It seems I can’t go a day without hearing about someone “catching a cold” or about someone who knows someone who has the flu (or swine flu, or H1N1, or whatever strain the media are scaring us into believing are out to get us). Sure, it’s winter, so it’s “that time of year.” But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if winter just meant cold weather, and not an inevitable cold?

This has been my goal for awhile now, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. While lots of factors play into whether or not I (or anyone) catches a cold, I realized that the most basic thing I could do to significantly lessen my chances of catching anything was to build up my immune system via nutrients & rest. So I started reading up on my options, and as of this winter, I’ve got five favorites that seem to pack the most punch: bone broth, butter, minerals, sauerkraut, and rest.

I am a firm believer that the main “medicine” we should ingest, and spend money on, is real food. So much can be healed by food that if the knowledge really spread, the pharmaceutical industry would be done for. They’ve taken certain elements of real foods, extracted them, and put them into pills (with 45 seconds of listed side effects—my favorite that most commercials mention: “risk of death.” Oh gee, now I really wanting to try that pill). And then they spend billions to convince us that we need those pills to be healthy. Well, in a sense they are right; whatever substance they’ve extracted and put into the pill probably is a substance we need…but we don’t need it from a pill. We can get it “for free” from food. Ok, yes, food isn’t free. But if we spend just a little bit more on good, real food—food that is full of so much good stuff that not only our bodies need but that our bodies can actually break down and use without side effects—we would not need to spend twice as much on pills. As we keep hearing in the health care debate, health care is a right. Indeed it is, but I think of it as a right to just say no to “health” that requires piles of money to acquire and instead a right to embrace health I create on my own with simple foods.

So in a bit more detail, my five favorite immunity boosters to help keep the pills away…

1. Eat bone broth regularly. “Good broth resurrects the dead.” –South American proverb, as quoted in Nourishing Traditions. When you hear old tales about how chicken soup helps fight colds, the “chicken soup” they mean is NOT the vapid, tasteless muck sold in cans in stores (Cambell’s chicken soup…ugh, how did I ever think that was actual chicken soup?). They’re talking about real chicken soup made from bone broth. Bone broth does require cooking, so someone could argue that it’s not a “simple” remedy. It’s not as easy as popping a cold pill, obviously. But it is simple enough that the rewards to be had from consuming bone broth on a regular basis so completely outweigh any “trouble” you go through to make it that I consider it my main line of defense against a list of ailments, colds/flu being just one. I plan to write in detail about the benefits of bone broth, but for now check out this WAPF article.
2. Eat grass-fed butter. More specifically, increase your intake of fat-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins are vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K, and vitamin E. But here’s the catch: you can’t just pop these as pills and get the full benefit. To be properly used by the body, they need all their cofactors, which you get when you eat them in food. Happily, getting more of these vitamins & their helpers into your diet is not only easy, but delicious. You will find the most fat-soluble vitamins in quality animal fats (fat-soluble vitamins need to be eaten in/with fat to be properly absorbed): grass-fed butter, pastured whole eggs, yogurt, raw milk cheese, raw milk, and meats from pastured animals. If you can’t do all of these, I’d suggest going with grass-fed butter. An excellent source, and one that I think is fairly widely available, is Kerrygold Irish butter; it might seem expensive compared to what you usually buy, but try buying just one a week and working it into your diet; as an example, veggies have a lot of fat-soluble vitamins in them, but they need to be eaten with fat for your body to get those vitamins…so adding butter to veggies is an easy way to up your vitamin intake. Remember, small additions are better than none, and the extra fat-soluble vitamins to be had from adding in just a small amount of grass-fed butter are worth it. As for the other sources, add them in as you can. Of course, replacing your current dairy & meat consumption with grass-fed is the ideal, but if you can’t do that yet, just buy some when you can, here and there. Think of them as vitamin shots: instead of spending money on vitamin pills, which are rarely absorbed well, can cause reactions due to their coating, and cost too much compared to the return they give, spend the money on good food. You can also budget to buy more of them in the fall and through the winter to boost your immune system when the bad bugs are more likely to be looking for hosts.
3. Ingest more minerals. If you’re eating bone broths and grass-fed butter, you’re already getting a lot more minerals. But I know I’ve been nutrient-starved for so long—and so much in modern life/diet leeches minerals from our bodies—that I’ll say again, every little bit helps. One simple thing I did is that I switched to using real sea salt (“Celtic Sea Salt” brand is my favorite) instead of refined table salt. It’s full of minerals as well as flavor. My other favorite way to get more minerals is to drink nourishing herbal infusions on a regular basis. I learned about herbal infusions a few years ago from Susun Weed, and they are a very, very simple way to boost mineral intake. Happily, Susun is now making videos, and here’s a video of her explaining infusions:
   
   Growing your own herbs is best, but if you can’t, or if you’re like me, you just don’t have them growing yet (I’ve got my seeds–can’t wait for a huge nettle patch!), you can buy all the herbs you need, affordably, at Mountain Rose Herbs (1 pound of dried organic nettle is only $8.50; I use 1 oz of dry herb per quart of infusion weekly (drink it over 2-3 days), so 1 lb of herb lasts me 4 months!).
4. Eat homemade sauerkraut daily. Did you know that sauerkraut is one of the best sources of vitamin C? Sauerkraut contains something like 10-20 times more vitamin C than cabbage, thanks to fermentation. But here’s the catch: you’ve got to make your own, because pretty much every brand of sauerkraut on the market is pasteurized, even the organics, and heat kills not only the good enzymes of sauerkraut but also destroys the vitamin C created during the fermentation. Lucky for us, it’s easy & cheap to make, since you need only three ingredients: cabbage, salt, jar. A head of organic cabbage doesn’t cost much, maybe $1-2, and will yield about a pint of sauerkraut (give or take). Of course, if you love kraut, you’ll want to keep more on hand. Happily, it gets better with age, so if you plan to buy a few heads of cabbage and have a marathon kraut-making session, you’ll be in kraut for months. The best book on the subject is Wild Fermentation, and its author has generously provided the how-to for sauerkraut on this page (I’ll post soon on how I’ve been experimenting with making it in small batches).
5. Sleep, sleep, rest, sleep. And more rest. Nothing attracts sickness like unending stress and being on-the-go (which I learned the hard way, especially when I was teaching). No matter what, every single person needs downtime, rest, relaxation, and enough sleep. Everyone. No excuses.

So there they are, my five favorite things to do to help keep my immune system humming along. I hope the information helps someone out there! Tomorrow I’ll post about five simple things I do to fight an active cold/infection if I get one, things I’ve tried and that have worked for me.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday for February 26, 2010.