Four Key Nutrients to Fortify your Lungs
Did you know that your lungs have their own 24/7 immune system?
This so-called “innate immune system” is always active and ready to recognize and inactivate pollutants and harmful germs entering into the respiratory tract.
“With the COVID-19 virus able to travel in the air and infect unsuspecting new hosts, it’s crucial we do everything we can to boost our respiratory immunity and fortify our lungs; the organs where most serious respiratory infections start and end,” says nationally known functional food expert and educator Stuart Tomc of CV Sciences.
“The American Lung Association offers a few basic recommendations for keeping lung function strong:
Exercise: Just as regular physical exercise makes your muscles stronger– it also makes your lungs and heart stronger.
Breathing exercises: Breathing exercises can make your lungs more efficient and are especially helpful for people who are living with chronic lung diseases.
Behavior & Lifestyle: Tobacco use, exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollutants, poor diet and obesity can all adversely affect lung health.”
Tomc says it was during a study of how lung cells protected themselves against cigarette smoke that an “antioxidant pathway” was discovered by which the cells could intake certain nutrients and shield themselves from oxidative damage and pathogens, improving their health and boosting their resistance to infection. Here are four important nutrients that utilize that pathway to support optimal lung health:
Four Key Nutrients that Build Lung Health and Immunity
1. Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Napa cabbage, bok choy are going to be very supportive of your body’s antioxidant response. These vegetables are rich sources of the crucial antioxidant glutathione, a protector of all our cells. Lightly steam these vegetables (no boiling) to preserve the vegetables, crucial constituents that are going to be supportive of your lungs’ immunity.
2. Selenium. Selenium, a mineral, is a powerful antioxidant that fights oxidative stress and helps defend your body from chronic conditions, such as heart disease and cancer. 200 micrograms is a good dose for regulating the glutathione molecule. If you prefer to intake your selenium through your meals, there are a number of ways to do so; the most common way is to consume brazil nuts, sardines, halibut, eggs, or oysters.
3. Quercetin: Research suggests that this plant compound can disrupt the fatty-based envelope of a number of different infectious viruses. Research has been done on animals administered the Ebola virus, HIV, and influenza. It has not been researched on the SARS coronavirus, but coronaviruses are also a fatty-enveloped virus. So, there is rationale for using quercetin at this time as a dietary ingredient to support our immune function.
4. CBD (cannabidiol): CBD, a compound extracted from hemp, is not an approved treatment for any disease except child epilepsy, but as a dietary ingredient it appears to have a researched immunomodulatory effect, and is able to reduce some of the activity of the immune-signaling molecules that are known to cause damage to multiple parts of the body when they’re too active, i.e. cytokine storms — which can fill the lungs with fluid and bring about suffocation. CBD provides a way for individuals to balance their immune response, especially as their immune system becomes weakened by stress.
“CBD represents another important nutritional tool for promoting lung health as well as overall health and wellness,” says Tomc.
ABOUT TODAY’S GUEST – STUART TOMC of CV Sciences
Mr. Tomc is a recognized authority on functional foods and dietary supplements, with twenty years of experience in the nutritional health industry. A renowned educator, Mr. Tomc is a recognized expert on CBD and its multiple mechanisms of action to support human health and envisions a new category of dietary supplements derived from agricultural hemp. His lectures and interviews can be viewed on the CV Sciences TV channel on YouTube.
