The flu season is not over yet. We all know how important it is to avoid close contact with people who are sick, to do the “sleeve sneeze” in public, and to wash your hands frequently. Here are some more natural preventative steps you can use to avoid getting sick in the first place, and to minimize the severity if you do.

- Gargle with salt water or mouthwash. Flu viruses take 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Gargling twice a day with warm salt water can help prevent the virus from spreading through your body.

- Drink a lot of warm liquids. This has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive.

- Use a neti pot or other nasal irrigation system. This will also keep your nose hydrated and clean of contaminants.

- Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C, or Vitamin C tablets that contain Zinc to boost absorption.

- Use a sauna or steam bath. One study showed that people who steamed twice a week got half as many colds as those who didn’t. Researchers aren’t clear about the exact role saunas play in prevention. One theory: When you take a sauna you inhale air hotter than 80 degrees, a temperature too hot for cold and flu viruses to survive.

- Aerobic exercise speeds up the heart to pump larger quantities of blood; makes you breathe faster to help transfer oxygen from your lungs to your blood; and makes you sweat once your body heats up. These exercises help increase the body’s natural virus-killing cells.

- Eat green foods. “Phyto” means plants, and the natural chemicals in plants give the vitamins in food a supercharged boost. Leafy greens or an Organic Greens supplement will be full of Phyto-nutrients. Probiotics improve the body’s ability to fight infection and enhance the immune response.