Using Food as Medicine

How to use food as medicine

You know us, we want our patients to use food as medicine and right now is a great time to actually do it since a lot of our families are at home, restaurants are closed or delivery only and we have more time to focus on preparing meals. 

Here are some of the foods we’d like you to use more of right now:

Onions are packed with immune-boosting nutrients like selenium, sulfur compounds, zinc, and vitamin C. In addition, they are one of the best sources of quercetin, a potent flavonoid, and antioxidant that has antiviral properties as well as histamine regulating effects.  Quercetin is helpful with seasonal allergies too so find recipes with onions in them.  

Some ideas:  onion soup,  roast, chicken noodle soup, omeletes or frittatas anything that you can load up with onions, preferably not onion rings and blooming onions.  Remember garlic has similar properties to onions so include them as well.  

Citrus fruits- We are so lucky to have all the citrus that we do here in Arizona.  I’ve been hearing from patients that they are juicing fresh oranges!  Might be a good time to meet your neighbors with orange trees!

Red bell peppers can have twice the amount of vitamin C as citrus so chop up some peppers and whip up some garlic hummus to dip it in and keep your body healthy.  

And for our meat eaters in the group- here are the tips for you.  We recommend adding more chicken and turkey since they are high in B6 and will help immune function.  Turkey is a great choice because it also boosts serotonin and melatonin production.  Serotonin is very important right now for our mood and melatonin is showing to possibly be protective against COVID-19 so let’s do what we can to provide our bodies what they need to make both of those.