With flu season at its peak, many of us are doing everything we can to stay healthy. Things like getting enough sleep and burning off stress with exercise, laughter and comraderie are all important measures that we can take. We can also do things such as gargle salt water, drink an alcoholic beverage daily (which lowers risk of catching a cold by 40% according to Yale University) and eating certain foods.

For example, Japanese researchers found that eating one (cooked or raw) clove of garlic daily reduces our chance of catching the flu by an incredible 43% and speeds up recovery by two full days as well. Eating an apple each day slashes our risk of sinus infection, bronchitis and pneumonia by 53%. And including yogurt in our daily diet also adds to this with its own 50% reduction in risk of contracting a cold virus and a 33% increase in recovery time. Those numbers beat the flus shot and the Tamiflu’s effectiveness rates by a good amount!

So be sure to go get your flu shot, but also remember that there is plenty of choices that YOU can make every day to boost up your immune system and help ensure a healthy year to come.

Because YOU can help control your own future.