The Immune System: Your Body’s First Line of Defense

As you go through your days, checking things off your to-do list, your immune system is constantly trying to protect you. From the door handle at work that hundreds of other people touched just before you scratched your nose, to that person coughing as they passed behind you at the grocery store, your immune system deftly wards off harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites 24/7. You barely ever notice it… until one of those pathogens slips through that incredible defense system, and you get sick. So, how does the immune system work, and how can you make yours stronger?

How the Immune System Works

As Johns Hopkins Medicine explains, entire swaths of your body are involved in the immune system, from your blood to your bones and several major organs. It is also split into two main parts, both of which work to protect you from infection and heal you if you do get infected:

• The Innate Immune System: You inherited a significant ready-to-go part of your immune system at birth. Your mucous membranes (the linings of your gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts), your skin, and even the corneas of your eyes were (and still are) lined with phagocytes: cells that surround, devour, and eliminate invaders.
• The Adaptive Immune System: As the name implies, this part of your immune system constantly adapts to threats throughout your life. When faced with a new threat, antibodies created by B lymphocytes and a host of specialized white blood cells analyze the threat and shoot messages to other parts of your immune system via cytokines (chemical messengers) and proteins. Then they all mount a defense to neutralize pathogens. You may feel sick during this process, but as your adaptive immune system learns, it remembers previous invasions and can shut down new ones from similar pathogens in the future.

Both aspects of your immune system are regulated by your nervous system with help from your bone marrow, blood cells, spleen, lymph nodes, skin, mucous membranes, and many other glands, chemicals, and proteins in your body. It’s a stunning system with millions of microscopic moving parts that you hardly ever think about. Yet, here at ReSet Lounge, your Chagrin Falls spa, we constantly think about optimizing the immune system. And because your immune system is so multifaceted, it requires multifaceted support.

Immune System Imbalances

Keeping such a complex system in balance isn’t always easy, as anyone who has suffered from an immune system imbalance can tell you. A weak immune system can’t effectively protect you from pathogens. On the other hand, some people’s immune systems overreact to things that aren’t actually harmful, like animal dander and pollen. This causes itchy, uncomfortable, and sometimes deadly allergic reactions. In people with autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, the immune system misfires and starts attacking the body’s cells, causing pain and inflammation throughout the body.

5 Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System

Strengthening and balancing your immune system is critical to helping it keep you safe from invading pathogens while not misfiring against you. At Reset Lounge, we can help you achieve these goals and also help you optimize your immune system and reduce inflammation with therapies like HOCATT Therapy, which rolls up to eight immune-boosting and inflammation-reducing therapies into one powerful wellness sauna. Combined with the six immune-boosting lifestyle actions below, we can help you bring your immune system back into balance:

1. Better Nutrition & Hydration

Poor nutrition can cause significant damage to immune function and lead to increased imbalance and inflammation. Focusing on good nutrition and proper hydration, plenty of clean water and whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and seeds, nuts, and lean protein sources provide the body with essential vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients it needs to work properly.

2. Quality Sleep

It can be hard to get a good night’s sleep these days, but it’s incredibly important for a strong, balanced immune system. One of the benefits of HOCATT treatment is that it’s incredibly effective at removing cellular-level barriers to deep relaxation so that you can achieve a good night’s sleep.

3. No Smoking

Smoking does absolutely nothing good for the body. Recent studies in the news have focused on its damaging effects on the immune system because it floods the body with so many toxins. Again, our detoxification services like our HOCATT treatments can help the body flush toxins out for a beneficial immune system reset.

4. Lower Stress Levels

Elevated, long-term stress levels throw important immune system functions out of balance while encouraging poor lifestyle choices that add more toxins to the mix. When life gets crazy, carve out time to relax, de-stress, rest, and nurture your body and mind to boost your immune system and your mental health.

5. Get More Oxygen

The body needs oxygen for every process, including the immune system. Getting regular exercise and trying breathing exercises can help, but when you are under a lot of stress and require additional oxygen, HOCATT therapy can boost your blood oxygen levels.

Try HOCATT Therapy for an Immune System Reset

ReSet Lounge is a Chagrin Falls wellness spa dedicated to helping you achieve your health and wellness goals, including boosting and rebalancing your immune system, so it defends you effectively. In addition to our revolutionary immune-boosting HOCATT machine, we also offer a host of supportive services including massage & compression therapy, acupuncture, and red light therapy—just to name a few! Whatever your health concerns, reach out to us, and we can help you find the right mix of therapies to strengthen your immune system. Just schedule an appointment today to get started!