"The gut-immune axis is a way of discussing how the gut and the immune system interact. It might seem strange that your immune system is affected by your gut, but what happens in the gut doesn't just stay in the gut. 

A lot of our immune cells are located in the gut, they're trained and educated by what's going on in our gut and then that has effects on other areas of our body. For example, our lungs and how well we deal with respiratory tract infections for example. 

Right from kids up to your grandparents, we should all be trying to include a diversity of plants within our diet. That can be nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, or even adding more beans to meals - these are really important. We do have evidence now that this isn't just feeding and fertilizing the gut microbes but it's having a positive effect on our immune system and that's helping to keep us well." 

To learn more about how you can diversify the amount of plants in your diet, explore here.

"It’s really fundamental and it's something we kind of overlook when it comes to our immune system. The science tells us that if you're habitually sleeping say less than 7 hours a night, it can increase your risk of catching a cold or flu or a viral infection by up to 30%, and if you're sleeping less than 5 hours a night, then you've got a 50% higher chance of getting sick if you encounter a virus.

Sleep helps our immune system with something called ‘immune memory’, so that's the ability of your immune system to remember infections you've seen before and respond to them faster."

Struggling to sleep? We've answered your most Googled sleep questions here.

Increased levels of stress hormones like cortisol can disrupt the balance of immune-regulating molecules, leading to inflammation.1 We know that stress-induced behaviors (like poor sleep and unhealthy diet) also affect our immunity! 

Dr Jenna Maccicochi outlines her top stress-relieving tips below: 

"I like to divide it up into the stress-resilient practices, so that's things like meditation where you need to be doing it regularly for it to build up that resilience to stress. 

Then you have the more in-the-moment things that you can do, so if you are finding yourself in a stressful situation, actually just going for a walk, and instead of focussing on a screen like we so often do, going outside and looking at the horizon can help signal to your brain that you are calm. 

And then the other in-the-moment tool that I really like is using your breath. We can take conscious control over our breath. If we extend the exhale that again sends signals to the brain that we are safe and we are calm."

Learn more about the impacts of stress here.