Immune Health Fundamentals
The delicate balance of the immune system can be interfered with and challenged by many factors. These include neglect, abuse, and overuse. Individuals who are impacted by COVID-19 are largely, not solely, those people that have diet and/or lifestyle related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart and lung disease. These disorders leave people in suboptimal health as a precursor for infection. No optimal level of vitamins as a “May Day” effort can protect the immune system as well as healthy lifestyles can.
How can you start boosting your immune system today?
Take a good quality multivitamin and a research grade probiotic. (Continue reading for more detail).
Without valuing nutrition vs big pharma, the mountain will remain steep.
The health as well as the function of the immune system can be upregulated by many factors. Immune function can be maximized and balanced through the following:
- Nutrition-whole food, lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Focusing on lean animal or vegetable proteins. Few processed foods.
- Reducing stress-emotional and spiritual wellbeing. This is different for each individual.
- Moderate exercise (150-200 minutes/week of continuous moderate movement)
- Decreased sugar intake (20gm or less/week for women and 25gm or less for men). Read food labels for added sugar.
- Sugar negatively alters the function of our white blood cells for hours after ingestion.
- Immune-specific nutrients and supplements. See list below.
The term “immune support” on the label of a nutritional therapy may be over-used in the natural product industry, due to an overabundance of caution caused by over-regulation by the FDA and other authorities. It has become very difficult to give consumers true information about the help and support that may be afforded by natural therapies. This caution has influenced natural product companies to over-rely on the term “immune support” to attempt to convey why a consumer might want to use a specific supplement.
The very best way to approach supplement usage is to analyze a person’s white blood cells (lymphocytes) versus red blood cells to identify what nutrients are needed by that individual. It’s not a “one size fits all” approach when it comes to cutting edge nutrition therapy. We do this testing at our clinic, Nutrition Consultants of Tulsa.
A list of our body’s immune support players includes:
- Microbiome-biologically interactive microbes (good bugs) lining all mucosal barriers-intimately involved in the immune response
- Gastrointestinal lining-most active immune area in the body, site of significant IgG production (a healthy antibody)
- Lung barrier mucosal lining-key player in immune response
- Thymus, Tonsils/adenoids, Spleen, Lymphatic system, Bone marrow and Suppressor T-cells-all have major roles in immune function.
Probiotics
The understanding of the microbiome is expanding exponentially. The major mechanism of probiotic action is the regulation of our immune response protecting against diseases that enter the body through the mouth and nose, such as COVID-19.
There are a variety of probiotic species on the market today, which can help to balance the microbiome when taken as a dietary supplement. The strength of the probiotic in yogurt is not great enough to endure the “trip” from the mouth to the intestinal tract, so don’t count on yogurt as an adequate probiotic. Multi-species, research grade probiotics from reputable companies supply a probiotic that is sustainable. We recommend and sell Microbiome Labs and Numedica research grade Probiotics in our clinic.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is a water soluble vitamin and supplies support to the immune system. The body cannot make vitamin C so it must come from foods/supplements. Low levels of vitamin C can increase susceptibility to respiratory infections, like COVID-19. Getting vitamin C from fruits and vegetables is ideal due to the increased absorption from the flavonoids present in these foods. Taking 500mgs twice daily as a supplement may reduce the severity and duration of a virus. More is NOT always better.
Zinc
Zinc is a mineral that can be supplied by the diet and is intimately linked to immune support. Zinc binds to certain cells that upregulate the body’s ability to fight inflammation. It has been found to be deficient in many diets, especially the elderly. Any form of zinc is well absorbed except for zinc oxide. Zinc lozenges can have some activity in the upper airway, where COVID-19 starts, but they will not directly help with lower respiratory illness (i.e. lungs), which is the greatest concern in COVID-19. Dissolved zinc leaves the respiratory system after the throat, moving to the gastrointestinal system, not the lungs. During the COVID-19 outbreak it is recommended to take 20-30mg/day, but only short term. Avoid taking this high dose for longer than 2-3 months due to induced copper deficiency and an actual adverse effect on the immune system.
These doses are to help boost the immune system, not meant to treat COVID-19. These doses are not appropriate for children or pregnant women.
Nutrition Consultants of Tulsa, LLC
A private practice of Registered Dietitians
Connie Davis Bendel, RD/LD
Cece Davis Gifford, RD, LD, CLT
Stephanie Harris, MS, RD, LD
Beyond the Buzz
SPECIAL FEATURE
Eating wheat packs on the pounds?
“Lose the wheat, lose the weight, and find your path back to health,” proclaims cardiologist William Davis in his best-selling book, Wheat Belly.
Wheat consumption and obesity rates have increased in the United States since the mid- 1980s, as Davis notes. We’re also eating more calories now, although wheat—along with sugars, fats, and oils—accounts for much of the increase.
And cutting bread, bagels, pasta, tortillas, piz- za crust, muffins, pancakes, crackers, croissants, cereal, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, pies, pita chips, pretzels, and dozens of other wheat foods out of your diet would certainly make a dent in your weight…assuming you didn’t replace their calories with calories from other foods.
However, no good studies have tested whether wheatless diets are any better for losing weight—or keeping weight off—than other popular weight-loss diets.
The truth is that you can lose weight on just about any diet that cuts calories. Unfortunately, after six months or a year, most people begin to regain the weight they lost, no matter which foods they cut to lose the weight.1
“What we’re really interested in is a scenario that helps you lose weight and keep it off in the long term,” says Julie Jones, professor of foods and nutrition at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. And there’s no good evidence that slashing carbs helps you do that.
“Avoiding wheat isn’t the answer,” says Jones, who recently reviewed the evidence for many of Wheat Belly’s claims.2
Some people—those who have celiac disease or gluten intolerance—need to avoid wheat. “But don’t do it to lose weight,” says Jones. “This, like the rest of all fad diets, will run its course.”
Bottom Line: Unless you cut calories, eliminating wheat won’t help you lose weight or keep
it off.
1 N. Engl. J. Med. 360: 859. 2009.
2 Cereal Foods World 57: 177, 2012.
Dairy foods cause ovarian cancer?
“Milk linked to ovarian cancer,” reported CBS News in 2004.
Dairy foods—especially low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese—supply calcium and vitamin D for bones and may protect against colorectal cancer and high blood pressure.1 So how did dairy get a bad rap when it comes to the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide?
In 1989, a study reported that women with ovarian cancer were more likely to say that they ate foods that were higher in lactose, the naturally occurring sugar in milk.2
But having a disease can color what people remember eating. To avoid that possible bias, researchers pooled the data from 12 studies that asked more than half a million healthy women what they ate and then fol- lowed them for the next 7 to 20 years.
Women who consumed the most milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream were no more likely to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer than those who ate the least. However, the researchers found a “weak” (their word) 19 per- cent increased risk in women who consumed at least 30 grams of lactose per day.3
To get 30 grams, you’d need to consume roughly 21?2 cups of milk, 2 cups of yogurt, 3 cups of ice cream, greek yogurt, or cottage cheese, or 27 pounds of cheddar.
How might lactose raise the risk of ovarian cancer if dairy doesn’t?
It’s not clear. Could dairy foods have some other nutrients that lower risk and counteract the lactose? Could genes play a role? Or could the “weak” link simply be due to chance?
“If there is an increased risk of ovarian cancer, it’s only at very high intakes of lactose,” says Shelley Tworoger, an ovarian cancer re- searcher at Harvard University. “Even then, it was still a relatively modest association.”
In 2007, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research declared that there
Only “weak” evidence links large amounts of lac- tose to ovarian cancer.
wasn’t enough evidence to reach a conclusion about dairy’s effect on the risk of ovarian cancer.
So what does increase risk? A family history of ovarian cancer, having used hormone therapy, or never having been pregnant. So may excess weight. (Oral contraceptive use can lower risk, notes Tworoger.)
One of the reasons the survival rate for ovarian cancer is so low: the disease often causes no noticeable symptoms until it has spread to a dis- tant site, when the five-year survival rate drops to only about 27 percent.
But new advances to detect the cancer early may be coming.
In January, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that PAP smears, which are routine screening tests for cervical cancer, could detect telltale DNA from endometrial and ovarian cancers as well.4
“There’s a lot of potential, but more work needs to be done to understand if we can use this to identify tumors in healthy women that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to identify,” says Tworoger.
Bottom Line: There’s only weak evidence that large amounts of lactose (equal to what you’d get in 2 1/2 glasses of milk) increase the risk of ovarian cancer.
1 Br. J. Nutr. 96 Suppl. 1: S94, 2006.
2 Lancet 2: 66, 1989.
3 Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 15: 364, 2006. 4 Sci. Transl. Med. 5: 167, 2013.
NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER n JUNE 2013 11
The Time You’re Most Likely to Binge
With Labor Day weekend in sight, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be invited a cookout or two. While barbecues make for great outdoor parties, they can seriously sabotage your waistline: People are more likely to binge at barbecues than other meals, according to a new survey by Forza Supplements.
For the survey, 8,000 people across the U.K. answered an online questionnaire about what they ate at barbecues. The results showed that the average person consumes nearly 3,000 calories when they attend one—that’s 1,000 calories more than the recommended amount per day. The problem? Many people treat cookouts like all-you-can-eat buffets—51 percent said they usually double back for a second helping, and some people said they go back to the buffet even more than that.
When you’re going back for seconds or thirds, it’s easy to lose track of calories. Not completely sure how much food makes up a reasonable portion size? Check out this chart before your next barbecue as a reminder:
Check out the article at http://blog.womenshealthmag.com/scoop/the-time-youre-most-likely-to-binge-2/