Diet - Fruits & Vegetables

All kinds of fruits and vegetables can greatly strengthen immune system. Such plant foods contain a large number of compounds that can boost immunity, including vitamin C and beta-carotene. Vegetarians have more powerful immune defences.

A recent study at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg compared the blood of male vegetarians were twice as deadly against tumour cells as those of meat eaters. This means vegetarians needed only half as many white cells to do the same job as meat eaters did. Researchers thought that vegetarian’s white cells were more deadly, presumably due to their yielding greater armies of natural killers’ cells or more ferocious natural killer cells. Vegetarian also have higher levels or carotene in their blood, which greatly helps strengthen immune system.

Garlic

Garlic greatly helps stimulate immune functioning. Its anti-bacterial, antiviral and anti-cancer properties are partly due to its ability to enhance immune functioning. It particularly stimulates the power of T-lymphocytes and macro-phages, which play a dominant role in immune functions. This has been discovered by Benjamin H.S. Lau, M.D., of the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University. In laboratory tests, he found that garlic extract impelled macrophages to generate more agents to kill microbes and tumour cells. Dr. Lau calls garlic a biological response modifier.

Several years ago, Dr. Tariq Abdullah, M.D., and colleagues at the Akbar Clinic and Research Center in Panama City, Florida, ate large amount of raw garlic, up to 15 cloves a day. Others in the study ate no garlic. The blood from the garlic eaters had more natural killers’ cells. In fact, such natural killer cells, destroyed from 140-160 per cent more cells than did natural killers cells derived from non-garlic eaters. An amount as small as 1.8 grams of garlic, about half a clove, results in an increase in natural killer cell activity.

Low-Fat Foods

Too much fat, especially of the wrong type, weakens immune system. There is evidence to suggest that excessive fat impairs natural killers’ cell activity. On study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School by James R. Herbert, Sc. D. Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, had some young men decrease the fat in their diets on an average from about 32 per cent of calories to 23 per cent. Their natural killer activity increased about 48 per cent. Those who consumed the highest fat diets got the greatest immune boost from the reduction.

The vitality of the immune system also depends on the type of fat. Fish oil, containing omega-3 fatty acids, actually seems to strengthen immune system. Most harmful are the vegetable polyunsaturated fats called omega-6 fatty acids contained in corn, safflower and sunflower seeds oil. Eating too much of them can severally disrupt immune functioning. For instance, such oils can inhibit formation of lymphocytes, causing a partial shutdown in immune responses.

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