Hello Health Champions. Today I want to talk about the immune system and the top
10 foods that can help it work better. Coming right up. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a
holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly
master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you
subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything so it's a
little misleading to talk about the immune system because there's not really
any such thing when we talk about the immune system we're talking about your
body's capacity to defend itself so it's not like you have an immune system you
are an immune system everything about you participates in your ability to
defend yourself you have 40 trillion cells and every one of them is doing
their part they provide physical barriers to keep foreign invaders out
the skin the inside the lining of the lungs and so forth we have cell
membranes that determine what goes in and out the virus bacteria they have to
get through and pass these membranes we have mucus which is secreted off a
mucous membranes to act as a barrier and trap foreign agents we have chemical
defenses we have free radicals we have phagocytes that that secrete toxic
substances that poison these foreign invaders to death we have detoxification
we have the liver and the spleen and the kidneys that are filtering out these
foreign agents and the broken-down substances and then of course we have
the cell based immune system the white blood cells and this is oftentimes what
people talk about primarily when they talk about the immune system but it is
so much more so how do we build the immune system well it starts with whole
food and whole food has vitamins it has whole complex
vitamins it has minerals in their natural organic absorbable form it has
essential amino acids and it has essential fatty acids these are the
resources that your cells need to do what they do so by eating whole food by
eating nutritionally dense food you're continuously providing resources for
your body and your cell to do what it's supposed to do now processed food and
fast food it has less vitamins and less minerals and less amino acids and less
essential fatty acids because the processing destroys them on purpose okay
these have nutrients so they don't have shelf-life these have the nutrients
removed so that we can get shelf-life and people often ask what do I take to
improve my immunity but we want to think about it as a balance there's some
things that help and there's some things that hurt immunity and we need to
understand both sides of it so what helps immunity are things like vitamin C
and vitamin D and vitamin A these are immune boosters they are white blood
cell activators they participate in this cell based immune system vitamin A is
critical for mucous membranes that act as barriers then we have zinc which is
the key trace mineral to activate white blood cells another important mineral is
calcium but what we're talking about is ionizable calcium something that is
quickly and readily converted in the body into calcium bicarbonate and
unfortunately almost all supplements sold are calcium carbonate also known as
limestone or chalk the body doesn't know what to do with it it is very very
difficult for the body to convert into calcium bicarbonate so a really good
form would be calcium lactate it's only one
step away from becoming calcium bicarbonate and then of course essential
amino acids and essential fatty acids essential fatty acids can help modulate
inflammation they are essential for making up healthy membranes and healthy
barriers in the body and amino acids or proteins they are what makes up all
these immune cells so of course the white blood cells have to be made from
something and I'm sure you've heard of immunoglobulins those globulins are
proteins and they require essential amino acids to be put together but we
want to stop thinking about these things as drugs
stop thinking about them as pills because we have this drug mentality that
if a little bit does something then more is better or more does a lot these are
nutrients the body just needs enough and enough is enough when you have enough
then more isn't necessarily better more isn't gonna do more it's just going to
be wasted at times it could unbalance something else but it's a nutrient all
right we don't need mega doses we just need enough and then there are things
that hurt immunity and this is really really important and people forget about
this but there is no nutrient there is no pill that can make up for a
continuous supply of toxins so when we eat things like sugar excess sugar
excess alcohol when we smoke we're constantly putting poison in our body
there is no nutrient that can compensate for that stress is detrimental and
processed foods will deplete your body and break it down and wear it down
gradually it has low nutrient content high sugar content high chemical content
and just one more thing before we get to the top 10 list
I know some people just want to jump ahead but please hear me out here
because like I said there is no nutrient that can make up for a poison and if I
just gave you the list it'd be like selling you an umbrella that doesn't
protect you from the rain but that actually rains on you alright so here's
what we want to think about that short term I believe that probably 50% of the
impact of what you're trying to accomplish and strengthening your immune
system it's not about what you take it's about what you avoid and then I would
say probably 40% is due to stress in terms of interfering with your immune
system and then the last 10% would be nutrition and the things that you can
take now these are not exact numbers I'm just trying to give you an idea that
probably 90% of the impact on your immune system are things that people
don't even focus on they eat sugar and they stress to death and then they
wonder what kind of pill what kind of food can I take long term then I can't really
prioritize one over the other because they're all essential you have to avoid
sugar and toxins you have to reduce stress you have to eat real food in the
long run for your body to function optimally so just keep that in mind as
we move into the list number one immune boosting food is garlic it has a
tradition spanning thousands of years of helping people improve immunity it has
an active ingredient a component called allicin which is a sulfur compound and
we know that garlic has antibacterial properties antiviral properties anti
yeast properties and antifungal properties as well as anti mold so it
will actually kill off a lot of these microbes it'll help us work so in that
sense it's not so much a nutrient but it has medicinal property
in addition to that it has 50% of our daily allowance of vitamin C per hundred
gram now don't go all out on garlic for that reason because it's kind of hard to
eat a hundred grams or three and a half ounces especially since it's most potent
if you eat it raw it would also give you ten percent of your daily zinc and 18
percent of your calcium immune boosting food number two is ginger it's another
medicinal food we don't eat it so much for the nutrient even though it has some
we know it has antimicrobial properties and it has been studied specifically for
fungus like Candida like yeast overgrowth it can help with the
digestion so you can absorb more nutrients but also to help have a better
gut flora and your biome your gut flora participates in your immune system so a
healthy gut and a healthy digestion is certainly of benefit and ginger can also
be beneficial as an inflammation modulator food number three is turmeric
root the active component is called curcumin it is also antimicrobial it is
an inflammation modulator but it also has the capacity to reverse effects of
stress so they found in a study that if you stressed mice then they would have
certain effects with their adrenal cortex would enlarge and thicken they
would make more cortisol and their hypothalamus would reduce the amount of
BDNF which is a very beneficial hormone that we need to make new brain tissue
and new synapses in the brain and they found that turmeric reversed all of
those changes so it has a profound impact on stress turmeric can have a
beneficial effect on gut healing so if you have leaky gut it can help heal the
lining and it can also help improve the biome
food number four is cod liver oil and I love this picture it's from a Norwegian
grocery store and the section on cod liver oil looks like the section on soda
or cereal in an American store one tbsp of cod liver oil has 375 percent of your
daily needed vitamin D it has 450 percent of the vitamin A in a tablespoon
but it also gives you these essential fatty acids the EPA eicosapentaenoic
acid and DHA docosahexaenoic acid over a thousand milligrams and over 2500
milligrams so one tablespoon is plenty to give you all of those things per day
and in addition to building healthy cell membranes these essential fatty acids
are also modulating inflammation food number 5 is eggs and if you have three
large eggs a day then you get 33% of your daily vitamin D 30% of vitamin A
22% of your zinc 9% of your calcium you also get 21 grams of complete protein
and it is insulin healthy and what does that have to do with anything well
there's been a lot of talk recently about how people are more susceptible to
the corona virus if they're insulin resistant if they have diabetes if they
have cardiovascular disease well it's the insulin that's at the key of this so
when we eat immune boosting foods it's not just what they have it's what they
don't have so we want to focus on these foods that don't trigger insulin and
eggs are very very insulin healthy food number six is king crab how fortunate
can we be when a delicacy is also something that's healthy so six ounces
or 170 grams will give us over a hundred percent of our daily zinc
and give us 20% of the vitamin C and this was a surprise to me because there
virtually no animal foods other than a few organ pieces that have some vitamin
C but here's one of the very few exceptions it had eight percent of your
daily calcium and we'll give you 31 grams of complete protein and again it
is insulin healthy food number seven is steak so a six ounce steak a hundred and
seventy grams will give you a hundred and forty five percent of your daily
zinc it will give you 40 grams of complete protein and that looks pretty
tasty to me and it is still insulin healthy food number eight is bell pepper
so a hundred grams which is three and a half ounces will give us twice the
vitamin C we need all the vitamin A a little bit of zinc and calcium but every
bit counts and also they have lots of minerals and
trace minerals and still it is very insulin healthy food number nine
broccoli a hundred grams three and a half ounces will give us one hundred and
forty-eight percent of our daily vitamin C twenty one percent of the vitamin A
a little bit of zinc a little bit of calcium and again no problem for the
insulin food number ten pumpkin seeds three ounces 85 grams will give you
almost all of the zinc you need in a day five percent calcium and 40 percent of
healthy fats they're not as healthy as the fish fats because the fish fats are
already in the EPA / DHA form that we need but some of these fats can be converted
into those end products and we get all that without messing with insulin so
it's about getting a wide variety of whole foods I've given a few examples of
some really good foods but keep in mind it's even more about not
putting in things or not doing things that stress you and destroy your immune
system I believe the vast majority of health problems come from the damage you
do from sugar and chemicals and stress if you enjoyed this video make sure you
also look at this one thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next
video