This will be our last post in the series Natural Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System. If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, you can catch up using the following links:

Natural Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System, Part 1 {Immune Strengthening Herbal Tea Blend}

Natural Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System, Part 2 {Water Kefir}

Natural Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System, Part3 {Vitamin D and Cod Liver Oil}

Today we are going to talk about the wonderful health benefits of eliminating processed and refined grains and sugars. Not only is it a good choice in general – but it will help keep your immune system strong. These refined and overly-processed foods (if you can call them that) interfere with your body’s ability to function properly – so decreasing and even eliminating them will do you and your body a world of good.

Many people will see this as a losing fight, but believe me when I tell you it is possible. Without going into in depth detail today, I’ll give you the simple changes you can make to begin to decrease, then eliminate refined sugar from your diet.

When your body is constantly fed sugar and foods that turn into sugar in your body – it can weaken the immune system. It messes up your hormones, eats away at your gut and entire digestive system, messes with your brain, depletes your energy and wreaks havoc on your insulin levels and production. When your body’s immune system is already weak, feeding it sugar will only delay the healing process. If you or your children are showing signs of a cold, flu or any sickness – do not consume any sugar. Stay away from juices, sodas, pre-packaged foods, white rice and white flours, candy and anything else that contains refined and processed sugar.

Do I think that we should be avoiding all sugar? No. I do believe that there are many natural sources of sugar that are fine – even healthy – to consume. Of course, if you are someone who needs to keep away from all sugar (example: if you have candida), then by all means, then you should even avoid these types of sugar. There are always cases where people need to be on a complete sugar-free diet, yet for the average person, natural sources of sugar in moderation are okay.

Fruits contain naturally occurring sugar and we should all be getting 1-2 servings of fruit a day. I also find foods such as raw honey, molasses and maple syrup are wonderful additions to baked goods and meals as they are a good alternative to refined sugar and they provide wonderful health benefits as well. If you are needing a dry form of sugar in recipes, good alternatives are coconut or palm sugar, sucanat (unrefined sugar) or organic cane sugar.

To eliminate the bad sugars from your diet and from your child’s diet, begin by decreasing the amount of processed foods that are consumed. I would say it’s best to just stop eating processed foods – but it isn’t always that easy. If you begin replacing boxed and bagged items with fresh food – this is the easiest way to remove refined sugar from their diet. If you’re taking something away – you have to replace it with something or else resistance will take place and cravings will occur. Instead of snacking on chips or crackers, have a plate of fruits and veggies with cheese and nut butter for dipping.  Bananas sprinkled with cocoa powder and/or cinnamon are always good and a mini-smoothie is a great snack as well.

Stay away from white pasta and white rice, which turns into sugar once metabolized. Other choices are gluten-free pasta, veggie pasta, whole wheat pasta, quinoa pasta or brown rice pasta. For rice, wild rice or long grain brown rice is a better choice. When baking and using flour, nix the white, bleached flour and go for flours such as spelt, whole wheat, whole wheat pastry, oat, rye or even coconut flour. Save the white or whole wheat white flours for those recipes that require a flour with certain gluten-levels. When choosing breads, definitely stay away from white breads and any breads that have too many extra ingredients. Also look for brands that DO NOT contain HFCS – High Fructose Corn Syrup. Sourdough is a great choice, or even sprouted grain bread (such as Ezekiel brand).

When it comes to treats, making your own is the best option. Buying prepackaged treats is one of the most unhealthy choices you can make. They are full of refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, soy by-products, synthetic ingredients and preservatives, food coloring and more! Making your own at home isn’t that time consuming and you can control what ingredients are going into your food. As stated above, use alternative sugar and flour choices. You may notice cookies seem a little more dense than when made with white flours and sugars, but they have such an amazing taste. I have no problem making soft, chewy and delicious cookies, moist cakes and creamy puddings and custards.

I need to add that you should also stay away from sugar substitutes. They are nothing short of toxic and should be avoided at all costs. Splenda, NutraSweet, Sweet ‘n Low – all these should be removed from your diet. If you need something to sweeten tea or lemonade, use raw honey, maple syrup or even organic cane sugar. It’s far more better for you than the substitutes. I’m not the hugest fan of stevia (and I explain why in this post), but occasional use is fine.

I strongly urge you and your children to stop drinking soda. This is a huge subject and one of debate, but believe me when I tell you that soda is toxic to your body in more ways than one. Fruit juice is another beverage I would cross of your grocery list. Unless you are drinking freshly squeezed or juiced fruits and vegetables, you should avoid fruit juice as much as you do soda – they are nothing but sugar and anything healthy in them is destroyed during pasteurization. Water is always the best replacement and we should all be drinking half of our body weight in ounces of water each day, but I know people like a change now and then. Alternatives would be sparkling water with freshly squeezed orange or lemon juice. You can also put slices of fresh fruit in your sparkling water for a refreshing citrus beverage. Adding mint and lemon juice to water is a nice change of pace. Juicing your own fruits and veggies is a wonderful addition to any day and at our home we also have water kefir which makes a nice alternative to sodas or juices.

Parents, your children, whether they are in elementary school, junior high or high school, should NEVER be drinking energy drinks. If you only knew how dangerous they were. Most labels don’t include the amount of caffeine in them, although they range from 50mg – 500mg. To give you an idea of how much that is, most sodas contain around 35mg a can, coffee can range from 80mg – 150mg. Most labels warn they are not to be consumed by those under the age of 18 – yet I see young kids running around with energy drinks in their hands way too often. Some labels warn you not to consume more than 3 per day – as a result of several deaths reported after consuming too many energy drinks in a short amount of time. I don’t think adults should be drinking these either – it’s like consuming 13 cans of soda at one time.

You now have four easy ways to help strengthen your immune system naturally. I promise you these work and are extremely effective. They are much safer than anything you can grab off the shelf at the store and instead of masking over the problem in your body – these natural ways will help build your body’s system back to a strong and healthy state. This is where we should all desire to be!