Exercise for the Immune System

By Andrea Henkel Burke

Physical activity is a key element when we want to maintain and improve our immune system. We can take care of having the best nutrients in our diet (and we should), but our built-in healthcare system is not complete, without moving our muscles and exercising frequently. You probably are reading Adirondack Sports because you are an active person. When I’m talking about athletes in this article, I mean basically everyone, whether you’re running or biking daily, or walking on a regular basis. I want you to know how different exercises affect your immune system in different ways. With this knowledge, you can design your workouts or activity depending on your situation, desire and goals.

Cardio workouts – While moving our muscles, we activate natural killer cells, which keep working a couple of hours after our workout ends. The more natural killer cells that get activated, the better our immune system is able to fight any illness, including viruses. Activating these cells does not happen with every workout. In fact, depending on the intensity of our exercise, it also can suppress our immune system. When our training plan or exercise mood is asking for a high intensity anaerobic session, we need to be aware that our immune system will not be in its best condition after those workouts.

Professional athletes and athletes with high performance goals, need those high impact workouts sometimes, as they need to stress their system in different ways in order to improve performance. The immune system of those athletes might be more often compromised than enhanced by this high impact training. That’s why they often, especially in competition season, use hand sanitizer, avoid big crowds, cinemas, and skip a party, no matter if there is a virus around or not. Over the years of training, they still created a better immune system, but it doesn’t show up all the time as virus protection. It often is busy with recovery from heavy workouts or big training blocks.

Even when not racing, it’s healthy to trigger different metabolic systems by exercising the whole spectrum – from very slow/easy to very fast/hard. Slow and easy should still make up the majority of workouts. In the fitness world, you often see much less of a variety in training. I know, it doesn’t sound logical that slow or easy training sessions can improve performance, people often view them as a waste of time. Physiologically, slow sessions make a lot of sense and I highly encourage you to include those sessions for better performance, well-being and overall health.

We all can use the time right now for setting up, improving or maintaining a great fitness foundation. I am obsessed with building and maintaining a solid base. You also would not start building a house without pouring a foundation. You probably heard before that our muscles can produce energy (ATP), with or without oxygen, also called aerobic or anaerobic. To build up our fitness base, and enhance our immune systems, we need to do aerobic sessions. Aerobic sessions are done at a lower intensity. In this training zone, our muscle cells use fat and carbohydrates to produce the energy we need for the workout.

As soon as we switch into the anaerobic zone, fat is not getting burned anymore, and our muscles rely only on carbohydrates to keep us going. This happens at high intensity. Depending on how well our aerobic system is trained determines when we enter the anaerobic zone. Those anaerobic sessions lead to stress for the body, which is wanted in some cases, but doesn’t support the immune system. I am not saying you should not work out in this zone at all, but right now it’s important to know that different training affects our ability to fight pathogens differently.

We are able to train and extend our aerobic zone or fat metabolic system to support our immunity. Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with a formula, because everyone has their own metabolic system and everyone is able to change this system in six to eight weeks. Because of that, I usually offer a test, called Aeroscan, which shows specific and individual workout zones. Aeroscan accomplishes this by measuring how much fat and carbohydrates we are burning at a certain speed and heart rate. Some athletes, even trained ones, show very short fat burning zones, others have a very good fat burning metabolism, and can run relatively fast, while still supporting their immune system. Obviously, it’s not possible to do an Aeroscan while social distancing.

Even without taking a test, I can give you two helpful markers which tell whether you workout in this immune supporting zone. First, when going for a walk or a run, you want to be able to continue to carry a conversation. You don’t want to feel like you are short of breath and cannot talk. Secondly, when you are done with your session, you don’t want to be hungry. If you are very hungry, you most likely were not burning fat as your primary fuel source during exercise. And don´t forget, the better that we can burn fats, the more flexible our metabolic system. And by having a good, flexible metabolic system, we also have a flexible immune system. That’s why it is important to keep moving!

Now we know that we can improve our immune system with light aerobic exercises. We also know that we should not stress our system, or get close to anyone (especially now), after a high intensity session. With those high intensity sessions, we create an open window in which we are not able to fight a virus as well. Make sure to take extra time to recover from these workouts, if you are still feeling the need to complete them during this time. 

I don’t really like to tell you, or my clients, to not do certain things or eat certain foods. I prefer to let you know what happens in your body while doing specific training, exercise and movement sessions. In this way, you are able to adjust your lifestyle in order to stay healthy. The same with eating. I don’t want to dive too deep into this topic right now, but just imagine, your body is using what you provide through food and maybe supplements. It also cannot use what you don´t provide. Here is just one example: To produce ATP – the energy we use for everything, not just working out – our cells need to have magnesium.

Strength training – I talked a lot about aerobic and anaerobic exercise. As a professional athlete in the sport of biathlon, I made my way to the top of the sport when I made significant increases to my strength training. General strength is also part of a good fitness foundation. Active muscles are very important for health and longevity. Unfortunately, but understandably, fitness facilities are closed to the public right now but we can do a lot at home. 

I do have my personal training gym at home, but I also like bodyweight exercises and working with bands, which don’t require a gym. I can practice both of these as regular “sitting breaks” for a couple of minutes when working in my office. Sitting breaks are very important for the immune system as well. Sitting for a long time creates low grade inflammation, which also is not helpful if we need to fight a virus or any other illness.

I want to finish this article by giving you some ideas with sitting break exercises. It’s best to do them for two minutes every 45 to 60 minutes. Some I do right in my office. For others, I just step outside and catch some fresh air, while activating my muscles to fight low grade inflammation from sitting. And trust me, this article took me a while, and also a couple of sitting breaks! If you don’t have any resistance bands, but would like to get some, go to flexvit.us. For more ideas for sitting breaks with those bands, visit instagram.com/flexvit.band.

Andrea Henkel Burke is a four-time Olympic athlete, winning two Olympic gold medals, and eight World Championship titles. Originally from Germany, she is now working in Lake Placid as a personal trainer and consultant for health, training, nutrition and related fields. You can find her at andrea-burke.com.