Nutritional Immunology or immunonutrition, is the science that studies the link between the food we eat and our immune system.
Everyone of us are born with the best doctor in the world - our immune system. By nourishing our body with the essential nutrients, we can have a healthy immune system, thereby can prevent or combat diseases like cancer, diabetes, influenza and live longer.
Such foods can help us recover faster without the use of medications when we fall ill.
Our body will also be able to perform the functions of defence, cleanse & repair more effectively.
Nutritional Immunology advocates on prevention is better than cure and focus on strengthening the immune system by consuming wholesome plant based food which is rich in Antioxidants, Phytochemicals & Polysaccharides to protect our body from the harmful effects of the free radicals, unhealthy lifestyle and diets in everyday life.
What are all these nutrients and why are they so important to us?
Antioxidants are compounds that can prevent body cell damages through oxidation and slow down aging and also anti-inflammatory agents to reduce the severity of arthritis and bronchitis.
Phytochemicals gives fruits and vegetables their colour, flavour and aroma. Phytochemicals protect these plants from sunlight and to ensure their survival, processes enormous healing properties to nourish and boost the immune system.
Polysaccharides are long chains of sugars found commonly in mushrooms, increases natural killer (NK) cells activities by 38 to 49 times, which prevents healthy cells or benign tumours from becoming malignant.
Nutritional Immunology not only supports taking the plant food in their wholesome form, but also how the processes of plant foods like the plant species and parts, harvesting time and processing procedures, plant parts to retain its optimum quality and quantity of antioxidants, phytochemicals and polysaccharides.
Examples: ginseng berry has 4 times more immunity supporting ginsenosides as compared to the roots which we are more familiar with? Banana has more nutritious value when they are ripen on the trees rather than we picked them while they are green and get transported to our table? Grape seeds which we always discard has OPC (oligomeric procyanidins) is effective against heart and retinal diseases.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nutritional_immunology
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/122/3_Suppl/591.full.pdf
http://hnrca.tufts.edu/research-laboratories/nutritional-immunology/
Enjoying Health & Longevity with Nutritional Immunology by Jau-Fei Chen, PhD
Thanks,
Karen Lim
9843-4599
