Balanced diet regulates immunity

The key to regulating immunity through a balanced diet is never to blindly supplement certain types of "immune-boosting foods" spread online, nor to copy anyone's "standard recipes." Rather, in the long-term diet structure, matching one's own physical condition to filling in immunity-related nutritional gaps and avoiding eating habits that induce chronic inflammation in the body are enough to help you maintain a stable and healthy immune level.

At the end of last year, I met a young girl who had just started working. She said that in order to prevent the flu, she took 3 vitamin C effervescent tablets and two spoons of Ganoderma spore powder every day. However, she still had to catch a cold once a month and had a fever when she blew a bit of cold wind. Later, when we talked, I found out that in order to lose weight, she only ate half a piece of corn as staple food every day, and almost no meat, eggs, or milk. Calculated, her daily protein intake was less than half of the recommended amount.

In fact, this little girl is not the only one. Many people have misunderstandings about diet to regulate immunity. They are stuck in "looking for special foods". They always think that eating expensive and rare foods can boost immunity. Instead, they ignore the most basic nutritional supply. To put it bluntly, immunity is your body's "defense force." If you don't have enough food and equipment, you will definitely not be able to fight a war, but if you just stuff it with a bunch of useless health products, it will increase the metabolic burden.

Nowadays, the nutritional community is actually divided into two schools of thought on how to regulate immunity through diet. No one is right or wrong, but it is only applicable to different groups of people. One group is the "basic supplement group". It is believed that as long as ordinary people eat according to the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Residents, they can eat more than 12 kinds of food every day, more than 25 kinds of food every week, have enough meat, eggs, milk and beans, and eat enough vegetables and fruits, their immune baseline will not be poor, and there is no need to supplement anything extra. ； The other school is the "accurate adjustment school", which believes that adjustments should be made based on individual circumstances. For example, the elderly who have less muscle mass must eat more high-quality protein than young people, office workers who do not get sunlight all year round should take extra vitamin D, and people with allergies should try to avoid pro-inflammatory foods high in sugar and trans fat, and even foods that may trigger autoimmune reactions such as gluten and dairy products should be avoided as appropriate, so as to adjust immunity to an optimal state.

I used to suffer from allergic rhinitis when the seasons changed, and I followed the popular anti-inflammatory recipes for half a month. I took turns with broccoli, blueberries, and chia seeds every day. As a result, I had a cold spleen and stomach. Eating cold blueberries every day only caused diarrhea for several days. After the rhinitis was gone, I felt weak. Later, I adjusted my plan. I drank a cup of warm soy milk every morning, added a small handful of almonds in the afternoon, and ate steamed salmon twice a week. I didn’t need to eat anything special, and the number of rhinitis attacks in the past six months was reduced by more than half.

There are still a lot of controversies on the Internet, such as "can quitting sugar improve immunity?" Some people say that sugar can promote inflammation, and it is healthy to quit it completely. Some people say that carbohydrates are the energy source of the human body, and not eating them at all will lead to insufficient energy supply for immune cells. I met an aunt with diabetes a while ago. After hearing the saying "cutting out sugar to increase immunity", she stopped eating staple food at all. As a result, she fainted due to hypoglycemia. When she was hospitalized for a check-up, her white blood cell count was low, and her immunity collapsed. In fact, both of these statements are correct. If you drink milk tea and eat cakes every day, and your free sugar intake is seriously excessive, then reducing sugar will definitely be good for your immunity. ； But if you don’t eat much in the first place and you have to give up carbs completely, it will be more of a loss than a gain.

Some people also ask whether they should take additional dietary supplements? Among the nutritionists I have contacted, some think that eating well is enough, while others think that young people nowadays eat takeout every day and don’t have enough types of vegetables, so it would not hurt to take some multivitamins appropriately. To put it bluntly, it depends on your own dietary status. If you can eat one pound of vegetables and half a pound of fruits every day, as well as meat, eggs and milk, then there is absolutely no need to spend such unnecessary money. ； But if you work overtime every day and eat takeaways that are heavy in oil and salt, and can't eat a few bites of fresh vegetables for a week or two, supplementing with some B complex and vitamin C is not a bad thing.

In fact, after all, the four words of balanced diet focus on "balanced" and "suitable for you". You don’t have to force yourself to eat broccoli that you don’t like in order to improve your immunity, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to eat sea cucumber every day because others say it is good. Pay more attention to your meals and make a variety of foods. Don’t eat all refined carbohydrates and fried foods. Don’t go on an extreme diet to lose weight. What you eat makes you feel comfortable. During the physical examination, all indicators are normal. It is more effective than any Internet celebrity recipe.