Immunity-boosting dietary recommendations

If you want to truly improve your immunity through diet, the core is never to follow the trend of eating "Internet celebrity foods" such as Ganoderma lucidum, sea cucumbers, and high-priced vitamin supplements. Instead, you must first ensure a balanced coverage of daily nutrition, give priority to protein, trace elements, and phytochemicals, the three basic immune ingredients that are most likely to be insufficient. At the same time, avoid the three common dietary minefields of high sugar and high salt, over-processing, and extreme dieting. This can already solve 80% of the problems.

In the past two years, I would catch a cold every fall and winter. It was common for me to have a fever for three consecutive days. In order to improve my immunity, I did a lot of things. I soaked in Cordyceps sinensis water and asked a friend to buy imported immunoglobulin tablets. I spent less than 20,000 yuan, but I couldn't escape the illness even if I should. Later, I went to the nutrition department for a dietary assessment and found out that my daily protein intake was less than 40g, which was equivalent to the "raw material inventory" of immune cells being depleted every day. No matter how many supplements I took, they would be in vain.

There are actually quite a lot of controversies about the immune diet on the Internet, and there is no absolutely correct standard answer. For example, the vegetarian group advocates that eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and staying away from animal products can reduce chronic inflammation and improve immunity. I have a friend who has been vegan for three years. It is true that he rarely catches colds and is in much better condition than his peers. But his eating method is not just chewing leaves: he eats fermented beans every day. The product supplements vitamin B12. Half a pound of dark green vegetables are combined with vitamin C to supplement plant-based iron. The serum zinc level is regularly monitored and supplemented as needed. It clearly supplements the immune-related nutrients that are easily deficient in vegetarian diets. Most people just eat boiled vegetables, but the lack of nutrients easily drags down the immunity. On the other side, low-carb and ketogenic enthusiasts say that they need to eat more animal protein and reduce their intake of refined carbohydrates to be effective. The gym instructors I often go to basically follow this eating pattern. They have a low body fat rate and never get sick all year round. However, they train at least 6 times a week with high intensity, and carbohydrates are consumed quickly. If sedentary office workers blindly follow the trend, it will easily mess up metabolism and reduce immunity instead of increasing.

In fact, ordinary people don't have to worry about which faction they stand on. They can just pay attention to their meals and don't have to count calories and nutrients every time. Just remember to have a palm-sized protein source for every meal, whether it’s eggs, fish, lean pork or tofu. To put it bluntly, immune cells are like security guards in your body. If you don’t feed people well, how can they have the strength to catch invading viruses and bacteria? Then try to eat three kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables of different colors every day, such as small tomatoes with steamed buns in the morning, stir-fried broccoli at noon, and a pear on the way to get off work. The flavonoids, carotene, and anthocyanins in these dark-colored ingredients are all good things to help activate immune cells. They are much more reliable than the synthetic anthocyanin capsules you buy for tens of dollars a bottle.

Oh, by the way, there’s another hotly debated point: Should we give up refined carbohydrates completely? I specifically asked two friends from different departments. Doctors from the Department of Endocrinology said that eating too much white rice, white noodles, and milk tea cakes for a long time will put the body in a low-grade inflammation state for a long time. This is equivalent to immune cells dealing with irrelevant inflammatory reactions every day. When encountering a virus, they will lose their strength. Therefore, people who usually sit for a long time can replace one-third of their white rice and white noodles with whole grains such as oats, sweet potatoes, and other grains. There is no need to completely stop eating. But friends in sports medicine say that if you do high-intensity exercise more than three times a week and take more than 10,000 steps every day, then it is absolutely fine to eat white rice normally. On the contrary, if you insist on eating whole grains to provide insufficient energy, the activity of immune cells will decrease. There is really no need to cut it all.

I have to tell you about the pitfalls I have stepped into. Before, I stocked up on a bunch of vitamin C effervescent tablets and drank one with water every day. After three months of drinking, my physical examination showed that urinary oxalic acid was high. If it were later, I would develop kidney stones. Doctors say that people who eat normally only need to take 100mg of vitamin C every day, which is about the same amount as a cup of fresh orange juice or 200g of strawberries. If you take too much vitamin C, it will not be absorbed at all and will put a burden on the kidneys. In the past few years, I went on an extreme diet to keep up with the trend. I only ate boiled vegetables every day for half a month. As a result, I got herpes zoster. The pain was so painful that I couldn’t sleep well for half a month. The doctor said that my immunity was broken, and viruses lurking in the body took advantage of it. Don’t mess around.

Now I no longer pursue a perfect immune diet. I usually bring one meat, one vegetarian, and one staple food to my meals at work. I don’t worry about having hot pot and barbecue with friends occasionally on weekends. I eat less takeaways that are heavy in oil and salt, and eat more fresh and less processed food. I really haven’t caught a cold in the past six months. To be honest, there is no one-size-fits-all plan. The best way to eat is to suit your own pace of life and make your body feel comfortable after eating it. If you are really unsure, it is much more cost-effective to spend dozens of dollars to go to the nutrition department for a dietary assessment than to buy supplements based on online remedies.