Top 10 Immune Boosting Foods You Must Eat For Optimum Health

I want to talk about the immune system and the top 10 foods that can help it work better. so it’s a little misleading to talk about the immune system because there’s not really any such thing when we talk about the immune system we’re talking about your body’s capacity to defend itself so it’s not like you have an immune system you are an immune system everything about you participates in your ability to defend yourself you have 40 trillion cells and every one of them is doing their part they provide physical barriers to keep foreign invaders out the skin the inside the lining of the lungs and

so forth we have cell membranes that determine what goes in and out the virus bacteria they have to get through and pass these membranes we have mucus which is secreted off a mucous membranes to act as a barrier and trap foreign agents we have chemical defenses we have free radicals we have phagocytes that that secrete toxic substances that poison these foreigninvaders to death we have detoxification we have the liver and the spleen and the kidneys that are filtering out these foreign agents and the broken-down substances and then of course we have the cell based immune system the whiteblood cells and this is oftentimes what people talk about primarily when they talk about the immune system

but it is so much more so how do we build the immune system well it starts with whole food and whole foods vitamins it has whole complex vitamins it has minerals in their natural organic absorbable form it has essential amino acids and it has essential fatty acids these are the resources that your cells need to do what they do so by eating whole food by eating nutritionally dense food you’re continuously providing resources for your body and your cell to do what it’s supposed to do now processed food and fast food it has less vitamins and less minerals and less amino acids and less essential fatty acids

because the processing destroys them on purpose okay these have nutrients so they don’t have shelf-life these have the nutrients removed so that we can get shelf-life and people often ask what do I take to improve my immunity but we want to think about it as a balance there’s some things that help and there’s some things that hurt immunity and we need to understand both sides of it so what helps immunity are things like vitamin C and vitamin D and vitamin A these are immune boosters they are white blood cell activators they participate in this cell based immune system

vitamin A is critical for mucous membranes that act as barriers then we have zinc which is the key trace mineral to activate whiteblood cells another important mineral is calcium but what we’re talking about is ionizable calcium something that is quickly and readily converted in the body into calcium bicarbonate and unfortunately almost all supplements sold are calcium carbonate also known as limestone or chalk the body doesn’t know what to do with it it is very very difficult for the body to convert into calcium bicarbonate so a really good form would be calcium lactate it’s only one step away from becoming calcium bicarbonate and then of course essential amino acids and essential fatty acids essential fatty acids can help modulate inflammation they are essential for making up healthy membranes.

Healthy barriers in the body and amino acids or proteins they are what makes up all these immune cells so of course thewhite blood cells have to be made from something and I’m sure you’ve heard of immunoglobulins those globulins are proteins and they require essential amino acids to be put together but we want to stop thinking about these things as drugs stop thinking about them as pills because we have this drug mentality that if a little bit does something then more is better or more does a lot these are nutrients the body just needs enough and enough is enough when you have enough then more isn’t necessarily better more isn’t gonna do more it’s just going to be wasted at times it could unbalanced something else but it’s a nutrient alright we don’t need mega doses we just need enough and then there are things that hurt immunity and this is really really important and people forget about this but there is no nutrient there is no pill that can make up for a continuous supply of toxins so when we eat things like sugar excess sugar excess alcohol

when we smoke we’re constantly putting poison in our body there is no nutrient that can compensate for that stress is detrimental and processed foods will deplete your body and break it down and wear it down gradually it has low nutrient content high sugar content high chemical content and just one more thing before we get to the top 10 list I know some people just want to jump ahead but please hear me out here because like I said there is no nutrients that can make up for a poison and if I just gave you the list it’d be like selling you an umbrella that doesn’t protect you from the rain but that actually rains on you alright so here’s what we want to think about that short term I believe that probably 50% of the impact of what you’re trying to accomplish and strengthening your immune system it’s not about what you take it’s about what you avoid and then

I would say probably 40% is due to stress in terms of interfering with your immune system and then the last 10% would nutrition and the things that you can take now these are not exact numbers I’m Just trying to give you an idea that probably 90% of the impact on your immune system are things that people don’t even focus on they eat sugar and they stress to death and then they wonder what kind of pill what kind of food can I take long term then I can’t really prioritize one over the other because they’re all essential you have to avoid sugar and toxins you have to reduce stress you have to eat real food in the long run for your body to function optimally so just keep that in mind as we move into the list.

Top 10 immune boosting foods:

Garlic
Ginger
Turmeric root
cod liver oil
Eggs
king crab
steak
bell pepper
broccoli
pumpkin seeds

1.garlic

It has a tradition spanning thousands of years of helping people improve immunity it has an active ingredient a component called allicin which is a sulfur compound and we know that garlic has antibacterial properties antiviral properties anti yeast properties and antifungal properties as well as anti mold so it will actually kill off a lot of these microbes it’ll help us work so in that sense it’s not so much a nutrient but its medicinal property in addition to that it has 50% of our daily allowance of vitamin C per hundred gram now don’t go all out on garlic for that reason because it’s kind of hard to eat a hundred grams or three and a half ounces especially since it’s most potent if you eat it raw it would also give you ten percent of your daily zinc and 18 percent of your calcium.

2.ginger

it’s another medicinal food we don’t eat it so much of the nutrient even though it has some we know it has antimicrobial properties and it has been studied specifically for fungus like Candida like yeast overgrowth it can help with the digestion so you can absorb more nutrients but also to help have a better gut flora and your biome your gut flora participates in your immune system so a healthy gut and a healthy digestion is certainly of benefit and ginger can also be beneficial as an inflammation modulator.

3. turmeric root

the active component is called curcumin it is also antimicrobial it is an inflammation modulator but it also has the capacity to reverse effects of stress so they found in a study that if you stressed mice then they would have certain effects with their adrenal cortex would enlarge and thicken they would make more cortisol and their hypothalamus would reduce the amount of BDNF which is a very beneficial hormone that we need to make new brain tissue and new synapses in the brain and they found that turmeric reversed all of those changes so it has a profound impact on stress turmeric can have a beneficial effect on gut healing so if you have leaky gut it can help heal the lining and it can also help improve the biome

4.cod liver oil

one tbsp of cod liver oil has 375 percent of your daily needed vitamin D it has 450percent of the vitamin A in a tablespoon but it also gives you these essential fatty acids the EPA eicosapentaenoic acid and DHA docosahexaenoic acid over a thousand milligrams and over 2500 milligrams so one tablespoon is plenty to give you all of those things per day and in addition to building healthy cell membranes these essential fatty acids are also modulating inflammation foods.

5.eggs

if you have three large eggs a day then you get 33% of your daily vitamin D 30% of vitamin A 22% of your zinc 9% of your calcium you also get 21 grams of complete protein and it is insulin healthy and what does that have to do with anything well there’s been a lot of talk recently about how people are more susceptible to the coronavirus if they’re insulin resistant if they have diabetes if they have cardiovascular disease well it’s the insulin that’s at the key of this so when we eat immune boosting foods it’s not just what they have it’s what they don’t have so we want to focus on these foods that don’t trigger insulin and eggs are very very insulin healthy.

6.king crab

how fortunate can we be when a delicacy is also something that’s healthy so six ounces or 170 grams will give us over a hundred percent of our daily zinc and give us 20% of the vitamin C and this was a surprise to me because there virtually no animal foods other than a few organ pieces that have some vitamin C but here’s one of the very few exceptions it had eight percent of your daily calcium and we’ll give you 31grams of complete protein and again it is insulin healthy.

7.steak

so a six ounce steak a hundred and seventy grams will give you a hundred and forty five percent of your daily zinc it will give you 40 grams of complete protein and that looks pretty tasty to me and it is still insulin healthy.

8.bell pepper

so a hundred grams which is three and a half ounces will give us twice the vitamin C we need all the vitamin A a little bit of zinc and calcium but every bit counts and also they have lots of minerals and trace minerals and still it is very insulin healthy.

9.broccoli

A hundred grams three and a half ounces will give us one hundred and forty-eight percent of our daily vitaminC twenty one percent of the vitamin A a little bit of zinc a little bit of calcium and again no problem for the insulin.

10.pumpkin seeds

Three ounces 85 grams will give you almost all of the zinc you need in a day five percent calcium and 40 percent of healthy fats they’re not as healthy as the fish fats because the fish fats are already in the EPA / DHA form that we need but some of these fats can be converted into those end products and we get all that without messing with insulin so it’s about getting a wide variety of whole foods I’ve given a few examples of some really good foods but keep in mind it’s even more about not putting in things or not doing things that stress you and destroy your immune system I believe the vast majority of health problems come from the damage you do from sugar and chemicals and stress.