Do we want to be boosting our immune system?

Let’s be clear here, there is not one food or supplement that will ‘boost’ your immune system or prevent you getting ill.

Increasing your garlic consumption or taking a vitamin C supplement but then still eating a diet predominantly containing processed foods such as burgers, pizzas, takeaways, sweets and chocolate to name a few will make limited to no difference to supporting your immune system.

Processed foods contain many man made chemicals, preservatives and other weird concoctions that impacts your health in a multitude of ways including impeding your gut microbiome which as 70% of your immune system resides in the cells that line your gastrointestinal tract will impact your immune system. They often contain very high levels of the more inflammatory trans fat and omega 6, if your immune system is already ramped up because of the food you’re eating or the lack of nutrients you are intaking then the capacity to deal with external inputs such as a virus are impeded. A boosted immune system is a system already overworking. This is why we don’t want to be focusing on ‘immune boosting’ but instead on ‘immune balancing’

There are many foods that have time and time again in studies shown to have an array of compounds that support in a lore balanced way many aspects of the immune system.

Eating a diet full of plant fibres to include pulses, legumes, beans to support your microbiome, eating a rainbow of fruit and vegetables that contain many phytonutrients, getting adequate levels of micronutrients including vitamins and minerals which ALL support the everyday function and balancing of our immune system.

Increasing your garlic consumption or taking a vitamin C supplement but then still eating a diet predominantly containing processed foods such as burgers, pizzas, takeaways, sweets and chocolate to name a few will make limited to no difference to supporting your immune system.

Garlic

Ginger

Curcumin found in turmeric

Quercitin food in foods such as apples and red onion

ECGC in green tea

Oregano and many other herbs

It’s not about changing your diet massively but about ‘pimping’ it with foods that support you and not foods that don’t.

After all the foods that we eat are the building blocks that allow our body and systems including our immune system to function