Keep Feeding Your Army

Dr. Brie Gindele’s Secrets to Boosting Your Immune System

Maintaining good health should always be at the forefront of your mind. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, staying healthy has taken on a whole new meaning. Unfortunately, the only advice we’ve gotten from leaders is: wash your hands, wear a mask, and practice social distancing. That might help avoid the virus, but it has nothing to do with being healthy!

I believe it’s important for us to take active steps to improve and maintain our health. To this end, I invited Dr. Brie Gindele from Gindele Family Chiropractic to speak on my podcast “The Hartbeat Show.” She brought with her a bunch of great strategies for boosting your immune system and staying healthy.

Right away, I knew this conversation would be a lot of fun. Dr. Gindele has a really cool way of explaining how the immune system works so that even I understood it.

“Your body is like a castle and you have two main types of immune systems,” she explained. “You have your soldiers on the outside who see and remember things. They learn from the first attacks and are ready to fight things off and keep you from getting sick. Then, you have your soldiers on the inside. They can’t see what’s coming, but they’re really big and bad. If something does penetrate and get into your body, they can help you kick it, you’ll just have some symptoms. But they can’t remember anything long term. You have two different types of soldiers fighting for you, and you need to feed them both.”

There’s a lot more we should be doing to take care of our immune system. Or, as Dr. Gindele put it, “We need to feed our armies.” There are some really important immune boosters we need to be paying attention to.

Nutrition What are you getting from your diet? Are you eating a well-balanced diet, or are you mostly a fast-food person? What we eat is really important to how our immune system functions. Also important: What we shouldn’t be eating.

“Everybody knows that some people are gluten-intolerant,” Dr. Gindele said. “A lot of people say they’re lactose-intolerant. Those are different immune reactions. If you know that you’re dairy- or gluten-intolerant, then you are immunosuppressed to a degree. You need to boost your immune system more than other people.”

Exercise Let’s be honest, most of us could stand to exercise more. My job has me at a desk almost all day, so I’m a pretty sedentary person. This lifestyle isn’t great for the immune system.

“Think about what you’re doing through the days and the weeks,” Dr. Gindele advised. “How much movement are you getting to your body? It is also immune-boosting, the more that you move.”

Vitamins Right away, Dr. Gindele recommended vitamin C. That’s a big one that most people are aware of.

“If you’re starting to feel sick, grab some vitamin C,” Dr. Gindele advised. “Vitamin A is also good. You don’t have to take vitamin A. It’s not something that we’re very deficient in. But just supplementing a little extra vitamin A is something that’s really good right now to immune boost with.”

I was also very interested to ask about sunshine and vitamin D.

“You can get vitamin D from the sun,” Dr. Gindele confirmed. “That’s an amazing, beautiful way to get it. Now with everyone out of school, you have more time to get enough vitamin D from the sun … If you can’t spend enough time in the sun, there’s a lot of good liquid vitamin D to help supplement what you need. Even Floridians can be deficient in vitamin D.”

If you’re worried that you may have vitamin deficiencies, Dr. Gindele recommends getting your bloodwork done. This will show you anything you may be deficient in.

Probiotics We also talked quite a bit about gut health — and I don’t mean a beer gut.

“Probiotics are really important to take every single day,” Dr. Gindele said. “That’s your gut health, and some people say that upward of 90% of your immune system comes from your gut; that’s significant. A probiotic is all the good bacteria. You need that good bacteria in your gut so your army has food.”

Supplements Dr. Gindele covered a bunch of different supplements during our conversation. I highly recommend listening to the full episode of the podcast to hear what she has to say and which supplements she recommends people take regularly. Some big ones were: zinc, monolaurin, echinacea, calcium, and colloidal silver.

Sleep “Good sleep is really important, especially for women. We need to get the right amount of sleep. It’s proven. We literally go crazy when we don’t get enough sleep.”

When I asked Dr. Gindele how much sleep we all needed, she explained that there’s really no hard-and-fast rule. Apparently, that eight-hour thing we’ve always been told isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Teenagers need more sleep than adults. Women tend to need more sleep than men.

“It varies by age,” Dr. Gindele explained. “But adults shouldn't have less than seven hours of sleep. Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep a night.”

Emotional Health Our immune system can benefit from what we put into our bodies, but the immune system also benefits from what we do with our bodies. Especially, what we do when faced with a lot of stress.

“Emotional health is huge right now,” Dr. Gindele said. “You can take things and take things, but being active about relaxation, stress, and anxiety is huge. Being active is huge for relaxation, and it can be as simple as going for a walk. Massages, yoga, meditation, and journaling are also really helpful. There are a lot of healthy coping mechanisms to vent out your stresses.”

Chiropractic Care Of course, I couldn’t have Dr. Gindele, a chiropractor, on my show without talking to her about how chiropractic care helps boost the immune system.

“Chiropractors work with the nervous system,” she explained. “People think we just rack and crack them, but that’s just the bonus of getting adjusted by a chiropractor. It feels really good and you get to hear some noises. But the reality of it is that we’re using muscle tone and the alignment of the spine to utilize, correct, and optimize your nervous system function so your body can work the best for you.”

Dr. Gindele had a lot of great advice, but she emphasizes the fact that we can’t just blindly start taking new supplements and hope it works.

“Don’t just fill your body with supplements and stuff,” she warned. “You want to talk to a doctor and find what works best for you or your child’s body.”

Remember that none of this is medical advice to help cure or prevent COVID-19. But as stated before, there are a lot of things that we can do to help our immune system. When our immune system is as healthy as can be, we’ll enjoy much better health in the long run.