The weather has been so whack lately, it’s hard to tell what season it is. Indoors we’re dressed like Eskimos, wrapped in several blankets and drinking chicken soup, while roasting our toes near the radiator. Then we’re leaving the house in Uggs and an anorak, only to find its warm and steamy and an absolute inferno is happening underneath our clothes. This is, and has always been, our dilemma here; we are freezing in our homes, and then complaining there’s no more winter when we are outside. Despite our mild winters, many of us are walking around with the sniffles, the coughs, and sometimes the fevers. Here are a few steps you can take to keep your immunity alive and kicking:
1- Don’t speak to or come near anyone who seems to be under the weather (joke).
2- Eat food that’s in season because that’s what your body needs: oranges, grapefruit, broccoli, spinach, and sweet potatoes for example, are all in season now and are full of immunity boosters, mainly Vitamin C; which your body needs to keep sickness at bay.
3- Take a daily Vitamin D supplement. No, the fact that Egypt is sunny is not enough. Spending time indoors, in a polluted city like here, having darker skin and using sunscreen all block your absorption of vitamin D from the Sun. Vitamin D is an essential immunity boosting vitamin, so do yourself a favor, buy the drops and start a dripping. Besides boosting your immunity, vitamin D is also a mood enhancer, so maybe the robabekya guy yelling downstairs won’t ruin your day as much.
4- Throw left over bones into your soup as it’s cooking. This means you need to start collecting all those chewed up chicken thighs after meals in order to use them for soup preps. Bones contain massive amounts of minerals that your body needs, and boiling them releases these minerals. You can extract more minerals by adding a spoon of apple cider vinegar into the mix. Slow cooking bones for way too long creates bone broth, so if you don’t know, now you do!
5- Consume less dairy products. I know, I know we all hate this one. We all refuse to believe dairy isn’t serving us. The reality is dairy creates mucus in our body so if you’ve already started sneezing you’re doing yourself a favor by going easy on the Kiri sandwiches.
