Encouraging Health

Your immune system is responsible for helping fight off everything from the common cold to cancer. A tall order!

Send in some reinforcements so it doesn’t get battle fatigue. Here are four foods your immune system loves.

Sweet, Creamy, Steamy, Crunchy . . .
Oranges, yogurt, tea, and pumpkin seeds are the order of the day when it comes to giving your immune system a treat, according to experts Michael Roizen, MD, and Mehmet Oz, MD, authors of the best-selling (and now newly expanded and updated) YOU: The Owner’s Manual. Here’s how these four superfoods help:

Oranges are chock-full of vitamin C, an antioxidant vitamin that helps your immune system fend off disease-causing invaders. Other good C options: bell peppers, strawberries, cantaloupe, and broccoli. Or take 400 milligrams of vitamin C three times daily.

Yogurt (unpasteurized) contains Lactobacillus acidophilus — a healthy bacterium that helps thwart fungus-related infections. Or take a 20-milligram acidophilus supplement twice daily.

Tea is full of flavonoids, powerful vitamin-like substances that reduce immune-system aging. You’ll also find them in oats, onions, broccoli, tomatoes, apples, and berries.

Pumpkin seeds are great year round, not just at Halloween, because they contain zinc — a nutrient that’s been shown to help reduce the average length of the common cold.

Here’s more good nows on how Zinc can help your workout:

Fatigue during workouts could have many underlying causes. Recent research suggests a lack of zinc could be one factor. When 14 men were fed either a low-zinc or zinc-supplemented diet for 9 weeks, the men on the zinc diet performed much better on exercise tests compared to the men on the low-zinc diet.

Aim for at least 12 milligrams (mg) of zinc per day from food and supplements. However, zinc can be harmful in excessive amounts, so avoid getting more than 30 mg per day. Zinc helps rid the body of excess carbon dioxide that builds up during a workout, so if you’re low you may tire more quickly. It also facilitates oxygen uptake, carbon dioxide output, and other metabolic processes that help maintain stamina. Zinc performs a variety of other functions in the body, as well, including aiding in the synthesis of genetic material, maintaining a healthy immune system, speeding wound healing, and helping enzymes perform their various functions.

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