 And now let's think a little bit about the natural approach to promoting the immune system. Now this is one of the most common questions I'm asked by my patients. How do I support my immune system? How do I overcome this cold, this flu, etc. And so this is something you want to get very good at. Now these are some really important bits of advice for you to take away and to start incorporating into your future practice but also into your own life and your family's lives. Now to support the immune system we need to try and manage stress. So combating stress and dealing with the ultimate cause of stress and making good decisions and working with things like breathing exercises will be very important because as soon as we are stressed we release cortisol which suppresses the immune system. Remember as well that refined sugars will spike the blood sugar levels, that will spike the insulin levels and as a result of spiking your blood sugar levels your cortisol levels will ultimately increase too because as soon as you go up with your blood sugars they very quickly come back down. So think about the foods that you're eating trying to minimize refined carbohydrate intake. We then need to think about things like zinc because zinc does help to enhance the immune system and promote the development of immune cells. So we can think here about pumpkin seeds, chickpeas, cashews, spinach and mushrooms. Vitamin C is often suggested to modulate the immune system. So think here of those foods like broccoli, guava, currents, red and also green peppers as well as kiwi and oranges. And you may consider supplementing with vitamin C here. If you're supplementing with vitamin C I would perhaps look at a couple of different forms of that supplement. You could consider something called ester C. Ester C is a very bio available form of vitamin C that your body can use easily. And you might also look for vitamin C that contains bioflavonoids which basically means that the vitamin C is with lots of other plant pigments and plant substances that are also packed with nutrients. Again, that's a form that generally is a bit more bio available for your body. Vitamin D is also important and there's actually been a lot more research coming out about how vitamin D could play a big role in things like flus and other viral infections. Now one of my go to very quickly topics here with supporting the immune system would be to look at beta-glucans. And beta-glucans come from medicinal mushrooms. Beta-glucans are actually carbohydrates but they are very good at supporting the immune system. So this really whenever I talk about supporting the immune system it's one of my really first bits of advice. And I would often recommend patients to consider supplementing with beta-glucans but also to incorporate those medicinal mushrooms into their diet which may be easiest for them to incorporate that in a powdered form. So look at those mushrooms like shiitake and reishi mushrooms, chaga mushrooms, cordyceps and so on. We also need to support the micro flora, the gut flora, so think about probiotics and prebiotics. We can use herbal medicines, probably the best herbal medicine that will increase your immune activity will be echinacea. Echinacea increases the numbers of white blood cells. Elderberry is also good at supporting the immune system and elderberry is particularly good at dealing with viral infections. Ginseng will also support the immune system and we can also think about using things like ginger which is antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory and also garlic. Garlic is probably one of the best antimicrobials that we can get from foods. We can also try and incorporate other antimicrobials if there is a local active infection. Colendula can be used, so colendula topically or as a liquid tincture could be used. You could also use colloidal silver which has directly antibacterial and antiviral and antifungal properties. So if you have an infection occurring in the oral cavity in the mouth you can think about gargling with colloidal silver which will help to kill some of those microbes. So we need to think about supporting the immune system and then directly introducing antimicrobial agents. You can also use grapefruit seed extract which is also antimicrobial that's very effective and you can also use things like tea tree which is also antimicrobial. Exercise is good at supporting the immune system too and like we said before we've got to ensure that somebody is not smoking that they are trying to manage their stress that they are trying to minimise alcohol intake too. So those are some tips for you as to how you can support the immune system with some basic bits of advice and these are very easy to incorporate into somebody's life.