As the seasons change around autumn solstice, suffering from frequent colds and flu are often mentioned as an inevitable part of it. But does it have to be the trajectory you wish to follow?

Your immune system responds to your thoughts and emotions as well as to the signals of danger outside of your body – science has confirmed it beyond doubt. Your expectation, i.e. outlook, awareness of these factors, the attention you pay them and the emotional fallout it triggers actively shape this process on a daily basis. If your brain based threat response system (amygdala) detects danger in the form of a virus or bug that is ’going round’, and your mind-body message integration area part of the brain (insula) picks up the message, the resulting outcome is felt across the two systems: your nervous system and your immune system. Of course various lifestyle, psychosocial and environmental influences playing into this together with your genetic predisposition and previously experienced times of stress or trauma also contribute towards your body’s response to the threat of pending flu or cold. And this happens irrespectively whether the threat is real (i.e. you are getting a sore throat and cough thinking about these as harbingers of what’s to come) or imagined (i.e. just worrying about it as someone mentions it in a conversation).

If this happens often, the brain maladapts and overstimulates both systems keeping the body on the alert and triggering a chronic stress response in the brain and the body, with a range of inflammatory symptoms showing up everywhere. Consequently, the body cannot remain neutral when encountering a real immune offender, be it a virus or a bacterial infection and needs to amplify its attempts to deal with them. The hypothalamic-adrenal-axis gets out of balance and amygdala and insula get sensitised to symptoms detected. The vicious cycle of maladaptation continues as secondary dysfunctions are created in the cell power houses (mitochondria), in the adrenals, new allergies emerging, oxidative stress and pain increasing, sleep deteriorating and circulation faltering: acute illness becomes chronic. Of course, this is a great oversimplification of the whole process, but you get the idea.

So how can you stop this cascade and form a response that re-trains the locked cause & effect feedback loop between the nervous and the immune system to produce a different outcome? Can you create a shift in mind and body to feel strong and resilient rather than endangered?

Luckily the answer is a big and resounding YES! As you embrace and practice the concept of neuroplasticity, the immune-neural interface is re-set and the autumn season exposures feel lighter to swallow (not just because your tonsils are not enlarged and your throat is no longer sore). The question is: How do you do it?

It takes a few steps to get into the zone of neural plasticity: from retraining to recognise your flight and flight signals, through learning how to relax your nervous system (by incorporating mindfulness meditation, alternate nostril breathing and other toolls to assist with that), to finally re-engaging with joy found on a moment-to-moment basis. By interrupting adverse somatic (body) signals, through repetition you create new neural pathways that indicate safety to the brain and break the downward spiral. You can enhance this process of rewiring your brain by aiming to do at least one thing a day (perhaps the one that is your most ingrained habitual behaviour pattern) in a different way, like walking your typical route the other way round or starting your exercise routine from a different muscle group. Cumulatively, these small changes in your interaction with your internal and external environment  make a huge difference to your ability to withstand a variety of immune challenges you may encounter, leaving you to enjoy this time of the year as much as the other seasons. It’s not all in the flu vaccine. Would you like to start re-educating your brain and flexing your neuro-immune muscles straight away?