Showing posts with label diet and immune system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diet and immune system. Show all posts
The Immune Booster in Your Spice Cabinet
'Researchers at the Department of Pharmacology, University College of Medical Sciences, in Delhi, India conducted a trial involving the essential oil of clove. They tested the effect of the oil on red blood cells and found it caused a significant increase in the primary as well as secondary humoral immune response.
It's not difficult to add some cloves to your diet. The spice is popular and is often used to add a sweet and aromatic taste to pumpkin pie, muffins, cookies, and breads. Cloves are also added to many entrees.'
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Are You at Risk For An Auto-Immune Disease?
'While your body is designed to defend against a host of environmental invaders, it cannot completely withstand the adverse effects of poor diet, chronic stress and toxic build-up. These common factors can contribute to a group of serious health epidemics including autoimmune (AI) disease, which is rising to the top of the list. Autoimmune diseases include more than 100 unique types such as Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Celiac disease and many others, which are all characterized by inflammatory immune responses that cause the body to turn against its own systems and attack organs and tissues.'
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Our Immune System: Nature’s Perfect Machine
'The human immune system is an amazing, complex, intricate biological framework of structures and processes that is exquisitely designed to protect the body from a wide variety of pathological agents. It is composed of countless cellular and subcellular mechanisms that gives it an intelligence and flexibility that is nothing short of miraculous. B cells and T cells, and Natural Killer cells (that’s really what they’re called!) and immunoglobulins all coordinated and synchronized and astoundingly effective, in most cases the immune system is all that stands between us and potential disaster caused by bacterial, viral and environmental invasion. Without an immune system you would be dead in hours.'
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Discover the Fountain of Youth with Herbs: Immune Boosting Herbal Soup
by Laurel Vukovic
Method
Makes about 4 servings
Prepare this delicious herbal soup once a week to take advantage of the immune boosting properties of astragalus, shiitake and maitake.
Ingredients
- 1 ounce sliced dried astragalus root
- 1 piece (1 inch) fresh gingerroot, peeled and slivered
- ¼ cup basmati rice
- 8 cups vegetable or chicken stock
- ½ cup chopped onions
- ½ cup sliced carrots
- ½ cup sliced parsnips
- ½ cup chopped fresh shiitake mushrooms
- ½ cup chopped fresh maitake mushrooms
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 4 tablespoons light miso, or to taste
- ¼ cup minced cilantro
- ¼ cup minced parsley
Method
- Simmer astragalus, ginger, rice and stock in a covered pot for 1 hour. Sauté onions, carrots, parsnips, shiitake and maitake in olive oil for 5 minutes.
- Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add sautéed vegetable mixture to the soup pot, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove astragalus slices.
- Pour a little hot broth into a small bowl, and dilute miso in the broth. Add to the soup pot along with cilantro and parsley. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 5 minutes before serving.
Australian scientists find direct link between diet and immune system
Australian scientists have found a "direct link" between what we eat and how well our immune system operates, a breakthrough that could explain rising rates of autoimmune disease across the western world.
Professor Charles Mackay, working at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, identified how fibre in the diet plays a major role in ensuring a person's immune cells function properly, the Australian Associated Press reports.
"This does provide a direct link for the way immune cells work with the sort of things we eat."
This broken-down fibre was found to "profoundly affect immune cell function", Prof. Mackay said, and without it the immune cells appeared more likely to go awry.
Autoimmune disease refers to disorders in which a person's immune system mistakenly attacks part of the body, causing inflammation. "When (immune cells) go bad they cause inflammatory diseases, so asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease." Prof. Mackay said.
A lack of dietary fibre could also be behind the rise in type 1 diabetes, he said.
The research suggests that having a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds would reduce a person's risk of autoimmune disease.
It also helped to explain why food supplements that affect the balance of gut bacteria were known to reduce the symptoms of some inflammatory conditions.
Prof. Mackay said dietary fibre, or roughage, was otherwise known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers plus it ensures you will be regular.
CANBERRA, Xinhua
Original Article HERE
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