The Real Immune-Boosters

What comes to your mind when we say “immune support”? Vitamin C and maybe zinc? Those have their place, but there are things we can do that are a lot more important!

It’s just, these things are not talked about as much, because stores can’t sell them to you

Sleep

One of the biggest difference-makers. Get good sleep! Getting at least 7 hours decent sleep (not lying in bed, not counting interruptions to sleep as part of the sleep duration) can improve your immune system by three or four times.

Put another way, people are 3–4 times more likely to get sick if they get less sleep than that on average.

Check it out: Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

In short, for most of us this means lots of whole plant foods (lots of fiber), and limited sugar, flour, alcohol.

For more details, you can see our main feature on this: Keep Inflammation At Bay!

You may wonder why eating to reduce inflammation (inflammation is a form of immune response) will help improve immune response. Put it this way:

If your town’s fire service is called out eleventy-two times per day to deal with things that are not, in fact, fires, then when there is a fire, they will be already exhausted, and will not do their job so well.

Look after your gut microbiota

Additionally, healthy gut microbiota (fostered by the same diet we just described) help keep your body pathogen-free, by avoiding “leaky gut syndrome” that occurs when, for example, C. albicans (you do not want this in your gut, and it thrives on the things we just told you to avoid) puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes in them. And through those holes? You definitely do not want bacteria from your intestines going into the rest of your body.

See also: Gut Health 101

Actually get that moderate exercise

There’s definitely a sweet-spot here, because too much exercise will also exhaust you and deplete your body’s resources. However, the famous “150 minutes per week” (so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) will make a big difference.

See: Exercise and the Regulation of Immune Functions

Manage your stress levels (good and bad!)

This one swings both ways:

• Acute stress (like a cold shower) is good for immune response. Think of it like a fire drill for your body.
• Chronic stress (“the general everything” persistently stressful in life) is bad for immune response. This is the fire drill that never ends. Your body’s going to know what to do really well, but it’s going to be exhausted already by the time an actual threat hits.

Read more: Effects of Stress on Immune Function: the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

Supplement, yes.

These are far less critical than the above things, but are also helpful. Good things to take include:

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Zinc
• Elderberry
• Echinacea
• Garlic

Enjoy, and stay well!

These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…

• “Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
• “Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
• “Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”—Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
• “Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.

For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.

But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!

Here are some sneaky tips:

(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)

Beyond soups and smoothies

Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…

Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”

Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:

• Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
• Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
• Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.

Vegetables that punch above their weight

Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:

Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…

They:

• are full of antioxidants and fight inflammation
• boost immune health
• help control blood sugar levels
• improve vascular function and heart health
• and even fight cancer, which is a many-headed beast, but for example:
  • against bowel cancer
  • against prostate cancer
  • against breast cancer
  • against ovarian cancer
  • against lung cancer

…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.

Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.

Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.

Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.

Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.

• If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
• If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
• If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
  • If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!

Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.

Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:

• Lipid-lowering effects of time-released garlic
• Garlic extract lowers blood pressure in patients with hypertension
• Garlic extract reduces blood pressure in hypertensives

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!

But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!