Immune Boosting Foods
Your diet can have a profound effect on your immune system, energy level, and how well your body heals. The right foods can also help your body reduce inflammation, cope with stress, and prevent the next ailment that comes your way.
If you think about it, you probably eat three to five meals a day, amounting to approximately 1500 meals each year. The goal of an immune-enhancing diet is to decrease inflammation and optimize the proactive helper cells of the immune system. Your diet is one of the most powerful tools in your immune empowering toolkit. Here are a five suggestions to get started:
1. Increase Foods of Color
When you think of eating carbohydrates, think of eating from the rainbow-reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and purples. Strawberries, sweet potatoes, squash, kale, blueberries, and grapes are all good examples. Foods with dark pigments have high antioxidant levels.
Foods that contain high levels of antioxidants, minerals, and essential fatty acids reduce inflammation, boost your immune system, and benefit your health in unexpected ways. Optimize your diet by including 8-10 servings of colored foods within the full color spectrum.
2. Reduce or Eliminate Sugar
Similarly, eating carbohydrates without color (pasta, bread, white rice, etc...) has the potential to increase levels of inflammation. Carbohydrates are an important macronutrient and source of fuel for your body. When we think about major diseases that affect Americans today such as heart disease, allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders, or osteoarthritis they are seemingly unrelated. However, they have a common culprit: inflammation.
These foods also cause fluctuating blood sugar levels triggering an insulin and inflammatory response. Avoiding refined carbohydrates such as processed breads, muffins, and pastries can prevent blood sugar peaks and valleys as well as several pro-inflammatory responses. Choose quinoa, brown rice, and buckwheat instead.
3. Reduce Non-Organic Food Sources
Research is just beginning to suggest that choosing organic food sources has many health benefits. These include less risk of allergenic diseases, lower rates of obesity, improved cognitive function in children, and less exposure to antibiotics. Research also suggests that choosing organic food sources may be an important strategy for addressing antibiotic resistance. The more antibiotics you consume, the more likely you are to develop antibiotic-resistant bacteria as these organisms adapt over time with frequent antibiotic exposure.
Additionally, continual exposure to antibiotics also wipes out the good bacteria in our guts. The good bacteria that make up our microbiome are critical to our immune system, digestive system, and many other physiological functions. Non-organic food sources contain synthetic pesticides, fungicides, hormones, and other chemicals that add to the daily load on your immune system. Eliminate these products along with other processed foods and see how you feel during the next allergy or flu season.
4. Consider Common Food Allergens
Many foods including wheat, dairy, or soy can create a mild to severe allergic reaction in the body. These moderate reactions increase the body’s inflammation levels over time. To make matters more confusing, delayed immune reactions typically occur at least 24 hours after exposure. Allergy-like symptoms can occur up to 72 hours after eating a certain food. This type of delayed sensitivity is difficult to figure out. You may not be sure whether you are sneezing due to today’s glass of milk or feel bloated due to yesterday’s slice of pizza.
You can eliminate the guesswork by taking a food inflammation test to determine whether there is anything in your diet causing an immune or inflammatory response. This blood test can be done with an at-home, finger-prick kit. Results arrive in 7-10 days showing the level of inflammatory reactions to one or more foods, spices, and additives. To learn more about this test, contact OMBE and we can drop-ship a kit to you in 1-2 business days and help create a customized food plan during the food elimination phase.
Additionally, you can try an elimination diet to see how your body responds to the removal of a few suspected culprits. The caveat with this approach is that there tends to be quite a bit of trial and error. For example, you may remove dairy or gluten for several weeks and not feel any better only to figure out later that you were allergic to soy or something else that you did not suspect.
5. Include Essential Fatty Acids
What are essential fatty acids (EFAs)? EFAs are essential because the body does not produce them. Therefore, we need to include them in our diet. The two essential fatty acids are known as linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3). Omega-3 fatty acids help to reduce inflammation and support cells related to the immune system response. Sources include salmon, herring, mackerel, and cod. Vegetarian sources include olive oil, flax oil, primrose oil, chia seeds, avocados and other nuts and seeds.
Good fats affect mood, behavior, and levels of inflammation in the body. High, chronic levels of inflammation in the body burdens the immune system. We also know through research that supplementing with essential fatty acids can decrease pain due to rheumatoid or osteoarthritis. Additional studies show that low circulating levels of essential fatty acids increase the risk of postpartum depression. So double the avocados in your salad, try wild Atlantic salmon, or a chia-seed smoothie!
Follow just a few of these suggestions, and you will be on your way to turning the foods you eat into your first defense against coughs, sneezes, and more.
If you found this article helpful, you may also like our Nutritional Supplements for Immune Support or Garlic Lemonade posts.
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