Are you looking for a practical and natural way to boost your immune resilience and stay healthy? Food can play a huge role! An immune health dietitian can not only support you to eat well, but help uncover potential reasons for low immunity.
Is your family fed up with catching everything that’s going around? Or maybe you just want to get ahead of travel plans, or other changes, pressure or stress that may compromise your immune function. Nutrition provides the building blocks your immune cells need to function normally. That’s why attention to diet is a sensible and sustainable way to start strengthening immunity. What’s more, the overall benefits of eating well not only improve your immune system, but every system in your body.
Immunity can be complex. There is no single food or supplement that boosts immunity overnight. Your immune system relies on a steady supply of nutrients like vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, quality sleep, movement, stress management and overall health to function at its best. Also at the core of a strong immune system, is the health of your gut. So how do you balance your microbiome so that it’s functioning well? And how do you know which nutrients are low, and which foods will be supportive?
That’s where an immune health dietitian comes in. Our Accredited Practicing Dietitians are experienced immunity and gut health dietitians who offer a personalised approach to optimising your diet and lifestyle to help strengthen your immunity. Working with us can also help you identify nutritional gaps and develop practical eating habits that help sustain immune resilience over the long term.
Your immune system depends on a wide range of nutrients to function effectively. Research around immune health and nutrition shows that a balanced, varied diet supports the normal development and activity of immune cells, helps regulate inflammation and promotes a healthy gut microbiome. The immune response relies on an adequate intake of both macronutrients, such as protein and healthy fats, and micronutrients including vitamins A, C and D, zinc, iron and selenium. These nutrients help support the growth, communication and activity of immune cells, regulate inflammation and contribute to the body’s ability to respond to infection.
In fact, Harvard Nutrition Source highlights that eating a balanced diet is the number one way we can support a healthy immune system, and that the Mediterranean Diet is an optimal way we can support this.
Research also highlights the important relationship between diet, gut health and immunity, with a healthy, diverse gut microbiome playing a key role in immune regulation. Rather than relying on individual superfoods or supplements, maintaining a varied, balanced diet is one of the most effective ways to support normal immune function over the long term.
Wondering if your diet is measuring up? If you’ve checked with your doctor and there is nothing else wrong, a poor diet could be letting your immune system down in the following ways:
Frequent infections
Slow recovery from illness
Fatigue
Poor wound healing
Digestive problems
Limited dietary variety
High reliance on processed foods
Unintentional weight loss
Restrictive eating patterns
If you’re also travelling, working in high-contact environments, spending time in busy public spaces, or have young children bringing home every bug from kindy or daycare, your immune system is going to be constantly challenged. Addressing immune system function through diet may help to reduce some of those symptoms, and reduce your risk of illness.
According to consultant gastroenterologist and UNSW Professor of Medicine Emad El-Omar, a healthy microbiome also provides correct feedback to help us navigate our environment and potential pathogens in it:
“The lion’s share of our immune system – around two-thirds of all immune cells – is concentrated in digestive system tissue. It’s separated from the gut microbiome by only a layer of epithelial cells lining the inside of the intestinal tract.
This proximity is no coincidence; the gut microbiome’s primary role is to educate our immune system about our environment.”
With around 70% of immune cells associated with the gut, it makes sense that we concentrate on gut health when it comes to immunity. Chiefly, reducing inflammation, restoring gut health, and fuelling a diverse microbiome to help stay healthy.
Since 1993, the team at Tree of Life Nutrition have been at the forefront of gut health dietetics. The team offers a personalised approach to optimal gut motility, function and microbiome health that not only supports better immunity, but overall health and wellbeing. We help identify root causes of poor gut health, which can have many and varied factors some of which may also be impacting your immune system. You may be experiencing IBS-like symptoms, or have been diagnosed with Small Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth (SIBO), or just be suspicious that your gut is not functioning optimally.
Gut health and immunity support may include advice on microbiome testing, incorporating fibre and highly diverse plant-based foods, and concentrating on low-inflammatory foods which can be found in a Mediterranean Diet plan.
Typically, we address five key areas of gut health and gut restoration in relation to immunity:
Vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, iron and protein (including glutamine) are vital nutrients for healthy immune function. Where possible a varied diet high in these nutrients is going to support great immune function. In simple terms, this looks like a diet high in whole foods like vegetables, fruit, lean protein and whole grains. And also, lots of water – an often-overlooked adjunct to good nutrition!
In some cases where dietary intake is inadequate, supplementation can also help. But of course, a varied nutritious diet also benefits gut health, and in turn, immune function, so where possible, a great diet is always the preferred choice to support immunity.
Your immune system typically functions well when you give it the right support to do so. In addition to a nutritious and varied diet, attention to lifestyle can also enhance immune function. Here are some key areas that can support better immunity:
At Tree of Life Nutrition, we often recommend a Mediterranean-style eating pattern as a practical way to support immune health. Rich in vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, olive oil and seafood, the Mediterranean diet provides many of the nutrients needed for normal immune function while also nourishing your gut microbiome.
Maintaining a healthy and diverse gut microbiome plays an important role in your body’s natural defences, and the Mediterranean diet is a natural way to fuel this. It is also an anti-inflammatory diet, which is key for reducing levels of chronic inflammation that may interfere with the body’s natural immune response. Combined with adequate protein and a variety of nutrient-dense foods, a Mediterranean-style diet can help support immune resilience while also benefiting your heart, metabolic health and overall wellbeing.
If you’re fed up with feeling tired all the time, or taking time off work as soon as someone sneezes, then let us help you understand your system better and the real reason for your symptoms. During a 1:1 consultation we will discuss what the underlying factors influencing your immunity might be and devise a plan to work through them.
You see, food is medicine and prevention through diet is always better than chasing after health when you’re sick. Rather than relying on medication, or just throwing another band-aid over the problem, let’s look for the root cause and a dietary plan that can enhance your health long term.
Purchase our latest cookbooks
