A handful of common supplements are flu-prevention superstars. Learn what they are in this video with preventive and functional medicine specialist Dr. Susan Blum.
So there are many supplements that are wonderful boosters for your immune system, there are the basic supplements like vitamin A which is the actual preform vitamin A, which is Retinyl Palmitate if you read it on the label, there is vitamin D, there is zinc. And so those are classic vitamins, you should be taking in your multi everyday.
In addition to that, and I had already mentioned probiotics, that's a supplement for sure, and that will support your gut flora, which is important. The other vitamins that are key are vitamin C, and my husband had the flu two weeks ago, it is the the first time anyone in my family ever had the flu, and I was dosing up on 3,000-4,000 milligrams of vitamin C everyday.
So definitely if somebody around you is sick and you want to add some booster, definitely bump up your vitamin C and when it comes to vitamin C, you can take as much as you want until it loosens your stool, so we call it vitamin C to bowel tolerance. So if you find that 2,000 or 3,000 is too much for you, you can back, back down but you certainly, my recommendation is 3-4,000 milligrams of vitamin C.
My next favorite favorite is something called beta-glucans, and those are extracts from mushrooms. And you might have heard about shiitake mushrooms and how well, wonderful they are for the immune system. Well, the extracts from those mushrooms cause your T cells to fight much better which are what you need for antiviral, so those beta-glucans are great, I recommend those, and I've been taking those also for the past few weeks since my husband got sick.
Elderberry is a wonderful herb that you take, there is astragalus, there is echinacea, and sometimes, which is what I do, there is a blend, you can find an immune nutrient blend that will have all those things in it together and that's really the easiest way to go about doing that.
Susan Blum, MD, is a pioneer in functional medicine. She is the founder of The Blum Center for Health, and an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
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