Upping immunity without sacrificing girl sway?

[Naiad]

Hi! We are hopefully in a position to sway girl by the end of this year... I'm already worried about the (pre)school bugs from our kids, which are going to explode when school opens again. Last year I had a cold every month (I can live with that) but was extremely ill in November and December with norovirus for the first time in over 20 years and then immediately afterwards an ear infection that lasted for weeks in December. I had fever for weeks on end and felt ever so weak... In January I contracted something else with my stomach but wasn't even sure what... It drove me mad, so I started taking cod liver oil, something that's always boosted my immunity. It seemed to help but obviously this sways blue! And I plan on taking less vitamin C and zinc later this year, because I don't want to sabotage my pink sway. So my immune system is not going to have the same support. I can't imagine being so ill and then having to deal with pregnancy in the first trimester too, which on its own makes me very unwell. I don't think my immune system handles these kiddo environments very well without any boosting supplements, but what can I do without swaying blue? Unfortunately I'm also on the autoimmune spectrum and so I can't take echinacea or elderberry (these are said to increase autoimmunity). Did anyone else have this problem with their pink sway? I feel completely "unprotected" on this front.

[atomic sagebrush]

Thanks for your patience. This has been a very hectic week.

I understand that some of you believe in the powers of boosting immunity and worry when you're not taking your supplements. But the thing is, the reason otherwise healthy people living in the first world get sick is from encountering germs they have not experienced and for no other reason than that.

When my oldest kids were young, we got sick CONSTANTLY despite being in our early 20's and superhuman, LOL, and also taking Vit. C and zinc which were being wildly touted in the media at that time as miracle cures. One year when my sons were in preschool, we were sick twice a month for the entire year (the absolute worst year of parenting I've ever experienced) My husband took so much zinc he got diarrhea and so much C he got canker sores, but he still caught everything that went by. Now that we're older, our kids may get sick, but I rarely do (my husband gets sick more than I do but less than the kids) even though we're older and more run down, and even when we're not taking massive amounts of vitamins. I also remember my mom being the same way - she was a teacher and even though she was around sniffling and barfing kids all day long, she hardly ever got sick even though she smoked, ate terribly, and never took vitamins. It was because she had already had everything under the sun, not because she was such a healthy person.

Maybe, maybe some of these megadose nutrients can help shorten the duration of an illness (open for debate) but you're not catching sicknesses because you aren't having cod liver oil. You got unlucky last year - a lot of stuff was in circulation that hadn't been in circulation for a while. Even I got sick a couple times last year, despite taking a bunch of coronavirus vitamins I had read about - and those were a pair of absolutely brutal illnesses regardless of being full of Vitamin D and C and 11 herbs and spices. It was simply a matter of being exposed to germs I hadn't encountered before. That was it. No mystery. Just germs. My husband took even more supplements than I did and he got sick too. Then a few weeks after that, despite being run down from being sick and still coughing, my kids (despite also being full of Vitamin D and C and 11 herbs and spices) all brought home a stomach flu and my husband and I didn't even feel queasy. We had had it before. The kids hadn't. That was the only difference.

Of course you are welcome to do and take whatever you want. I understand that you probably feel like they worked for you in the past and all the stories in the world won't change your feelings, but I am simply saying that based on not only my experiences, but my observations not only about my own life, but from people who are convinced they'll keel over dead from Martian Death Flu if they stop their vitamins, and then they don't and have a pink sway when they're barely sick to their great surprise, and people who tell me they're SURE they are getting sick because of the LE Diet and they've only been on it for a week (yes, this happens with some frequency) not to mention people who get horribly sick while swaying blue and on every vitamin known to man, that in a healthy person without malnutrition, the biggest determinant of whether or not you get sick is if you've had a particular bug before.

Now, obviously, yes, being seriously malnourished can in fact make it easier to get infections and harder to overcome viral sicknesses, but the LE Diet is simply the lower end of a normal healthy prepregnancy diet. It's not supposed to be starvation or unhealthy. You shouldn't be on it long enough to deplete your stores of nutrients that your body stores (like B12 for example), and the types of nutrients you need to get daily are easy to get adequate amounts of on LE Diet.

The exceptions are folic acid/folate, iodine, potassium (you do need to be careful to get enough potassium on the LE Diet). Everyone should take folic acid or folate of course. Taking iodine supplements (or using iodized salt) is fine and isn't a strong blue swayer. Lots of people do take iodine just to be on the safest side. Even a couple times a week on iodine (150 IU) can serve as a maintenance dose.

If you're worried about it, that's why we have the maintenance doses of some nutrients that can get depleted over time. If you've been swaying longer than 6 months and haven't gotten pregnant, what you can do is add in zinc 8-15 mg 2-3 times a week, the lowest doses of Vit D and Vit B12 you can find 2x a week, and 18-30 mg iron 2-3x a week. Usually that's good enough to keep people going a little longer on diet.

But best of all is simply to conceive in a reasonably short time. No one should be on diet longer than necessary.
I am unsure why exactly you're swaying last winter and then haven't started to try, can you refresh my memory as to what is happening with that? Have you been dieting strictly this entire time? If so you absolutely MUST add in those "maintenance doses" like I'm describing above because you will need them for your overall health and ability to conceive by the time next winter rolls around.

[Naiad]

No worries at all. Thank you so much!

You know, what you say makes a lot of sense after giving it some thought. Because when I look back, I think those supplements didn't do a damn thing... And meanwhile I was thinking I'd have been even sicker had I not taken them! But in actual fact I think it's more likely they did nothing. Because like you say, they were germs I had probably not encountered for a very long time or never. I also noticed that the staff at the pre-school ALWAYS seemed to be around - I think they hardly ever took off sick days. They never had any obvious colds either! I know they had all worked there for years so probably immune to all the common strains.

No, I wasn't swaying last year (I was still awaiting return of fertility after giving birth to my son Feb 2022, no periods until this spring) but was very aware that a lot of the supplements I was on to "bolster" immunity would sway blue, so I wasn't keen on taking them with an intention to sway pink a year later. (A year isn't super close to the sway of course, but still.) Only now several months leading up, I'm becoming serious about diet/lifestyle.

[atomic sagebrush]

And hey, who knows, maybe that could have been true - maybe it went a little easier, or you missed out on complications like strep throat or whatever. But in terms of catching stuff, a lot of people really seem to think that if they take a vitamin they should never get sick and that is just simply not the case at all.

Oh yes that's true and just to add another data point, I have found that a lot of my swayers who get concerned because they're sick a lot (like I mentioned before, often after barely having started the diet) and then I ask them a few questions and their child had just started at daycare or school.

Ok great I'm glad to hear it - we occasionally have people who think "well, if 12 weeks is good, 12 months is surely better" and then we open ourselves up for issues with the cycle getting wacky, and even potentially situations where people's bodies just sort of adjust to the diet (this is an entirely hypothetical concern, but it's one I have where people who are carrying a lot of muscle and with "skinny" PCO-tendencies can be quite thin and still have boys). It's GREAT to ditch unneeded supplements as far in advance as possible though.