Powerful Antiviral & Immune-Boosting Foods To Help Combat Covid-19

(Give yourself the best chance of avoiding – or recovering quickly from – Covid-19 with these plant-based, antiviral immune system protectors and boosters!)

I’m not going to add to the fear porn about the virus here. Nor will I go on about the facts and figures for this illness that most of us are in lockdown for – you’ve already read/heard lots of information on TV and the internet, and there is lots of conflicting, confusing information around. We are not being given full context around figures of deaths from flu this year compared to deaths of flu from previous years; who died OF CV compared to who died WITH it etc, and I’m not going to add to this holy clusterf**k.

However however however….

….all that aside, one thing we can ALL agree on is that we don’t want to contract COVID19 (or any other flu) and if we DO contract it, we want it gone ASAP.

Agreed?

Right. So you should be all aware of your government guidelines on what we can do physically in terms of distancing, hand-washing etc, but here are my expert nutritional tips for giving yourself the best chance possible of avoiding the damn thing, or if you have it already, getting shot of it pronto.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is known for its anti-viral properties . It seems they even used vitamin C in Chinese hospitals against the virus.

This is a no-brainer, but I’m still gonna say it dammit. Include (more than ever) lots of green leafy veg and plenty of citrus fruit in your diet. Clementines, oranges and grapefruit are all vitamin C bombs, but also powerful is lemon juice. Now you’re obviously not gonna peel a lemon and eat it! Eeeww – I’m making the sour lemon face as I type 🙂 So a great way to ingest some lemon juice is to squeeze half a lemon into a tall glass of warm water. It is thought that the warm temperature is better for extracting the vitamin C than if it were cold. Don’t forget to either drink it with a straw, or rinse your teeth once afterwards, as you don’t want the citric acid sticking around on your tooth enamel.

I’ve been doing this every day for over 2 years now, and I’ve definitely noticed the difference in terms of the reduced number of bugs I’ve picked up. If you need an extra incentive – it’s great for the skin too!

Gut health

As we learned in this post, keep up the health of your gut, as this is the majority of your immune system. Make sure to eat some fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, miso or plain plant-based yoghurts several times a week; or at the very least, take a non-dairy probiotic every day throughout flu season.

Garlic

Garlic is your best winter friend. It is good for your immune system by helping keep your gut in order, and on top of that it has anti-viral properties. You can crush it and put it in dishes at the end of cooking, and it will do it’s darndest to prevent you getting sick.

If you’re a garlic hater, first of all – BOO; but don’t worry, you can take garlic capsules.

Water

Another no-brainer, but I know how easy it is to get absorbed in your work and forget to drink adequate water. As well as keeping you hydrated, water is going to keep flushing your system, helping you to all the quicker rid your body of anything undesirable.

If you don’t have a routine for drinking water, now is the time to get into one. Drink several glasses at convenient times throughout your day. Drink more if you’re exercising, less if you’re not. There are conflicting opinions on how much water to drink exactly per day; and it depends on your body size, whether you’ve perspired that day or not, whether you are eating especially dehydrating foods that day or not – but a common suggestion is 2 litres, so aim for that.

Fibre

We actually know that dietary fibre protects against flu viruses. Like water, eating plenty of fibre is gonna keep your system ticking over nicely and will help you to expediently eliminate that which your body doesn’t need! It goes without saying that a vegan/plant-based diet is gonna give you the most fibre, what with there being ZERO fibre in animal products. Obviously look more to whole foods (whole grains and cereals; lentils; all beans; all fruit and veg) as opposed to refined and processed products, and you’ll be a fibre champ!

This one connects into gut-health too because a high-fibre diet will ensure you have a healthy balance of gut microbiota. So like garlic it’s a 2 for 1 🙂

Green Tea

I am thrilled that my drink of choice is actually anti-viral! It seems the green tea catechins (compounds from the tea leaves) ‘especially epigallocatechin-3-gallate, have antiviral effects against diverse viruses.’ Green tea extract is effective against enveloped viruses – of which Covid-19 is one.

So it’s great for me, but what if you’re a coffee or a Yorkshire Tea fanatic? Look, no-one is asking you to give up caffeine, least of all me – I love it. But there is plenty of the stuff in green tea honest! All I can say is try it. Try it a couple of times a day, then try and make it your go-to hot (or iced!) beverage of choice. Have it with a slice of lemon, a few mint leaves, some cardamom and agave nectar, whatever you fancy. I quite like Clipper White Tea (same as green – just younger leaves) because it’s quite strong with a nice caffeine hit 🙂

These next two are based on empirical evidence solely. I know they work for me, and that they will not harm you should you decide to try them (as indicated) too.

GSE

There is a product (available online or at health food stores) called Citricidal (GSE in the US). It is grapefruit seed extract and is a very powerful anti-viral, anti-biotic, and anti-fungal.

Obviously the anti-viral properties are what we are interested in right now (although the anti-fungal properties will also keep your gut in check), and GSE has been scientifically proven to be effective against what are called ‘enveloped viruses‘ of which, as already mentioned Covid-19 is one.

I’m currently taking 5 drops in a double whisky shot size of water 3 times a day as I’ve just recently been on a plane. After 2 weeks I’ll do this twice a day throughout this period. It’s a good idea to dip a cotton bud in the water before you drink it and then wipe it around one nostril while inhaling with your mouth closed, then doing the same with the other end of the cotton bud for the other nostril.

If you want to read up on this product, you can read the US and UK Amazon reviews of it. It’s probably one of the only places you’ll get some truth. There was a campaign to try to discredit GSE a while back, but as you can see in the science I linked to above, the claims were bull. As it’s a natural product, big pharma can’t make money from it, so it’s very possible that might be the reason for the bogus claims.

Umeboshi

Umeboshi plums have also been shown to have anti-viral compounds.

If I feel like I have the first signs of a cold – the bone-ache, the slightly swollen feeling in the back of the throat etc, then I take half an umeboshi plum. If you don’t know these already, they are salted Japanese plums (available in health stores) and are the sourest little mofo’s you ever did taste – and that’s the point. They are extremely acidic, but they have an alkalising effect once in the body and as you may be aware, the more alkaline your body is, the less disease it can harbour. If I remember to take half a plum in time, the cold-feelings are gone by the next day. Just remember to take a couple of mouthfuls of water afterwards, to rinse excess acid from your teeth.

If they are too sour for you to eat as they are, then you can mash half a plum and stir it into some cooked brown rice. This actually flavours the rice nicely, and kids like it too. They are around ten pounds for a jar (around fifteen bucks in the US?), but if you only take them when you need them, they last an absolute age.

Bonus (non-nutrition) tip:

Avoid rolling news and fear porn

This isn’t technically my remit but just to remind you that fear will reduce your body’s capacity to prevent or fight illness. Fear causes the body to transfer its energy away from the immune system into ‘fight or flight.’ Therefore a great thing you can do for your immune system right now is to throw your TV out of the window (or I guess you could just turn it off, that would probs be more responsible :)). The mainstream news seems intent on giving us bad news and numbers without full context, which only serves to create fear and panic. Bad news is good news for ratings but not for your sanity.

You’re on lockdown. You don’t need the news on. I haven’t had a TV for years and I always end up knowing exactly what I need to know, and not what I don’t. If you get your news from social media as I do, just check the few accounts you trust then leave it alone.

I hope these tips are helpful. Eat plants; stay well; breathe deeply; question EVERYTHING.