Introduction

You're probably familiar with the many diet plans, books, infomercials, and products on the market that have one goal in mind: to get you skinnier. Okay, fair. But what if you could get the same results by just getting healthy and staying healthy? What if you could look better, feel better, and experience fewer cold and flu symptoms or other illnesses just by making simple diet and lifestyle changes that boost your immunity? The simple truth is that when you boost your immunity, you can have it all.

When you begin to eat and live in a way that boosts your immunity, you naturally remove inflammatory foods as well as the foods that don't move you toward health. You begin eating true superfoods - foods rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant power that make you feel better than you may have in years. What overall effect does boosting your immunity have in your life? You'll have reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancers, colds, flus, and other illnesses. You'll have more energy, look younger, lose weight, get stronger, and sleep more soundly.

The immune-boosting plan isn't a diet in the traditional sense, although we do ask you to give up certain foods - sometimes just for a short time and, in some cases, indefinitely. Although that may sound intimidating, this book shows you the reasons you should avoid certain foods for optimal health. We also provide plenty of practical tips to make the transition as easy as possible for you and your family. From how to stock your kitchen cupboards to how to stay healthy while you travel, from reversing disease to exercising wisely, you'll find everything you need to adopt an immune-boosting lifestyle.

About This Book

Embracing a healthier paradigm may feel overwhelming at first, but Boosting Your Immunity For Dummies helps you understand the benefits of living an immune-boosting life. In this book, we explain the underlying science of how the immune system works and define all its parts and functions. We pay special attention to what happens when your immune system gets off track and what you can do about it.

We break down the patterns of an immune-boosting lifestyle so you know exactly where to begin, and we help you understand just what to include in your diet to reach your goals. Whether you're trying to get healthy, stay healthy, lose weight, reverse a medical condition, fight aging, or improve your energy, you'll find the information you need to succeed. We also explain the nutritional aspects of the immune-boosting lifestyle and answer your questions about superfoods, herbs, vitamins, minerals, supplements, and more.

Because boosting your immunity goes beyond the food that you put on your plate, we also explore how you can improve your sleep, enhance your cells through detoxing, and benefit from immune-boosting breathing and moving.

If you're more interested in practical application than scientific theories, we've got you covered there, too, with chapters that outline how to revamp your kitchen for boosting immunity and how to plan and stock your kitchen for the nutritionally superior immune-boosting foods.

And finally, Boosting Your Immunity For Dummies wouldn't be complete without plenty of delicious, satisfying recipes to help you and your family make the transition to living healthier. The recipes will keep you nutritionally fed from breakfast through dinner with healthy snacks in between and even a few dessert recipes for those special occasions when you want something a little sweeter than usual. We also share a lot of easy meal ideas that don't require a recipe at all.

Conventions Used in This Book

We use the following conventions throughout the text to make things consistent and easy to understand:

• All web addresses appear in monofont.
• When this book was printed, some web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that we didn't put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So when using one of these web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in this book, pretending the line break doesn't exist.
• We use boldface to highlight keywords in bulleted lists and the action parts of numbered steps.

Here are some specific recipe-related conventions that apply throughout the book:

• Vegetarian recipes are marked with a tomato in the Recipes in This Chapter list.
• Temperatures are all given in degrees Fahrenheit. (If you prefer working in the metric system, turn to the appendix for help converting temperatures to Celsius.)
• All eggs are large, unless noted otherwise.

What You're Not to Read

We've written this book so you can find information easily and quickly. Each chapter covers one aspect of boosting immunity and includes specific details and practical tips to help you understand how to incorporate it into your new lifestyle. If you don't have the time (or the desire) to read every word, you can skim the text in the shaded sidebars. They provide interesting but not essential anecdotes and additional information.

Foolish Assumptions

As we wrote this book, we made the following assumptions about you:

• You want to build your immune system to experience fewer colds, flus, and other illnesses or to manage some type of medical condition, lose weight, or fight aging, and you know that to achieve these goals, boosting your immunity makes sense.
• You understand how to eat and live healthy, and you want your loved ones to enjoy a healthy, immune-boosting lifestyle, too.
• You want to stop eating processed and unhealthy foods to feel younger, healthier, more vibrant, and happier.
• You're interested in discovering how food affects you physically and mentally and how to live a healthier lifestyle but don't want to get bogged down in too much scientific detail.
• You're open to the idea of making lifestyle changes - avoiding certain foods, making sleep a priority, and adopting healthy principles - to enhance your quality of life.
• You want to gain a better understanding of how the immune system works and what you can do if your immune system isn't functioning properly.

How This Book Is Organized

We've divided this book into five parts to make the different topics more manageable and easier to digest. Each part deals with certain aspects of boosting immunity and discusses the relevant topics.

Part 1: Getting to Know Your Immune System

If you're interested in starting with the basics, this part is for you. The first chapter gives a broad overview of living an immune-boosting lifestyle, pointing out all the ways your decisions impact your immune system. In this part, we explain the immune system in detail, from the many organs involved to the different cells and how they interact. If you're a bit of a science geek, this is the place for you.

Part 2: What Happens When Your Immune System Gets Off Track

Although most of the time the immune system functions well, other times it doesn't. If things go haywire, some disease states can develop. This part addresses the hows and whys of specific conditions, such as allergies, autoimmune conditions, and cancer, as well as immune-boosting suggestions specific to each. We also discuss immune deficiency states, both inherited and acquired, along with suggestions that help modify immune activity.

Also in this part, we discuss the impact of other medical conditions on the immune system and the immune system's impact on other medical conditions, showing you how interconnected your overall health is to your immune system.

Part 3: Laying the Groundwork for Super Immunity: Nutrition, Lifestyle, and Detox

In these chapters, you find out why eating immune-boosting foods is the best choice for you and your family and how they can get you well and keep you well. Tapping into the immune properties of superfoods is one of the most amazing tools you can use to improve your health. Packed with nutrients, they provide you with the deepest nutrition. However, living an immune-boosting lifestyle goes beyond food. Lifestyle patterns also make a difference, and the chapters in this part explore the principles of living an immune-friendly lifestyle. We also show how detoxing can work its magic in people who need a cellular cleanse.

Part 4: Cooking Up Recipes for Immunity and Wellness

Getting reacquainted with your kitchen can be a gift for you and your family. We live in a busy world filled with responsibility, and this section helps you overcome the obstacle of feeling overwhelmed when you're ready to jump back into your kitchen. Chapter 13 provides tips on planning and stocking your kitchen. Chapters 14 through 19 include a collection of delicious, comforting recipes to fill every meal (and your stomach) with healthy, energizing foods. You'll find recipes for easy breakfasts, lunches, dinners, side dishes, soups, salads, desserts, teas, and smoothies that will improve your health, energize your body, and help you live longer and stronger.

Part 5: The Part of Tens

Like all For Dummies books, this one includes the fun and exciting Part of Tens. Here, we list ten tips to avoid...