How Can I Protect Myself From Getting Sick?

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How can I Protect Myself from Getting sick? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness Hollywood of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Karen from Instagram asks, how can I protect myself from getting sick? Well, Karen, there are a lot of things that you can do here to protect yourself. I'll be right back with the answer.

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Okay, Real Talk.

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There are a lot of things that are completely within your control to keep yourself from getting sick. Whether you're looking at this right now, while I'm recording this and we've got COVID 19 or in general, you know, because this is really what we want to think of, prevention is key all the time. So perhaps this whole thing going on is a little bit of a wake up call for how we really want to optimize our immune system all the time and focus on prevention rather than reaction. So the first thing is to, and here's the challenge with this is I want you to be connected but protected. How do you like that for a little rhyme? We know that social isolation is a massive threat to your health. So I want you to stay connected to people. And at the time of this recording, that means Probably Skype and FaceTime and all those, but at a distance, social distancing. And that would happen if you knew you were sick or you knew those people around you could be sick. You'd want to stay away from them so that you don't catch their germs. The other thing that's of course super important, there is a very clean environment. Keeping your hands clean, keeping everything around you clean so that anything that germs that could live, you've gotten rid of. The next thing is to make sure that you're doing everything you can to have a strong immune system. Now, seven years ago, my son was the victim of a hit and run. He was crossing the street and run down and left for dead in the street. And he was in the hospital for four and a half months, multiple times in there fighting for his life. And I was alongside him. And I realized at the start of that that the only way I was going to pull through that because I was in the ICU with him and you cannot walk in there if you're sick, was that I had to really, really like there was no margin for error. I had to optimize my immune system because if I didn't, I was not going to be able to be there with my son. And that was non negotiable. So I'm going to tell you the things that I did and realize that I was launching the Virgin Diet. At that time, my whole business was up to me. I had to make it work, otherwise I wouldn't be able to pay the hospital bills. But I'm in the hospital with my son. I'm not leaving there. So, you know, it was a super stressful time. And I say that because if I could manage to pull this off, we all can. And the first one I did was I made sure that I got my sleep. This is so critical. If you steal from sleep, you will hurt your immune system. So I made sure I got. Ideally I was going eight hours of sleep a night. I really like eight and a half, but I was hitting more around eight. I was managing my stress. I couldn't remove the stress of the situation, but I could remove the way that I was reacting to it. And you might find, I say, find your bliss. Maybe it's tapping, maybe it's meditation, maybe it's doing some high intensity interval training. But find the things that can help you if you are, you know, internalizing that stress. The next thing was I made sure that I had some positive focus that I was really working in some kind of mindfulness. So for me, that meant starting out the day in gratitude, writing down what I was grateful for. That meant if I started to get whacked during the day and angry, irritated, etc. Freaked out by the situation, I text or called someone and told them what I appreciated about them. I reached out to and got outside of myself. And then at night, I would always celebrate the little miracles that happened that day. So I called it my jam. Gratitude, appreciation and miracles. We can all do it takes five minutes, it's free. The next one is sunshine. In fact, they were looking at the 1918 flu pandemic and one of the ways they got that to end was people being out in the sunshine, fresh air. So hopefully this is possible where you are to be able to get out into that space, sunshine, and get out into that fresh air on a regular basis. I know when Grant was in the hospital, I was up in his room with him. We would put him into a wheelchair once he was able to. Before that, we put him into a cardiac bed and we got him outside in the sunshine and we got out there too. Next is to take care of your gut. 80% of your immune system lives there. It starts there. So we got to make sure you're taking care of your gut. That means if you haven't done it yet, virgin diet and probiotics and eating healthy. So those are just some of the basics on good gut health. Is removing the foods that you're intolerant to and healing your leaky gut, optimizing your gut microbiome. Probiotics and prebiotics are a great start there. And then of course, fiber that can help feed that gut. And the one that you don't want to do is sugar. So not only is that not great for your gut, it also can impair your immune system. So, you know, I know that when people are stressed and they want to go have some sugar, that's the worst possible thing you could do. So no sugar. If you're just craving sugar. Can I do a shout out? I guess I can because it's my podcast. My dark chocolate coconut bars on my store are like super@jjvirginstore.com and 1 gram of sugar. All right, Intermittent fasting, you wouldn't think about this. You might be thinking about this if you're worried about gaining weight. I've actually been talking a lot about the quarantine 15 and how not to gain that. And intermittent fasting is one of those ways. But the other cool thing about intermittent fasting or time restricted eating, and that is when you eat just a small during a small window, say eight hours a day, is it also supports a better immune system. It triggers autophagy, which kind of cleans up the cellular debris and it helps your immune system work better. Now, there's also some great immune power foods. And I really look at foods that are rich in vitamins A, C, D, zinc, selenium, probiotics, quercetin, glutathione. And I did a podcast episode on this. So grab that and I'll go through all of those with you. Next up. This is not a time to bail on exercise. This is a time when you want to make sure you're getting your exercise in. It is super important for your immune system. Just don't go run a marathon. Do a little bit every day. Okay. And supplements. And again, I did a separate podcast solely on supplements. Make sure you check that out. But my highlights are vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin D with K, zinc, quercetin, and probiotics. Those are my biggies. And then other ones that can work well here. Silver elderberry, andrographis, astragalus glutathione, beta glucan, medicinal mushrooms. But I would start with those first ones first as the key, most important. And then those other ones, I actually do a blend, I do a formula. It's got a bunch of those in those just to help. There you go. I hope what you see here is that there's so much you can do. It's so in your control to protect yourself from getting sick. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com foreign.

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