Health & Food

Does Your Food Boost Your Immunity or Make You Vulnerable to Disease?

“No more midnight muffins…” If Will Smith’s viral social media post showing his post-lockdown out-of-shape physique resonates with you, we have some insight and inspiration for you. In this excerpt from a recent conversation moderated by popular podcast host and author Nikki Walton, prominent physician and author Dr. Mark Hyman and Sadhguru discuss how your food choices make a huge difference in your susceptibility to disease, hospitalization, and even premature death. Learn what and how to eat for optimum health and wellbeing.
Author and podcast host Nikki Walton, professionally known as Curly Nikki

Nikki Walton: During the pandemic, people are gaining weight, and there’s been a lot of substance abuse. What can people do to hit that reset button and jump-start the path to good health?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, this is a real problem. Because COVID created such an emotional stress, many people have reverted to eating poorly as a way of comforting themselves. I just met a guy who gained about twenty to thirty pounds because he started baking bread and decided he wanted to cook for himself, which is generally a great thing, but not the best idea the way he did it.

What Multiplies the Likelihood of Getting Hospitalized

I think we have seen the COVID-19 quarantine weight gain and the challenges that come with it. If you are overweight, or you have a chronic illness which is caused by food, then your likelihood of getting admitted to the hospital and getting really sick is six times higher, and your risk of death is twelve times higher. If you are African American or Latino, you are five times more likely to end up in a hospital, because these cultures are often underserved and consuming foods that are targeted at them by the food industry, which are making them sick and overweight and have chronic disease.

Your immune system is regulated by what you eat.
—Dr. Mark Hyman

We know that in a linear way, when your body mass index is over twenty-three, which is not very overweight, you start to increase your risk for hospitalization and death from COVID. So, the number one thing people can do – and the government is not talking about this – is to take care of your own biology, because your immune system is regulated by what you eat.

What to Eat to Ward Off Disease

If you eat a lot of plant-rich foods that are full of colorful phytochemicals, get off of processed food and sugar, throw in adequate amounts of plant protein or animal protein, and you are also eating for your microbiome, which means pre- and probiotics – because poor microbiome plays a huge role in our health – you can literally upgrade your health, and make yourself COVID resistant.

Plus, if you take vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, and a few other things, you may actually be able to prevent yourself from getting sick. I know I’ve been exposed many times, but I’ve never gotten sick. I’ve been really focused on doubling down on my health instead of eating comfort food, sugar, and sweets, or drinking alcohol. That’s a bad idea because it’s basically setting you up for getting really sick and dying.

Nikki Walton: That’s so good. In the past, whenever I would drink, I would notice that I’d be very susceptible to catching a cold. So I knew that if I went into an environment like an airplane, I couldn’t drink, because it seemed otherwise I would set my immune system up for failure.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely.

Why It’s Not Only About What You Eat

Sadhguru: By eating all these wrong kinds of things, as Mark said, you are pushing the body to a place where it’s difficult for it to exist. Let me put it in a simple way. The food that you eat is literally setting the code in the body. The very cellular structure in the body is determined by what you eat. It’s also very important how you consume the food.

You need to handle what you consume and how you consume it with a certain amount of awareness.
—Sadhguru

This is not a philosophy or some made-up, airy stuff. There is enough science today to tell you that water and food are very responsive to how you consume it, and with what intent. How you consume it is a science by itself. You need to handle what you consume and how you consume it with a certain amount of awareness, without being overly dogmatic about it.

What to Do When Food Makes You Feel Lethargic

We can’t always eat the ideal kind of food, especially those of us who are traveling and doing a whole variety of activities. In case you end up eating something that makes your body a little sluggish – that is if you are sensitive to what’s happening in the system – all you have to do is cut the next meal into half, or skip the meal; that is all it takes for the body to bounce back.