AKA Eat your fruits and veggies.

The last line of defense we have against a virus or bacteria is our immune system and our immune system works better when it has the necessary tools for us to fight an infection. Vitamins and minerals found in fruits, vegetables and other eatables provide these necessary tools for our immune system to work at its best.

This article is going to be a long one, if you’d rather have the short and sweet version.
Here you go.

For a deeper dive into immune function. The cells that play a role. The different types of Immunity and how each of the vitamins and minerals in table 1. play a specific role in immunity start after table 1. below.

You’ve been told your whole life to eat more fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals that your body uses to operate. One of the systems in the body, the immune system, can’t operate at its highest level without vitamins and minerals.

The Immune System uses vitamins and minerals for the creation of immune cells, for those cells to reproduce, for the cells to be at their strongest and for them to work effectively and efficiently at fighting off disease causing viruses and bacteria. The main vitamins and minerals the immune system needs are Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and minerals Zinc, Selenium and Iron.

When you don’t get enough of these vitamins and minerals it increases your risk for diseases caused by viruses and bacteria because the immune system isn’t operating at 100%.

So eat your fruits and veggies so your immune system can operate at 100%.

Below you’ll see a more detailed breakdown of how the immune system uses each of the vitamins and minerals and 3 foods that you can find them in. For a more complete look at the immune system, how it uses each vitamin or mineral and a larger list of foods containing these vitamins and minerals a more thorough continuation is below the table.

Table 1.

Now for a deeper dive into immune function. The cells that play a role. The different types of Immunity and how each of the vitamins and minerals above play a specific role in immunity.

The immune system; our body’s defense system against foreign bacteria and viruses. This defense system of ours relies on two strategies. Innate Immunity and Adaptive Immunity.

Innate Immunity is the uneducated, shoot on site, non-specific part of our immune system. This part of our immune system works to protect against all bacteria and viruses (pathogens) and it does this through chemical and physical barriers in the body and through a group of cells called leukocytes.

The physical barriers are our skin, the lining in our intestines and stomach, our lungs, our nose and our mouth. The extra defense the physical barriers provide is through secretions these barriers produce. This includes our saliva, mucous, tears, stomach acid, bile and sweat. These secretions help to either trap viruses and bacteria so cells of the immune system can destroy them or these secretions will attempt to destroy them before they enter the body.

However, if bacteria or viruses get past this first layer of defense the Innate Immune System has non-specific cells as a second line of defense.

These cells include:
Phagocytes, cells travel throughout the body looking for threats to the body like bacteria and viruses that don’t belong. These cells then literally eat the foreign bacteria or viruses.

Phagocytes needs Vitamin C to reproduce and travel.

Macrophages are specialized phagocytes that can travel to areas in the body that regular Phagocytes can’t. Macrophages need Vitamin A so that they can destroy viruses or bacteria, Vitamin D to move and mature, Vitamin C to clear out the waste they produce after destroying bacteria or viruses, Vitamin E to regulate what they destroy and Zinc to help them fight off bacteria in the gut.

Neutrophils are another group of specialized phagocytes but these phagocytes hold granulocytes that are extremely toxic to bacteria and fungi. Neutrophils must have Vit. C to function, reproduce and move and use Iron to kill bacteria.
There are many other Innate Immune System cells but the research on what vitamins and minerals they use isn’t conclusive.

On to Adaptive Immunity.

Adaptive Immunity is able to identify different bacteria and viruses and then create cells to specifically fight those disease causing bacteria and viruses. Adaptive Immunity is slower than Innate Immunity because the cells have to get ready before they attack.

Adaptive Immunity Cells include:

B-Cells- These cells are made in the bone marrow but aren’t ready to go on the offensive yet, they first have to be told who they are going to go attack. Based on who they are told to attack these B-Cells then mature and turn into a multiple different variations of B-Cells.

B-Cells use Vitamin A to make help make them work better in the gut.

T-Cells are very similar to B-Cells, they are made in the bone marrow as well but then they go to the Thymus(an immune system organ) to mature and then after that are given specific instructions where to go and what to become.

T-Cells use Vitamin A, B6, B12, C, D, E Minerals Zinc, Iron and Selenium to help them become more specific when they are attacking bacteria or viruses, to help them form and replicate and help develop into different types of T-Cells.

When it comes to these B-Cells and T-Cells they change to dozens of different versions and while vitamins and minerals are crucial for them to change into different types of cells they also use vitamins and minerals to form different defense mechanisms and weapons to attack different viruses and bacteria.

Vitamins and Minerals Play a Bigger Role than Just Immune Function

They are involved in every process in our body. Our body is amazing at making due with what it has and many of us are able to live a long life without eating enough vegetables, fruits or other nutrient rich foods. A long life doesn’t mean a high quality of life. When we don’t consume healthy nutrient rich foods our risk of nearly every disease increases and our body’s ability to fight those disease processes decreases. This holiday season enjoy the turkey, enjoy the ham and serve yourself an extra serving of greens or yams to help your body work at a higher level.

For Lists of Foods with different vitamins and minerals see below.