What We Do to Help Our Immune System During an Illness

As if 2023 wasn’t bad enough, 2024 is here with a vengeance! My husband and kids decided to play “musical colds” for the last three weeks of January. They would each be sick for 3-5 days, on the fourth day the next one would get sick, and that repeated for the rest of the month. Each time they started to feel sick, it was a coin toss to decide if it would be a head cold or a full-blown flu.

I have no idea how I managed to avoid getting sick for those weeks. Usually, I have a great immune system, until I get near my husband. He’s the only one who seems to be able to get me to fall ill, and it’s as easy as him walking past someone with a sniffle 200 yards away.

February hit and my immune system gave up the ghost, it just couldn’t hold back anymore. While the rest of the family dealt with head colds and mild flu, I got RSV, because, of course, I did. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the universe laughed and sought fit to give me Shingles too. It took two weeks, but I’m finally on the mend. My RSV is down to a lingering cough, and my doctor put me on an oral steroid to help heal these Shingles faster, because OMG are they annoying and getting more painful by the day! I’m lamenting that I’m too young for a Shingles vaccine because I never want this again!

I try to keep our diet fairly healthy, but we aren’t perfect. Let’s face it, sometimes you just want some Bagel Bites and Hot Pockets. We are trying to weed out more and more processed foods as the months go by, but when we get sick, that is when I go out of my way to make sure we are focusing on key vitamins and minerals.

Our Key Focus Vitamins and Minerals

• Beta Carotene: The body converts this to Vitamin A, which supports eye health, can prevent eye disease, improves memory and cognitive function, helps bolster skin health, and can prevent certain cancers. We bring this in with carrots, sweet potatoes, and red or orange bell peppers while we are sick. I’m a strong believer that horrible diseases and cancers like to target you when you’re weak, so I don’t like to slack off on things that are important to me. Cancers, eye concerns, and memory issues all run in both our families, so I am always looking to keep such things at bay.
• Dietary Fiber: This feeds the healthy bacteria and cells lining your large intestines. Roughly 70% of your immune tissue is in the gut, which is why having a healthy gut is so important for your immune system.
• Magnesium: Magnesium is essential for healthy muscles, nerves, and bones, and for balancing sugar levels. While only 4-12% of Americans are truly deficient in magnesium, it is believed that more than 70% of us aren’t getting enough of this important mineral. This is a daily mineral for me that I don’t allow our family to avoid.
• Omega-3s: Very important for heart health, as well as brain and eye health. It also supports functions like your immune system, digestion, and fertility. I don’t eat seafood, so I’m always struggling to get enough Omega-3s in my diet, which makes this another vitamin I don’t pull back on when I’m feeling poorly.
• Potassium: When you’re feeling sick, hydration is so important. I like to focus on potassium because it helps to maintain normal levels of fluid inside our cells. Pair this with the sodium I get from my Himalayan pink salt and Swiss chard, and that targets the fluid levels on the outside of the cells. Beyond that, Potassium also helps your muscles to contract and maintains normal blood pressure, both important items to consider when dealing with illness.
• Selenium: A powerful antioxidant that protects immune system cells.
• Vitamin B6: Vital to the formation of new and healthy red blood cells, which is important as your illness will attack, damage, and kill old red blood cells.
• Vitamin C: Increases the production of white blood cells in the body, allowing those cells to fight against whatever ails you, therefore leading to a shorter illness. Your body can’t produce or store Vitamin C, so you have to be sure you are consuming enough every single day!
• Vitamin D: Helps move white blood cells around in the body, allowing them an easier time fighting illness and infections.
• Vitamin E: Regulates and maintains immune function. Often pushed back in favor of Vitamin C, but it’s just as beneficial and important.
• Zinc: An antioxidant that helps your immune system and metabolic function. It’s also important for wound healing and managing your sense of taste and smell. It’s very important to get enough of it, especially while sick, you can have too much, so be mindful as you consume this.

Foods we eat regularly, but increase our consumption of while sick

You can imagine that getting these vitamins and minerals is best through diet and not supplements. Beyond that, you need food to have energy. Sleeping through a sickness is important, but if there is no fuel in the tank, your body won’t be able to heal its way through, no matter how much restful slumber you manage.

When I get sick, my homemaking duties are the first thing to go out the window. Let’s face it, the last thing I want to do when I feel poorly is to cook or scrub dishes. I like to cut a lot of corners when illnesses appear. I generally always have some sort of casserole or frozen dinner like lasagna or enchiladas in our deep freezer for when things strike and make cooking harder. When I do have to cook though, I tend to favor soups and hashes.

Soups and hashes are our go-to while sick since they are quick and easy to throw together and rewarm well so I can easily toss together a bunch in a quick meal prep session when my energy levels are high and not have to worry about feeding the family when my levels drop again. We also will munch on salads, fruits, nuts, and whole grain breads when we are sick. Continuing to eat to keep our strength up so our body has the energy it needs to heal is the most important thing, so we go with whatever we can.

• Citrus fruits: Citrus is a great source of vitamin C, so we pack these in. Generally, we eat orange slices, but we also like to buy lemons and limes to slice and serve in our water. A slice of citrus and a pinch of Himalayan pink salt helps to get the water down. I don’t know about you, but the water feels really heavy on my stomach while I’m ill, but the citrus and pink salt seem to curb that so I can drink more water and less Gatorade.
• Red and Orange Bell Peppers: Bell peppers are a regular part of our diet, but thanks to the beta carotene and the fact that a red bell pepper has more Vitamin C than a Florida orange per serving, I grab these specifically when we are feeling poorly. They are easy to cook, light on the stomach, and can be easily thrown into a soup or a hash.
• Broccoli: Vitamins A, C, and E, as well as fiber and antioxidants, make this one of my favorite vegetables. It’s easy enough to eat raw in a small salad, but it also works brilliantly in soups or a hash, which makes it a go-to. Bonus, it’s both of my kid’s personal favorite vegetable.
• Our Leafy Green Quartet: I have a firm leafy greens rule in our family. Everyone consumes a minimum of 1 cup of leafy greens per day. Our favorites are Swiss Chard, Spinach, Collard Greens, and Kale. This quartet covers us for the year-round growing seasons and all of them are packed with vitamins such as Vitamin K, A, and C, folate, calcium, fiber, antioxidants, magnesium, selenium, and potassium.
• Garlic: A powerful food with antioxidants, anti-inflammatory effects, and lipid-lowering properties (bye-bye bad cholesterol!), garlic is wonderful for boosting the immune system while also helping to prevent diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, blood pressure, and diabetes. I very literally add it to just about everything.
• Ginger: Ginger is an antioxidant, which is always important to manage our free radicals, but also can help cut down on constipation, bloating, and intestinal gas, making your stomach hurt just a little bit less while you’re sick.
• High-quality broths: Vegetable, Chicken, Beef, and Bone broth are all amazing for boosting collagen, supporting digestion, maintaining your immune system, promoting healthy sleep, and improving joint pain and stiffness. When sick, we tend to stick more to vegetable broth and bone broth. I use these in our soups and occasionally we drink them straight. My vegetable soup is always made with mushrooms as well, namely, portobello, lion’s mane, and shiitake mushrooms to help bolster our immune system, raise energy levels, manage blood pressure and blood sugar, and showcase their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer properties.
• Almonds, Chia Seeds, and Sunflower Seeds: Vitamin E, Selenium, and Omega-3s are present in this trio, and all very important for immune health.
• Green Tea: Have I said the word “antioxidants” enough yet? We try to have a good diet, but you can’t avoid the free radicals, so I always bulk up on those antioxidants. Plus, you can only drink so much water before you want to scream. Green tea helps to mix that up for me!
• Berries: Oh no, more antioxidants, but at least these are super tasty! I am especially fond of elderberries, blueberries, and blackberries.
• Apples: “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.” We’ve all heard it, and it’s not exactly wrong. Apples are packed with Vitamin C, antioxidants, and fiber, not to mention being easy on a troubled stomach, making them an amazing food. Any Sailor worth his salt knows that apples and crackers are great for seasickness, but all that fiber helps with your digestion too! When an illness throws your body off-kilter, it’s so easy for your digestion to riot and send you to the porcelain throne one way or the other, be it with diarrhea or constipation. I especially love apples because my kids will all but inhale them, and with their picky eating eras, it helps keep their bowel movements stable so I don’t have to hear about so many self-imposed tummy aches.

Increasing your fluids is also super important. We opt for drinking water, green tea, Gatorade, and broths.

I also like to go with the “Sick Jasmine” tea that my Great-Grandmother taught me when I was young.

To make this tea, you melt a teaspoon of raw honey into 8-10 ounces of hot water and then steep Jasmine Green Tea until done. Afterward, you add a pinch of Himalayan pink salt, two slices of lemon or lime, and three drops (roughly a quarter of a teaspoon) of garlic-ginger juice. Add ice if you please, and then enjoy.

We aim to use high-quality ingredients at all times, but we don’t compromise with them when it comes to an illness. Our honey is always raw, unfiltered, local honey, the lemons or limes will be organic or very thoroughly washed before slicing, the Himalayan Pink Salt will be a highly-rated brand, and the Jasmine Green Tea is always loose-leaf and organic. Making the garlic-ginger juice is easy too. Place equal parts garlic and peeled ginger into a blender or food processor. You can finely mince it together and use it for Asian cooking later, or you can blend it smooth and strain it for immunity juice shots. My Great-Grandma always used it for cooking and would just stir the mixture in the jar until it coated the back of a teaspoon and then use the spoon to stir her tea, giving the tea just a hint of the garlic and ginger juice.

This tea is amazing for illness. Garlic and Ginger are both powerhouses for your immune system, green teas are packed full of antioxidants and Jasmine will boost those antioxidants while also helping to calm digestion issues. The Himalayan pink salt helps cleanse the respiratory system to reduce the symptoms of sinus infections, asthma, and other respiratory problems. Lemons and limes are great sources of Vitamin C, which will not only boost the immune system but also give the tea a refreshing flavor. Finally, the honey rounds out the drink. Honey is amazing, with its antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, apoptotic, and antioxidant properties. This means it can help reduce the symptoms of a bacterial infection, reduce the inflammation that could be affecting your airways during a respiratory infection, apoptosis rids the body of cells that have been damaged beyond repair, making way for new cells to form, and antioxidants protect the body from free radicals; which play a role in various cancers, diseases, and can in general slow healing in the body.

Great-Grandma used this tea liberally during an illness but also recommended it for indigestion and as a hangover remedy. It’s been a go-to for me since I was still in elementary school, and I always have the ingredients in my pantry for it at all times.

Being sick is awful and I hate having to go through it. I’m happy that we have a system in place for our food so that we can work through the illness quickly and easily.

What do you do when your family is sick? I’m always open to new things we can try!