Each year, supplement brands fall over themselves to sell us products with the (asterisked) promise that they will boost immunity and provide protection through cold and flu season. (The asterisk, literally speaking, being that none of these claims have been evaluated by the FDA.) But what does it actually mean to boost the immune system? The short answer: nothing. “That’s a pseudoscience term,” says Laura Purdy, MD, MBA, founder and CEO of Swell Medical. “You're not boosting anything. You're not giving yourself more B cells or more T cells.”
First of all, instead of thinking of immunity as something that can be boosted beyond its normal capacity, think of it like any other system in your body; you simply want it to work the way it’s supposed to. “I like the word ‘optimize’ better than ‘boost,’” says Dr. Purdy.
Second, similar to how you can’t target belly fat specifically, we can’t isolate our immunity, because the immune system isn’t just one thing. “The immune system is a highly complex network, involving components like the spleen, white blood cells, the lymphatic system, the gut microbiome, and even our skin. And these systems all work together,” says nutritionist Daryl Gioffre, DC. In other words, to optimize your immune system is to optimize your overall health, and vice-versa. It’s not a slogan that’s going to send vitamins flying off the shelf, but that’s just how the immune system works.
Read on for the most effective way to optimize your immune system, and everything else have we been getting wrong about cold and flu season.
