Boosting your immune system with foods

Boosting your immune system with foods

Whether you're looking for foods to eat to prevent illness or foods to eat when you're sick, try these tips to perk up your immune system.

1. Eat well. Good nutrition is one of our best preventive medicines. The healthiest diet is the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats, and has minimal sugar.

2. Choose citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruits, tomatoes) as a great source of Vitamin C, but also consider red peppers, which have three times as much vitamin C as green peppers. Ideally, you should get your vitamins through healthy foods rather than supplements. Mega-dosing on Vitamin C won't ward off illness because it's water soluble and your body will excrete what it doesn't absorb.

3. Avoid inflammatory foods. All illnesses stem from some degree of inflammation. Inflammation is the body's first line of defense against various assaults, including tissue damage, viruses, and bacteria. Redness, swelling, and fever are signs that your body isn't healthy, and your immune system is sending healing white blood cells to affected sites. Sometimes, however, your body sends out inflammatory cells even if you're not sick or injured. This can cause chronic inflammation and lead to painful conditions like arthritis. Sugar can trigger inflammation, so make sure only 10% of your daily calories come from added sugar. (One can of Coke contains 78% of your recommended sugar intake!)

4. Keep your gut healthy. Like the rest of your body, your gut contains good and bad bacteria. Infection indicates that you have more bad bacteria than good. Probiotics, a good source of good bacteria, can help restore the balance of bacteria in your body, support healthy immune function, and control inflammation. Probiotics typically contain a variety of microorganisms, most commonly bacteria that belong to groups called Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. They may also contain organisms that occur in yeasts, like Saccharomyces boulardii. You can take over-the-counter probiotic-supplements, or consume them naturally in foods, such as:

• Yogurt
• Buttermilk
• Sourdough bread
• Cottage cheese
• Kombucha
• Tempeh
• Fermented pickles
• Fermented sauerkraut
• Kimchi
• Miso soup