However, as vaccination is neither 100% guaranteed nor applicable to everyone, or simply down to personal choice, I would like to mention some other ways to protect yourself during this winter season. 

As up to 70% of our immune systems resides in our guts, I always think of what we put into our bodies as fuel. The old adage ‘food as medicine’, which some people take great offence to, couldn’t ring more true at this time of year. What we eat can have a huge effect on our immunity and helps to strengthen resilience for the challenges to our bodies during winter. Eat a diet with a focus on foods rich in those vitamins and minerals we know support out immune systems such as zinc rich foods (pumpkin seeds, chickpeas and red meat ) selenium rich foods (brazil nuts, eggs, sunflower seeds) and vitamin C rich foods which you will find in abundance at this time of year in the form of citrus fruit, kiwi, broccoli and spinach. Also we must remember to include fermented foods, strengthening our good bacteria can help boost immune activity, reducing down the risk of illness.

And don’t forget your vitamin D. Public Health England now actively recommends that everyone in the northern hemisphere takes a vitamin D supplement from October-March as the UV in the sun are not strong enough for our bodies to be able to make enough vitamin D that we need. Vitamin D is an essential for our immune health both regulating and modulating it.  I would echo the need for supplementation at this time of year but also recommend eating vitamin D rich foods such as oily fish, mushrooms and eggs and making time to spend outside in natural sunlight also.

Lastly include herbs and natural remedies in your daily life through winter. Those mothers remedies which science now backs to help prevent or ease symptoms of some winter illness’. Echinacea, chamomile and elderberry are winter superhero’s supporting our immune systems and providing much needed antioxidant and antiviral activity. Honey, thyme, lemon and ginger used so commonly in cough sweets and cold and flu remedies, but the natural, unmedicated ingredients can be just as powerful as the over the counter versions.

And as always, remember the holy lifestyle mantra of good sleep, regular movement and modulating stress. Such simple measures which can have such a profound effect on the strength of our immune systems this winter.