Having a sick household can make for a long and dreary winter. When one person in the family gets sick, the germs often end up engulfing the entire tribe. But sickness isn’t inevitable and there are certainly things you can do to protect your family from the dreaded lurgy this winter. We asked our resident naturopath, Jessica Donovan, for her top five tips to boost your family’s immunity and wellbeing during these cooler months.
1. Nourish with nutrients
Food does not necessarily equate to nutrients, in fact many of the foods that line the supermarket shelves these days are so low in nutrition they shouldn’t even be called food! Our kids are often attracted to these processed and nutrient depleted foods and eating high amounts of them can compromise their health.
Our immune system is fuelled by nutrients found in fresh, whole foods so packing as many of these as we can into our diet makes sense.
Try including:
- Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, kiwi fruit, baby spinach, beetroot and sweet potato to boost your antioxidant levels including vitamin A,E,C, and Zinc.
- Superfoods such as Goji berries, camu camu, raw cacao, turmeric, garlic and ginger, which all add power to our immune system.
- After school smoothies are a great snack idea and you can pack as many of these brightly coloured fruits, vegetables and superfoods into the blender as possible.
- Organic produce, as it is higher in these immune boosting antioxidants.
2. Safeguard your gut
The link between our gut health and immune system is strong, in fact around 80 percent of our immune system is located in our gut! Bloating, constipation, heartburn or irritable bowel type symptoms are all signs your gut needs some attention, and your immune system is probably not in optimum health either.
The number of bacteria we have in our bodies outnumbers our cells, so you could argue we are more bacteria than ourselves! It is when the ‘good and bad’ bacteria become unbalanced that we can experience both digestive upset and lowered immunity.
There are many things in a teenager’s modern lifestyle that contribute to this imbalance, including sugar and processed foods, study and social stress, antibiotics and other medications.
To boost the levels of beneficial bacteria in the gut try adding to your family diet fermented foods such as yoghurt, kombucha and homemade sauerkraut. A good quality probiotic supplement can also help to restore gut health.
3. Knock back some broth
There’s nothing better than a bowl of steaming hot chicken soup when we’re sick, and there’s good reason for that. Chicken broth is, of course, good for our soul, but it is also tremendously nourishing for our bodies. Bone broths contain ample amounts of important minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium. They also contain gelatine which aids digestion and is fantastic for joint health.
Bone broths are a great staple to have on hand in winter, they make delicious bases for soups, sauces, slow cooked meals and casseroles. They also eliminate the need for commercial stocks in carton or powdered forms, which usually have undesirable ingredients. You can make a big batch and freeze so there is always some on hand – check out my recipe on this page.
4. Snub the sugar
Many teens have an insatiable appetite for sugar, which can have detrimental effects on their immunity. Sugar can be likened to a ‘chill pill’ for the immune system, it reduces the activity of white blood cells, making them so relaxed they don’t have the energy to fight the viruses and bacteria that surround us in winter.
Avoiding sugar involves more than just not adding it to your tea, coffee and breakfast cereal. Almost every food in a packet will have some form of sugar added to it – cane sugar, sucrose, glucose, dextrose, corn syrup are all names for sugar. The best way to avoid excess sweet stuff in your diet is to eat more “real food”, such as vegetables, fruit, salad, nuts, seeds, whole grains, eggs, fish and meat. “Real food” is food as it was meant to be eaten, straight from plants or animals, and as close to its natural state as possible.
5. Soak up the sunshine
Vitamin D is an essential nutrient for our immune system and we soak it up through exposure to the sun. Sounds easy when we live in one of the sunniest countries in the world, but Vitamin D deficiency is a major health concern in Australia, particularly in the winter months. Encourage your kids to get off the computer and get outside in the midday sun every day. Go for a walk or simply sit outside to eat your lunch. Expose some skin – roll your jumper sleeves up and take off your sunglasses and scarf to really soak up some Vitamin D goodness.
