When it comes to foods that help you get or stay healthy, most people’s first thoughts turn to the old standards: orange juice and chicken soup. But your options don’t end there! You can work immune-supportive foods into each meal of the day with just a little bit of planning.

Start your day with the aforementioned orange juice—or consider a tropical fruit smoothie. Fruits like papaya and kiwi are packed full of nutrients including vitamin C (double your daily dose in a single papaya), folate and potassium. Papaya provides the added bonus of the digestive enzyme papain, which has anti-inflammatory effects on the body. Mix in a scoop of NTFactor® Lipids Powder to help maintain healthy cellular function and provide a powerful energy boost.

Pair your smoothie with a bowl of plain Greek yogurt to take advantage of the probiotic cultures that give it its signature tanginess, and reap the many benefits of vitamin D. This crucial vitamin helps reduce the body’s production of pro-inflammatory compounds, making you better equipped to fight off respiratory illness so common this time of year.

For lunchtime, turn to veggies. Did you know that red bell peppers contain almost three times as much immune-boosting vitamin C as the lauded oranges? You can even find vitamin C in veggies like broccoli and spinach, making a simple lunchtime salad a great way to pack more of this crucial nutrient into your diet. Top with avocado and garnish with some slivered almonds or sunflower seeds for a dose of powerful antioxidant vitamin E, another important nutrient for maintaining immune function and reducing oxidative stress.

Sunflower seeds are also high in selenium—providing almost half of your daily needs in a single ounce. Studies have linked adequate selenium levels to a supportive effect on the body’s ability to fight viruses.

For a mid-afternoon boost, consider taking a break to enjoy a hot beverage. Soothing green tea will provide potent antioxidants, particularly epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which has been shown to aid immune function. If you want something with a bit more bite, opt for a spicy turmeric latte—all the rage these days. Turmeric is high in curcumin, which is well established as an anti-inflammatory compound and has shown promise as an immune-supportive compound as well.

For dinner, harken back to that age-old chicken soup recommendation. It turns out, there’s more to it than an old wives’ tale. The meat itself contains vitamin B6, which facilitates the body’s ability to form healthy red blood cells, while chicken stock contains amino acids, collagen, and other nutrients that protect the health of your gut (home of 70% of your immune system). Boost the immune fighting power of soup by adding veggies high in beta carotene (such as sweet potatoes and carrots), or swapping the traditional noodles for beans or lentils, which are high in zinc (shown to support white blood cells). You could also consider adding mushrooms, many of which have health benefits.

Incorporating all these healthy foods into your daily routine is a great way to give your immune system the solid foundation it needs to help you stay hale and healthy this cold and flu season. And don’t forget to include NTFactor® to give your body the energy boost it deserves!

That means eating a good diet high in fruits and vegetables, getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night, exercising, frequently washing your hands, and minimizing stress.

Sounds simple, right?

Unfortunately, many times daily life gets in the way. The kids have soccer practice, dinners get cut short, we don’t have time to prepare that well-balanced meal we intended. Work deadlines get moved up, financial worries arise, exercise time gets cut short… The list goes on and on, and our best intentions to keep our immune system balanced get sidelined.

When we lose our ability to keep our immune system performing at its best, it can lead to all sorts of issues, from increased fatigue, colds, intestinal issues, and infections. Everything we are trying to avoid.

Thankfully there are things we can do to help boost our immune system. Studies have shown that as we age, it becomes more challenging to meet our complex dietary needs through diet alone.  The good news is, there is help; by adding nutrients, vitamins, and mineral supplements, you can support good health and boost your immune system.

Propax with NTFactor® by Nutritional Therapeutics was created to do just that. It provides a complete nutritional system for your body for when your busy life gets in the way.  The benefits of Propax with NTFactor® start with the unique power of NTFactor® Blend, which works at the cellular level to repair and restore damaged cell membranes—the first step to making sure your body has the energy to support a well-balanced immune system.

Recent research has identified how important a healthy gut is to a balanced immune system. Propax includes both pre and probiotics to help maintain that healthy gut, making Propax with NTFactor® one of the most complete nutritional supplements on the market.

Our complete nutritional system provides all the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and powerful antioxidants needed to boost your immune system including vitamin C, vitamin B6, and vitamin E as well as vitamin A, vitamin D, folic acid, selenium, and zinc.

Make Propax with NTFactor® part of your health regimen today, and give your body the nutrition it needs to keep you healthy and active all year long.

If you’re daunted by the idea of being an octogenarian marathon runner, let me reassure you that while it’s important to stay active as we age, we don’t necessarily need to maintain the same level we did as young adults.  Even a brisk nightly walk around the neighborhood can do a lot of good in our later years. The important thing to remember is that if we don’t maintain some level of physical activity, we can accelerate the aging process. Physical activity stimulates and increases blood flow into the brain, which is important in maintaining cognition and memory.

Of course, if we maintain physical activity as we age, we also need time to rest and recover.  In fact, we actually need that rest more than when we were younger. While we may not necessarily need more rest time, we need to make sure that we are getting enough rest to completely recover from various activities. No more skipping our recovery time and hoping we can just muscle through it—leave that invincible attitude for the young!

A recent article in the Cleveland Jewish News, “Keeping brain healthy important as seniors age”, shared opinions from numerous professionals in age-related fields on additional actions we can take to improve brain health and prevent some of the decline in brain function as we get older. One important factor? Socializing!

Maintaining social contacts and interactions stimulate our brain networks, and keeping active inter-personal interactions and exercising our brains keeps our nervous system functioning at a high level.  This can be as simple as playing cards with friends or even reading a book for the first time.  

In the above mentioned article, Silvia Orsulic-Jeras, a senior research associate and SHARE program manager at the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland, urges, “It is so important for families to remember to keep their older loved one socialized through interactions. A lot of what happens is people stop asking their older loved ones what they like to do. Learn more about their interests and their life story, spend time with them doing what they love and value.”

Of course, nutrition is also important in aging and especially for brain health.   Nerve cells are the basic building blocks in our nervous systems, and have a much higher rate of metabolism than other cells in our body. They are also much more sensitive to toxic molecules that find their way into the brain. This means that brain nerve cells need much more energy than cells in other tissues in order to function, and they need more protection than other cells and organs from toxins.  They get this energy primarily from the little ‘batteries’ inside each cell called mitochondria, and mitochondria are also important in the removal of toxic molecules in the brain.

Mitochondria supply over 90% of brain cell energy, so it’s easy to see why these little cellular organelles are so important to brain health.  Nerve cells in our brain need nutrients and oxygen to perform their vital functions, including providing high-energy molecules to nerve cells, maintaining calcium balance inside our cells, and important immune functions and other maintenance operations.  If nerve cell mitochondria are damaged or cannot receive the necessary nutrients and oxygen, then all of the biological functions that involve the nervous system are impaired.  

In my next update, I’ll tell you more about the impact this damage can have, and what you can do to help mitigate it by adding to your diet important natural membrane molecules that are already inside your cells, and especially inside your mitochondria!  What are these natural membrane molecules?  One class of the essential membrane molecules inside mitochondria are the membrane phospholipids that compose the matrix of all biological membranes, and this essential class of membrane molecules forms the basis of important natural supplements for your brain like NTFactor^® Lipids. The membrane lipids in NTFactor^® Lipids are essential to maintaining mitochondrial function, and these lipids must be routinely replaced. My next update will go into more detail how NTFactor® Lipids can help maintain your brain and especially your brain mitochondria.

Prof. Emeritus Garth Nicolson, PhD, MD (H)
The Institute for Molecular Medicine
Huntington Beach, California

References

Nicolson GL. Membrane Lipid Replacement—a functional approach to repairing cellular membranes, reducing symptoms, and restoring function.  Functional Food Science 2022; 2(8): 198-204. 
https://doi.org/10.31989/ffs.v2i8.990

Nicolson GL, Ferreira de Mattos G, Settineri R, Breeding PC. Membrane Lipid Replacement and its role in restoring mitochondrial membrane function and reducing symptoms in aging and age-related clinical conditions.  Nature Cell Science 2024; 2(4): 238-256.
https://doi.org/10.61474/ncs.2024.00038