Boost your immune system with good nutrition

SALT LAKE CITY – A lot of people have been getting sick these past few months. Are you one of them? You may already know that nutrition plays a significant role in our immune system, but how exactly does it?

In the latest Let’s Get Moving with Maria podcast episode, Maria Shilaos spoke with Functional Medicine Nutritionist Karin G. Reiter to learn what foods we should include in our diet if we want to strengthen our immune system.

What is functional medicine?

Reiter describes functional medicine as the marriage between conventional medicine and holistic medicine.

“What we believe in functional medicine is that any disease has root causes that are going to affect the disease or your health,” Reiter said.

These root causes can be both physical and mental. In order to achieve health, we need to work on our mind and body together.

There are many factors that affect our immune system.

We know that Vitamin C is good for us, but that’s not the only thing that determines the strength of our immune system. Our sleep habits and stress levels also play a big role in this.

“In terms of food, there are foods that make inflammation go down, and there are foods that make inflammation go up. When your body is in a chronically inflamed situation, your immune system is depressed,” Reiter said.

There are molecules found in foods which Reiter calls the color pigments of our fruits and vegetables. For example, there’s the blue of the blueberry, the red of the raspberry and the green of the kale. These color pigments are known as antioxidants, which have strong chemicals that can support your immune system and bring down inflammation.

On the flip side, chemicals like sugar are known for their ability to fire up inflammation in the body. Reiter says sugar is inflammation’s favorite food, so it’s best not to fill your diet with it.

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