Top up your Vitamin C
As we enter October and see the piles of leaves all off the trees and feel the air temperature start to drop a bit, you’ve maybe started to pull out the Winter Wardrobe essentials and prepare yourself for the cold season ahead.
The Winter season is also the most stressful season we experience - much due to the reduction in sunlight & increase in darkness which brings about the Winter Blues (SAD) - but it’s also always a busy period in the workplace, with a sprint from here through to Christmas and then there’s the added extra pressures from numerous different angles from family and community too. With elevated stress levels, more time indoors and closer contact with more people, it’s no surprise that winter season is also flu season, so what should we be doing to protect ourselves from going under this winter?
I would certainly recommend keeping a close check on your stress levels and to keep investing in rest and recovery practices that help you keep in balance. Commit time to performing regular moderate physical activity (brisk walks, jogging etc - exercising at conversational pace) as well as restorative yoga, meditation or deep breathing exercises should all become daily habits to provide support to your immune system.
Another great boost to your immune system is our trusty old friend Vitamin C. As stress accumulates the hormone cortisol, which becomes very damaging over time, increasing your usual Vitamin C intake from today could be a smart move this winter. Research points to a relationship between Vitamin C and cortisol regulation, and a 2017 systematic review involving studies of women where stress and/or anxiety was assessed, it concluded that high-dose sustained-release vitamin C was effective in reducing anxiety and blood pressure in response to stress.
A key thing here is that phrase “sustained-release”, so it’s not ideal to increase your intake through use of supplements (taking >1,000mg per day can also cause stomach pains), instead you should seek to make dietary adjustments to load up instead - so plenty of fresh fruit and raw (or lightly cooked) vegetables should be on your daily menu. You should be able to get all the Vitamin C you need from your diet and good sources include:
citrus fruit, such as kiwi, oranges and orange juice
green, red & yellow peppers
strawberries
blackcurrants
broccoli
brussels sprouts
spinach
red cabbage
tomatoes
potatoes
This week’s challenge is to eat at least 3 different colours during every evening meal and aim to have eaten the whole Rainbow by Sunday (Red, Yellow + Orange, Purple + Blue, Green, Dark Red, White + Brown). Manage to do this and you should be well stocked to battle the by-products of the busy season.
Have a great week. Keep up those good habits.
#HealthyHabits
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