a reaction there that decreases the duration of a cold or a flu. You have to dissolve it in your mouth, and it has to be a lozenge, a zinc lozenge, preferably made from something called zinc acetate. But if you do get sick, if the thieves and the echinacea and the elderberry for some reason still don't put up that blockade against an invader, then you can use something like zinc to actually decrease the duration of a cold or flu after you do get sick. Now, there's plenty of other dietary Strategies you can utilize, including cutting out commercial dairy from your diet that'll help out with your immune system. But I want to show you a quick thing that I've been doing now just about every morning to enhance the flow of my lymph fluid. See, lymph responds very well to G forces. That's why in many circles, you'll see people recommending the use of trampolining or a vibration platform to help with your immune system health. But you can actually, and I learned this from a Navy SEAL commander who does it for five minutes every morning. Get your lymph fluid circulating with a very simple technique I'm about to show you. You simply plant your feet about shoulder width or slightly wider than shoulder width wide, bring your hands down by your side, and you just start shaking your body. I know it seems kind of silly, but by bouncing up and down and shaking your body for 1, 2, 5 minutes, faster and faster as you go, keeping the fingers loose, kind of slamming your heels just slightly down into the ground as you shake, you move lymph fluid in a way that you don't move it if you're, say, just like lifting weights or doing yoga or going on an easy run. There's something about that up and down movement of the body and the G forces that result as part of that that actually allows for good movement of lymph fluid. So whether you want to call it shaking or wiggling or anything else, it's basically self full body vibration to enhance the health of your immune system. Combine that with some of these other strategies, like thieves, echinacea, elderberry, a little bit of zinc, and cleaning up your diet, and you'll fast track your way to building a bulletproof immune system.