What to eat to Build Immunity
Immunity starts in the gut, about 70% of our immune system lives in our gut! We are in the middle of craziness with this COVID 19 scare world wide. This should be a wake up call and a check for us all to make on our own health status.
Are we taking care of our bodies as we should?
Do we feed ourselves to ward off things like this?
I wish that most of our answers were yes of course! However, sadly it isn’t the case. This is the perfect time to start implementing better eating habits and better self care routines. It is also a wonderful and perfect time to teach our children and loved ones the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle. Let us look at a few foods we can eat now to help our gut health and help us build a stronger immune system.
#1 - Bone Broth can easily be made at home or you can purchase from many different companies. It can be expensive if you purchase, so I personally love to slow cook my own when I have the time. I like to slow cook 2 whole chickens I the crock pot or roast them and then just chuck the bones in our slow cooker for the next 24 hours! Check out a great recipe here…
Health benefits of Bone broth….
Full of minerals to support our own bone and joint health such as Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc and more!
Full of Collagen & Gelatin, great for healing a compromised gut lining and wonderful for your skin and your muscles.
Full of amino acids such as glycine and proline
Helps boost our immune system
Bone Broth is one of the top health foods I highly recommend for everyone, especially now and going forward a great staple food for your pantry or freezer.
#2 - Omega 3 Fatty Acids . This is because most of us are over loaded with omega 6 fatty acids and not enough omega 3’s. Omega 3 fatty acids are essential to bring down inflammation in the body. They help prevent heart disease and are wonderful for those with autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, chrons disease and more. Our bodies can not make omega 3 fatty acids on their own so we need to get it from our diet.
Add some of these Omega 3 rich foods into your daily diet…
Fish such as Wild Caught Salmon, Sardines
Flaxseeds
Walnuts
Hemp Hearts
Over all we should have a balance of omega 3 and omega 6 in our diet. The reason we don’t is due to the processed, refined foods most of us are consuming on a regular basis. A lot of this imbalance comes from the toxic vegetable oils that are in these foods. Read more on the next blog below…
#3 - Antioxidant rich foods This is what we all think of when it comes to immune boosting foods. We need Vitamin C and Vitamin E especially. Antioxidant rich foods help us protect our cells and to fight free radicals.
Some Vitamin C rich foods I recommend…
Bell peppers
Kiwi
Papaya
Broccoli
Kale
Parsley
Some Vitamin E rich foods I recommend…
Almonds
Sunflower seeds
Brazil nuts
Wild Caught Salmon
Avocado
In summary, the above are some simple things you can implement into your life today to help your immune system to work more efficiently. Another outcome is you will feel better overall by adding in some of these healthy nutrient dense foods.
