{"id":52484,"date":"2025-02-09T02:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T02:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/vitamin-pills-and-icy-swims-can-you-health-hack-your-immune-system\/"},"modified":"2025-02-09T02:51:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T02:51:00","slug":"vitamin-pills-and-icy-swims-can-you-health-hack-your-immune-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=52484","title":{"rendered":"Vitamin pills and icy swims: Can you health hack your immune system?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">It is a cold morning in the depths of winter.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And I feel like I&#8217;ve left my sanity as well as my warm clothes in the changing room as I stride out to the edge of a reservoir in my swim shorts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A brightly-coloured chalk sign informs me that the water temperature today is a chilly 3.9C, as one of the regulars tells me this is not cold water swimming, it&#8217;s &#8220;ice&#8221; water swimming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">How did I end up here?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Well, I&#8217;ve become enthralled by the idea of enhancing or boosting the immune system. My body has been the living embodiment of the &#8220;quademic&#8221; that the NHS spent all winter warning us about. It&#8217;s been a relentless stream of colds and coughs and one explosive tummy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Our immune systems already do a fantastic job fighting viruses and other nasties. If I collected all the air I breathed out over the course of a minute it would contain 100 to 10,000 bacteria, 25,000 viruses and a single fungi, according to Prof John Tregoning, immunologist at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You&#8217;re breathing these things in all the time, there&#8217;s just a swirling mass of pathogens [organisms that cause disease] in the air,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But there&#8217;s plenty of foods, supplements and activities that are touted for their &#8220;immune-boosting&#8221; properties. Can we dial up our protection?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cx2m8d44v4go\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a cold morning in the depths of winter. And I feel like I&#8217;ve left&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2204,231,5057,5059,5056,5058,662,5055],"class_list":["post-52484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-hack","tag-health","tag-icy","tag-immune","tag-pills","tag-swims","tag-system","tag-vitamin"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Vitamin pills and icy swims: Can you health hack your immune system? - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cx2m8d44v4go\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vitamin pills and icy swims: Can you health hack your immune system?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gulf News| UAE&#039;s Largest News aggregator site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cx2m8d44v4go\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gulf Times | News by the minute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-09T02:51:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/073dc5a0-e583-11ef-a319-fb4e7360c4ec.avif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vitamin pills and icy swims: Can you health hack your immune system? 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