Immune Health

Everyone is paying more attention to the importance of having a healthy immune system in light of the recent coronavirus pandemic.  On this podcast I explore the connection between a healthy immune system & a whole food, plant based diet as well as give you a common sense understanding of how the immune system works to help protect you from foreign invaders such as viruses.   

Stop Chasing Wellness is an online wellness coaching company founded by two Holistic Health Coaches, Gina and Kristin. Be sure to check out all of our offerings including our book, Stop Chasing Wellness; Create It, and our growing catalog of Hormone Specific coaching courses. All of our courses and offerings are designed to help you feel and live your best life in a simplified way that works for you. You can find Stop Chasing Wellness on Facebook and Instagram

Transcript

Welcome to the Common Sense Nutrition Podcast.
This podcast today is all about immune health.
Well hey everybody, my name is Kristen Peterson.
Welcome to the Common Sense Nutrition Podcast.
I'm really excited that you're here with me today.
I'm gonna be talking to you guys for a few minutes
about something that I think has become
so much more important for all of us as of late
with this recent health pandemic with the coronavirus.
We're gonna be talking about our immune systems
and the health and the importance
of having a healthy immune system.
So I think it's gonna be very timely stuff, so stay tuned.
But before I get started, I just wanted to remind you guys
to first go ahead and check out my website,
commonsensenutritionaz.com for more information
on what I do as a health coach.
Well thanks again for joining me.
Let's just jump into this.
I think that this, like I said,
it's a really important topic right now
just with this recent coronavirus pandemic.
But I really just, I think it's an important topic
every single day.
It's just something that we're paying
so much more attention to right now.
But I really wanna talk to you guys today
just to give you a little table of contents here.
I'm gonna talk about the relationship
between whole food, plant-based nutrition
and your immune system.
And I wanna make sure we have an understanding
of what that means.
What is whole food?
And then I will break down, like what is the immune system
and how does this work to help protect us?
Because it is kind of a complex system.
I'll break it down and make it as simple as possible
so that, like I love to do,
that's why I call it common sense nutrition.
Because I like to keep things simplified
and make sure that you walk away
with something you can really relate to and understand.
But there definitely is a correlation
between whole food, plant nutrition
and a healthy immune system.
So let's talk about that.
Why are whole foods so good for us
and so critical to our immune health?
And the reason for that is that, first of all,
plants are considered whole foods.
So we're talking about clean foods,
whole foods, what is that?
That's plants.
And the reason that plants are so important
to a healthy immune system is that plants contain,
you'll hear the words phytonutrients,
micronutrients, phytochemicals,
all of those basically are the same thing.
And those are the components of the plant
that help to build a healthy immune system.
To date, there are 20,000 phytonutrients
that we've identified, that science has identified
in whole foods, in the plants.
But there's probably another 20,000 or more
that we're not aware of yet.
I mean, science is, we're limited to what we know
and it's an evolving, nutrition is an evolving science,
which I think is partly why it interests me so much.
We're constantly learning new things.
So we're talking, if we talk about just making it
as simplified as saying you need to eat a diet
rich in whole foods, rich in plants being the primary focus
of your diet in order to have a healthy immune system,
that sounds easy, but the reality of it is
that actually doing that and getting enough
of that plant nutrition is, that's the challenge,
that's the hard part.
So we know that we're not all getting enough nutrition
from plants, we really need, like typically when we eat,
when you go to the grocery store,
imagine yourself walking through the grocery store,
don't you typically buy the same things?
I think most of us do, with a little bit of variation.
I mean, we typically have the same staples
or if you're buying things like just say for a salad,
you're buying probably the same ingredients for that salad
or you eat the same types of vegetables.
And that really largely is based on what's available to us,
but in part what's available to us is what is popular,
what are people buying and then the farmers grow
what people, what is in demand.
But like I keep saying, it's kind of just those same things
over and over, like broccoli for dinner
and maybe some carrots and lettuce and tomatoes
and cucumber and a salad.
We're really not getting enough from plants.
And what we really need is a little bit
of all of the nutrients from a variety of plants
because some of us are only eating the same things.
So you think about when we say eat the rainbow,
the reason for that is that all those different colors
in the rainbow of fruits and vegetables,
the red from a tomato, the purple from an eggplant,
the green from kale, all of those colors
contain different chemical compounds,
different phytonutrients and all of those nutrients
work synergistically in the body.
So our bodies over time, since from evolution,
we've adapted to this and as we've evolved
and it's that nutrition that really allows our bodies
to function well and to stay healthy.
And really, I mean, when you think about the human body,
it has an amazing capacity to stay alive,
even in the most harsh conditions.
And just sometimes we physically abuse our bodies
by just not treating it well and whether it's
that we're not physically treating it well mentally
or that we're just not nutritionally
treating our bodies well.
I mean, we all either know people or maybe some of us
are people that just are visibly unhealthy,
but our bodies are still functioning.
The body has this innate ability to stay alive.
The body wants to heal, the body wants to stay alive,
it wants to thrive, it wants to function.
And the normal functions of the body,
like the liver's trying to cleanse every single day,
it's trying to purge toxins and we're not always putting
the right things in to help the body do that,
but the body's still trying to.
So the more that we can do that through the power of plants,
the better our body's going to function,
the healthier our immune function will be.
So proper nutrition through, really through plants
is necessary for all of the organs and the organ functions
to function well and to function normally.
And like I said, that includes supporting
your immune health.
And without enough nutrition, you really aren't ever going
to be as healthy as you could be.
Your immune system is just going to be compromised.
So I would say like nutrition from plants,
it's one of those, it's probably like the only category
where you can't have enough.
Your body will use it, your body will absorb it.
If you think that you feel good now,
how good will your body feel if you increase your amount
of plant intake?
You may not know until you try that.
So let's jump ahead for a second.
I want to talk about just about what the immune system is
because I think that this is really important.
We talk about immune health, but a lot of us
don't necessarily know like what is your immune system
and how does it work?
So basically your immune system, it's an entire system.
Unlike your organs consist of solitary parts,
your immune system is a system of complex parts
and cells and substances that the job is to protect
the body from foreign invaders like viruses, right?
So this virus, for this coronavirus pandemic,
this plays into the role of why a healthy immune system
is so important right now.
Because a healthy immune system protects our bodies
from foreign invaders, one of those being viruses,
bacteria, parasites, molds, mildews, yeasts and pollens
and things that just aren't supposed to be in our bodies.
So things that come inside of our body
that are not normally supposed to be there, right?
Like a virus or bacteria,
they have to be identified by the immune system.
And then the immune system looks at that
and either assimilates it and says,
yes, you're supposed to be here
or it sees it as a foreign invader
and it attempts to get rid of it.
It's like, you don't belong here, you need to go.
And so your immune system has the job
of basically identifying the cells that are in the body
that become abnormal, right?
And that can happen when we have
foreign invaders in our body.
So cancer cells are some of those abnormal cells
and cells that have been infected
or maybe invaded by like a virus or a bacteria, right?
Like you get a sinus infection or something like that.
Those are cells that the immune system is looking at that
and saying, you are an abnormal cell,
we need to get rid of you.
So the same thing with viruses, viruses or bacteria,
they enter the cells and they replicate
and then they branch off
and they start to invade other cells.
And this is where you see the health start to decline.
So we have this thing called natural killer cells
and they have the job of going out into the body
and killing infected cells.
And those natural killer cells,
they're just, it's,
I think that they have a really important job.
We have to protect them
because they have a really, really important job.
And that's part of building a healthy immune system
is making sure that those natural killer cells
are doing their job.
So we have two types of immunity.
We have an innate immunity and we have an acquired immunity.
So your innate immunity is this,
this is an immunity that you're born with.
It's your white blood cells and your killer cells.
And then your acquired immunity is,
it's when your immune system,
when it meets a new invader for the first time,
like you catch a virus or you get sick
and your immune system reacts to that
and it wants to get rid of that infection or that virus.
But what it also does is it learns to recognize that
so that it can respond immediately and respond better
maybe the next time it's in contact with that virus
and help the body get rid of it.
So that acquired immunity,
it helps teach your immune system how to react and respond.
And we have two different types of cells
in our immune system.
We have T cells and B cells.
And the B cells in our immune system,
these produce antibodies that attack
and they attach to viruses and bacteria.
And that helps the T cells recognize things
that need to be rid of,
that helps the body say these don't belong here,
these need to go.
So eating a diet rich in clean whole foods,
primarily plants that are rich in phytonutrients,
phytonutrients we get from plants,
it helps to maintain and regulate
that normal healthy function of the immune system.
So without enough whole food nutrition,
many of those components of our immune system
become just inactive.
They're not being fed what they need.
And it's then therefore,
when you come in contact with a virus or a bacteria,
your body's unable to do its job fully.
And that leaves you so much more susceptible to illness.
So now are the pieces starting to come together.
It's starting to make sense as to why it's really important,
you know, focusing on immune health
and things that we do every single day can really,
you wanna keep it healthy all the time.
So we know that without enough
whole food plant-based nutrition,
the immune system, it just settles into this.
It settles into a rhythm that's not healthy,
but with enough proper nutrition,
it's functioning really, really well.
But the question is,
are you eating 10 or more servings a day?
I mean, most Americans aren't.
Most Americans are eating zero to three.
And a lot of that comes in the form of French fries
and tomatoes from ketchup.
And I'm sorry, but those are not,
those are not the nutrients that we need.
Those are not the phytonutrients that we need.
So when it comes to eating plants,
like I said a few seconds ago,
there's no limit to the amount
that you should be getting from the rainbow.
When you really wanna eat fresh and raw,
it's better when we're not,
you know, you're not deep frying something
and you're not overcooking something.
The closer to fresh and raw that you can get plants,
the better because it has the maximum nutritional content.
It has been cooked out of it.
So really, I don't want you to just focus
on those same fruits and vegetables.
You really need, you need to eat a rainbow of them.
And if you can get them locally sourced,
like if you can, you know,
once things go back to normal
and we can get back out to farmer's markets,
you know, finding local, locally sourced fruits
and vegetables is even better
because chances are you are eating it closer
to when it's been, you know,
picked or pulled out of the ground or off of a tree.
So the sooner you eat it after it has been picked,
the more nutritional value that that plant actually has.
We do know through science
that people that eat a wide variety
of fresh, fine, ripened fruits and vegetables,
what happens when you have that healthy immune system
is that you will heal faster from illness.
You may still get sick, but you will heal faster.
I know for me, that's been the case.
I will catch a cold, but it's not the kind of cold
that I used to catch before I really started doing things
to focus on immune health.
People that eat a variety of fruits and vegetables
consume less medication and they do get sick less often
for shorter durations and recover quicker.
And that's really what we all want.
Nobody wants to get a cold and get taken down by that cold.
And then, you know, I think one of the reasons
why we're hearing that the elderly population
is more at risk of this coronavirus
is because we do know that as we age,
certain functions of our immune system just slow down
and become less efficient.
So I think as we age, it's even more important
to focus on eating a tiny bit of tens of thousands
of phytonutrients on a regular basis
to help support a healthy immune function
because it becomes more and more critical as we get older.
And I never do this on my podcasts in the past,
but there is a supplement that I recommend
and that is called Juice Plus,
and you can get more information on it on my website,
commonsensenutritionaz.com.
And what Juice Plus is is it is a variety
of 30 different vine-ripened plants
that have been basically ground down.
The fiber and the, most of the fiber and the sugar
and the water content have been removed.
And it's basically the dry nutritional content
of the plants that have been put into capsule form.
So it, for me, is the easiest thing that I know of
in order to be able to help build
and maintain a healthy immune system.
In fact, it's the only product available on the market
that has research, clinical research done,
three different research studies to show that,
to basically prove the claim that it helps support
and maintain a healthy immune system.
And one of those studies is actually done
on the elderly population, which is super important
right now because we know that they are more at risk.
So it's a supplement that I recommend.
You can, like I said, you can get more information
on it on my website.
It's something I've been recommending myself
and my family eat it and lots of, you know,
people that I've worked with as health coaching clients
and just friends and family are eating it as well
because it's something people are recognizing.
They just need more of it.
And it's the easiest way I can think of
to get that variety into your body.
Because it's, we all know it's important to build
and maintain that system rather than boost it.
Because what we're not looking to do right now
is boost our immune system.
What we really want to be doing is maintaining
and building a healthy immune system.
Because when you do things, like we keep hearing people,
I'm doing these, you know, vitamin shots
or taking these elderberry extract to boost my immune system.
Well, that causes these little micro-inflammations
in your system and we don't want that right now
because illness is an inflammation to the system.
We don't want to boost.
We want to build and maintain.
So Juice Plus is a great way to do that
and also just eating a diet rich in whole food,
fruits and vegetables, wide variety.
And that's where Juice Plus comes in too
because it's hard to eat that variety.
So you get that variety with Juice Plus.
But I always like to challenge people,
like try different fruits and vegetables
when you're grocery shopping.
Make sure when you look in your grocery cart,
what kind of colors do you have in there?
Try to get a variety of colors.
So we're getting all those different nutritional,
different nutritional content from all of those colors.
Like I said earlier,
it all works synergistically in the body.
So a couple other things that I would like to mention
that we know that we can do to help, you know,
build and maintain a healthy immune system
is stress reduction.
We know that stress is really, really detrimental
to our immune system.
Primarily, I think, because it starts in the gut.
Stress is really bad for gut health.
Poor gut health can really compromise our immune system.
So things like, you know, breathing for one minute
a few times a day, deep breathing exercises.
You know, breathe in and inhale as deep as you can.
Hold it before you exhale.
Do that for a minute, up to a minute, a few times a day.
It helps circulate blood flow.
Even things like meditation, do it on your own
or download apps that have guided meditations.
I love meditation.
It's amazing how it'll get rid of a headache.
It just helps you see things more clearly.
Meditation's amazing.
I love yoga.
And even though right now I can't get to the gym,
I've been trying to just do, you know,
even just do some of my own yoga flow
from what I can remember doing in class with an instructor
or just find some guided yoga online.
Just exercising.
I can still get outside.
I can still ride my bike.
We can go for walks.
You know, if you have exercise equipment in your house,
use it.
Do jumping jacks.
You know, find little circuit exercises
that you can do indoors if you have to do it indoors.
You know, take a nap.
Make sure you're focusing on quality sleep, hydration.
Lots and lots of water.
Half your body weight in ounces of water
every single day or more.
More if you're exercising, more if you're stressed.
That helps flush out the toxins and those foreign invaders.
And really just let's reduce or eliminate processed foods
and things like sugary foods
because we know sugar really depletes our immune system.
It suppresses the immune system.
And that's the opposite of what we're trying to do right now.
So, you know, in short, what we really wanna do
to build an immune system is to focus on, you know,
clean whole food, plant-based nutrition
because that will never, never steer you wrong
and focus on things that you can do for stress reduction.
It's super important to be focusing
on all of that stuff right now.
And I hope that you will take a look at my website
and look at information about Juice Plus
and other things that I do as a health coach as well.
So I'm just gonna go ahead
and wrap things up for us here today.
But I just wanna thank you guys, huge thank you, honestly,
for joining me and listening in.
I value your time.
I think this has been a really important topic today
and I hope that you guys found this content to be of value.
And if you like what you hear,
I do hope that you'll share it with a friend.
And again, just a reminder to be sure
and check out my website, commonsensenutritionaz.com.
And when you're in there, feel free to shoot me a message.
Let me know what you'd like me to touch on
in a future podcast.
And while you're in my website,
be sure to click on the Programs button
to learn a little bit more about a clean eating program
that I lead each month.
And where I've taken my knowledge of holistic nutrition,
health coaching, and preventive health,
and I combine that with my knowledge
of different dietary theories.
And I use this to help coach you
through a lifestyle program
with a 10-day monthly jumpstart, love that program.
And I'm really excited for you guys to check it out.
So message me through the website once again,
commonsensenutritionaz.com to get started.
And until next time, this is Kristen Peterson.
Stay healthy, eat clean,
and thank you for listening
to my Common Sense Nutrition podcast.