Your immune system is hard at work, 24/7, helping to fight the barrage of potentially harmful invaders and substances you encounter every day. So, you want to do what you can to provide support for this industrious system.
In this month’s blog post, Dr. Scott Lafferty and our team at Lafferty Family Care want to shine a light on nutrition and the role it plays in your immune health, which isn’t small.
So, if you think that taking a vitamin C supplement during cold and flu season is enough, here are a few points that we want you to consider.
Let’s first spend a moment discussing your immune system, which includes your:
As you can see, your immune system is comprehensive and works inside and out. For example, your skin forms a barrier that provides your first line of defense, while the immune cells in your blood fight against anything that gets into your body.
So, when we talk about building immunity, there’s a good case to be made for boosting your health in all of the areas we outlined above. In other words, it’s just as important to have healthy skin as it is to have enough white blood cells to fight infections.
Now let’s get to the heart of our discussion — how nutrition influences your immune health. The bottom line is that nutrition affects every single area of your health, from how well you see to how well your body protects itself against pathogens disease.
Unfortunately, the problem that many around the world are facing is that we’ve gone from not having enough to eat to eating too much — and too much of the wrong things, at that.
Some reports estimate that the average American takes in about 3,600 calories, when this number should be more down toward 1,800 to 2,000 for women and 2,200 to 3,000 for men. Making matters worse, too many of these excess calories are what we call “empty” calories, meaning they contain no nutrients.
The first step to eating your way to better immune health is to get your caloric intake to within healthy ranges if you’re taking in too many. This is especially true if you have obesity, which can lead to low-grade inflammation in your body that suppresses your immune system. For example, early research shows that people with obesity may be more vulnerable to the flu due to impaired white blood cell function.
Not only should you get your intake to a healthy range, but your calories should be packed with immune-boosting nutrients, such as:
There are plenty of natural resources for these nutrients, and most involve plant and animal foods — not products that are highly processed.
So, in general, you want to eat a whole foods or Mediterranean diet that favors fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and lean proteins.
We also recommend that you come see us for some customized nutrition counseling. First, we can test you for any nutritional deficiencies and then figure out how to boost your immune health through diet and supplements.
Not only will improved nutrition strengthen your immune function, it will improve every other area of your health at the same time.
To get on the road to better immune health through nutrition, we invite you to contact our office in Rogers, Arkansas, to schedule a consultation.
