Living through a pandemic can be frightening, but you don’t have to be in the dark about how to strengthen your immune 
system against both COVID-19 and the flu.
You already may be aware of some risk factors such as obesity, lung or heart disease, aging, autoimmune conditions, and immune suppressing medication that make COVID-19 more dangerous, should you become infected. Keeping your body and immune system healthy with the right diet and spices has the possibility of
making you less susceptible, or having a milder illness, if you are exposed to the virus.
This is not a prescription for prevention or treatment. It is just an extension of common sense information you probably know or have been reading or hearing from your grandmother, or nutritionally-oriented friends or doctors.
While there are really no good human studies on diet and immunity with Covid 19, there are various articles in the literature and historical practices that suggest to me that some of the foods and spices below might make some kind of difference in keeping me healthy or possibly making me less ill, if I do get sick.
I will discuss some reasons why the recipe I have made for myself is likely to be helpful (in later blogs), but now I will just talk about delicious healthy meals to prepare and eat.
Let’s start with breakfast. Several times a week, I start with grapefruit, being sure to chew the pulp, and chew off some of the white inside the skin, especially if it’s organic. However, if you are taking any medications, check to be sure their levels are not affected by grapefruit. In that case, have an orange instead. The pulp and white inside the skin is where the bioflavonoids, and in particular, the naranganin is found.
Next, eat some ground, soaked flaxseed, or put it in your cereal. You could also add some cinnamon to your cereal for sweetness. Hold off on the sugar. Finally, how about a cup of green tea, with EGCG as a natural component? You could also cinnamon to your tea or coffee for flavor.
I just made a stew for lunch. Besides lots of kale and onions, I have seasoned it with thyme and turmeric, to name a few. Carrots, celery, and garbanzo beans made up some of the bulk. I used a quart of chicken soup liquid, but could have used vegetable soup stock instead. Miso and garlic and caramelized onions were added for flavor. I put in a big piece of astragalus root while I cooked it, for both sweetness, anti-viral protection and immune support.
While I was preparing this soup, I put a few handfuls of dried Shitake mushrooms into a pot of boiling water and flavored them with soy sauce blend and seasonings. Half of the soup got the bones and part of a chicken. I poured the stew over mashed potatoes and quinoa. I will add the Shitake mushrooms for the next meal. I added sweet white miso, flavored soy sauce, along with the Bragg’s aminos, and garlic and spices to flavor the soup).
With a few additions, this yielded 3-4 delicious meals for 2 people. I made the same recipe again tonight, vegan, with red lentils and vegetable broth instead of chicken, and it was delicious as well.
Here’s My Shitake Mushroom Stew Recipe:
- Rinse Shitake mushrooms with water, and boil them in a separate pot, with spices, until soft.
- Use a pint of water saved in the fridge from the pot where organic vegetables were steamed
- Add vegetable or chicken broth 1-2 pints
- Add water to a total of 2 quarts including above
- Lightly sauté 2 sweet onions salt in olive oil with 4-6 cloves of garlic added toward to end, and salt or vege salt.
- Flavor with sweet pale miso diluted in soup stock, turmeric, thyme, garlicsalt, basil, rosemary, and Italian spices, Bragg’s Aminos with whatever deletions or additions suites you.
- Boil the above liquid in a 6-8 quart pot and add in chopped celery and carrots, well chopped kale or cabbage, spices, Astragalus root, chicken bones with chicken, tofu, red lentils, or vegetable protein powder and any other slow cooking vegetables you like.
- When vegetables become almost cooked and softened, add sautéed onions, cooked beans, and Shitake mushrooms. Finish seasoning to taste.
- Serve over cooked quinoa, rice, squash, or potatoes. Put some aside for the next few days, and a container in the freezer to thaw for a later meal.
Stay safe with adequate distance, and wash those hands!
To your health,
Dr. Dattner
By reading this you agree that this article is for educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for advice from a qualified practitioner who understands your conditions and what you are taking, and is not a substitute for best preventative measures such as social distancing (but not emotional isolation!), hand washing, and wearing a mask. Getting enough sleep and avoiding excess sugar, smoking or other lung irritants is also a good idea.
I’d like to talk about a concept that has been developing in my mind over the past few months, that I call “the gap”. The gap contains the potentially helpful treatments, often based on scientific literature and capabilities of various healing systems, but not proven in the medical literature by double blind studies or evidence-based studies. Some of these are accessible only by extreme or serendipitous circumstances, such as a particularly skilled acupuncturist, or in the jungles of Brazil. Others are accessible by working via a combination of medically and scientifically based concepts through the perspective of integrative medicine and concepts borrowed from other healing traditions. It may employ energetic or other perspectives, such as Applied Kinesiology, which I use, to corroborate, point out, or refine diagnostic data and choice of treatment.
I recently saw a young woman complaining of bad dandruff. I agree with my dermatologist colleagues that Malasezzia yeast living in the follicles causes inflammation leading to this condition. My own perspective differs and jumps beyond.
