Consider your immune system as your physique’s protecting protect: It’s a wildly intricate system of cells, tissues, and organs that work collectively to maintain you protected from micro organism, viruses, and different potential unhealthy guys that may make you sick. So it solely is smart that you simply’d wish to do all the pieces you may to maintain it in fine condition in the course of the thick of chilly and flu season—particularly should you stay with a power situation (say, an autoimmune illness or immunodeficiency illness) that impacts your physique’s potential to combat germs.¹

You’ve most likely heard of varied immune system boosters and questioned whether or not taking a stylish complement or ingesting inexperienced smoothies will really provide you with an illness-fighting edge. However when you think about how the immune system really does its factor, the concept of giving it a enhance doesn’t make a complete lot of sense, Alice Knoedler, MD, an bronchial asthma, allergy, and immunology specialist in St. Paul, tells SELF.

Merely put: “No, it’s not potential” to quickly enhance your immune system, Mark H. Kaplan, PhD, the chair of the division of microbiology and immunology on the Indiana College Faculty of Medication, tells SELF. However there are issues you are able to do to assist this important a part of your well being—and it’s all fairly primary stuff. Right here’s what the consultants say.

First, it’s vital to have a normal thought of how the immune system works.

Your physique’s defenses fall inside two classes: innate and adaptive. The primary line of safety is the innate immune system, which is a sequence of boundaries that forestall intruders from establishing store in your physique, Dr. Knoedler explains. This usually consists of issues like your pores and skin and mucous membranes that act as a bodily barrier, and cells and proteins that spring into motion if germs occur to wiggle their well beyond these blockers.^1,2

The adaptive immune system is extra particular, Dr. Knoedler explains; it makes use of specialised defensive cells and antibodies to mount focused assaults on invaders that the innate immune system couldn’t cease. It additionally develops “reminiscence cells” that bear in mind the substances it’s focusing on so it might probably combat them off extra rapidly and successfully the following time it encounters them.²

Loads of how your immune system behaves right this moment is dependent upon what occurred in your previous. Whereas the fundamentals of your physique’s purposeful defenses are common, the strengths and vulnerabilities of anyone particular person’s immune system depend upon components which can be out of your management, Nicolai Van Oers, PhD, a professor within the division of immunology at UT Southwestern Medical Heart, tells SELF. A few of this comes all the way down to genetics, Dr. Van Oers explains, whereas loads of it’s influenced by what sorts of viruses and micro organism you’re uncovered to throughout your life (naturally and by way of vaccination), and subsequently, the reminiscence cells that your adaptive system has created. That’s why some individuals are simply higher at combating off sure sorts of infections than others.

The thought of boosting your immune system doesn’t make sense for plenty of causes.

Your immunity isn’t one single factor which you could pump up on demand—once more, it’s a extremely developed and complex system. “The immune system is wonderful,” Dr. Knoedler says, and it actually is aware of what it’s doing. “There are such a lot of kinds of cells concerned,” she explains. “That’s one of many issues that’s onerous [to make sense of] with immune boosters. What’s it particularly supposed to spice up? It’s a whole system, it’s not one cell.”