Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself by William W. Li

Author:William W. Li
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Health
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Activate Your Immune Command Center

Every grandmother, it seems, has offered her wisdom on choosing the right food to help fight sickness. When it comes to your immunity, some dietary traditions are now being looked at through the new lens of health defense. The science of modern immunology is revealing which foods affect immunity and telling us how they work.

Take chicken soup, one of the oldest home remedies known. We now know that soup made with chicken meat and bones indeed contains natural bioactives that, in the lab, can modify the inflammatory reaction of our immune systems. Less inflammation in the body translates to less misery from the symptoms of colds and the flu.1 Or consider the nostrum “feed a cold, starve a fever.” Actually, cycles of fasting can help the body rid itself of older, worn-out immune cells that are past their prime and cause it to regenerate from stem cells fresh new ones that are ready for battle to beat an infection.2

New discoveries reveal that specific foods can help fine-tune your immune system, keep it in prime shape, and help you thwart disease. There’s a simple way to understand the impact of diet on the immune system. What we eat and drink can turn up or turn down the two arms of immunity—the innate and acquired immune system—to defend our health. In this chapter, we’ll identify the evidence supporting specific foods that can boost your body’s ability to resist disease through the immune system.

Let’s first take a look at some major diseases where the immune system plays a role in making you sick. This will help you think about the different situations where diet can be used to your advantage.

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