By Donna Moodie, RD CDN
How can we keep our bodies healthy and ward off illnesses like colds and flu during the winter months? Here are some nutrition and exercise tips that can boost your immune system in order to make it as strong as possible.
- Eat enough protein: Protein helps the body fight illness. Choose lean meats and seafood, eggs, beans, nuts, and seeds.
- Incorporate Vitamin A rich foods: These will help keep your skin, tissues in your mouth, stomach, intestines, and respiratory system healthy. Shop for sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, spinach, pepper, apricots, and eggs.
- Vitamin C: This vitamin helps you make fighter cells. Include more citrus fruits, peppers, papaya, and tomatoes in your diet.
- Choose more Vitamin E rich foods: Adding such foods as sunflower seeds, almonds, sunflower oil, hazelnuts, peanut butter, or spinach will help you get more of this high antioxidant nutrient.
- Zinc: This nutrient is found in lean meats, poultry, seafood, whole grains, beans, and nuts. Zinc may help make the immune system stronger.
- Other nutrients Include Vitamin B6 (meat, fish, poultry), folate (leafy vegetables and beans), selenium (liver, shellfish, fish and brazil nuts), iron (beef, whole eggs, beans, green leafy vegetables), as well as prebiotics (indigestible carbohydrates that promote good bacteria in the gut) and probiotics (bacteria and yeast that are good for your digestion, ex: l. acidolphilus found in yogurt.)
***Always avoid foods you are allergic to.
- And remember, it is very important to keep up your exercise routine. Scientists are currently involved in research which indicates that exercise might be a helpful way to keep your immune system strong. Strive to exercise 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Always check with your doctor before beginning an exercise program.
Adapted from, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, “Protect Your Health: Immune-Boosting Nutrition” eatright.org 8/2015
Medline Plus: ” Exercise and Immunity” nih.gov 8/2015
Donna Moodie is a Registered Dietician and Diabetes Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County’s Family Health and Wellness Program. She can be reached at dm258@cornell.edu