Hey you guys I'm Dr. Jason Barker with the Natural Athlete's Clinic and today
I'm going to explain to you why you get sick more often than your friends who
don't exercise nearly as hard as you do. So a little bit of exercise or moderate
amounts is actually very good for your immune system and boosts the function of
it. Whereas high intensity exercise over several hours actually has a
depressive effect on your immune system. So think running a marathon, doing a
triathlon all day, fitness events, mountaineering, climbing a peak - things
like this are stressor on your body and they stress your immune system and then
your immune system technically crashes after a big event
like this. And so on the research, this is known as the open window theory. And what
that says is that for the first 3 hours up to 72 hours after one of these
exercise bouts, your immune system is depressed and therefore the window is
open for you to get sick from the viruses and bacteria that we're normally
exposed to. So there's a reason for this and that is because all of the immune
cells in our body have multiple jobs and when you've just beaten yourself up
doing some exercise like that, a lot of those immune cells that normally protect
you from the viruses and the bacteria, they are inside of your tissues
repairing all the damage so they're not really paying attention and that's how
you get these bugs in your body and you can't fight them and therefore you get
sick. So other than staying hydrated, eating a good diet, resting, sleeping,
making sure recovery is on point, how can you make sure this doesn't
happen anymore? Well, there's a couple of different natural products that I really
like to use and it's worked well in me and so I use it in a clinic with all my
athletes and we have good success with keeping people well after a hardcore
exercise bout or a competition or anything else like that. So the favorite
things that I like are Monolaurin. And Monolaurirn contains lauric acid and
lauric acid is a natural occurring fatty acid and we find it in vegetable oils,
it's in coconut oil, it's even in mothers milk for newborn babies, so that should
tell you how important this stuff is at fighting off infections. So we load up on
Monolaurin. Next thing I like is glutamine. Glutamine is an essential
amino acid that we need in our bodies for
many different things and one is it helps support immunity and we know from
the research, that when you go all out and exert yourself really hard like this,
your immune system crashes and your Glutamine levels are lower so I put
Glutamine in my water bottle. It doesn't really taste like much so I can kind of
nurse it throughout the long weekend like that or an event so I'm making sure
I've got enough in my body. And then the third thing I really like to use is
Greens First. And Greens First is essentially a powder that contains about
49 different superfoods so there's tons of fruits, there's tons of veggies, there
are antioxidants, there are probiotics so it's got everything that you need to
help keep your immune system strong and gives you that good nutrition. That's the
foundation of your health because let's face it, on one of these weekends where
you're going all-out or even a triathlon or anything like that, you're probably
living off of the simple carbohydrates, and so you've got a little bit of
deficiency in the nutrients that normally keeps your immune system
running. So check out the greens first. And then the last thing that's super
important is vitamin D. So you want to make sure you've got adequate vitamin D
levels. And again you want to have a level of about 50 in your bloodstream. We
make vitamin D when the sun shines on our skin - not gonna happen in the
wintertime for most of us so make sure that your vitamin D is up to a point and
make sure you start taking it in the fall all the way through the springtime
when the sun starts shining again on your skin. Okay so check out the Maunolaurin.
Check out the Greens First. Check out the
vitamin D and also use some Glutamine. Like I said the Glutamine and the Greens
First also tastes really good. You can put that in your water bottle. Sip that
all along through your event, through the weekend. It's also easy on your gut. So
hopefully this will help you all stay healthy and not get so sick
as easily. And if you liked the video of course, give it a like. Please share it
with your endurance buddies who are getting sick. And of course please
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Alright guys see you later!