This food can help protect you from a potentially fatal flu or virus
Story-At-a-Glance
Matt Cook here, there’s never been a better time to boost your natural immune system.
And one of the best ways to do that is to add 1 simple food to your diet.
This food contains glucans, a compound that helps the immune system defeat colds, flus, even cancer…
—-Important Message From Jonathan Hunsaker—-
Collagen is useless for bone loss, sore joints, and wrinkles — unless you pair it with this
Did you know that just taking collagen isn’t enough for stronger bones, younger-looking, healthier, skin, and pain-free, younger-feeling joints?
The body actually needs one very specific ingredient to absorb the collagen.
It’s like how the body will struggle to absorb turmeric unless it’s paired with black pepper…
Your body will also struggle to utilize collagen, no matter how much you take, unless you pair it with this…
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Eat this with dinner to naturally boost your immune system
I’m a big fan of mushrooms.
These unique foods can boost testosterone and lower estrogen. They help maintain gut health.
Eating mushrooms is strongly associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer and dementia — probably because these diseases are linked to gut bacteria and estrogen.
Another thing that mushrooms can help with is immunity.
For lab mice, mushrooms can mean life or death when they are exposed to a strong flu virus.
The experiments were carried out at the University of Louisville. The results were published in the Annals of Translational Medicine.
Mushrooms are complex organisms which contain many beneficial compounds.
Glucans are just one group of these beneficial mushroom compounds.
Previous research has shown that glucans can help to boost the immune system — fighting infection and cancer.
(One of the jobs of the immune system is to fight cancer.)
“The various biological effects of glucans include potentiation of anti-infectious immunity and inhibition of cancer growth.”
Because of the effects on the immune system, researchers decided to see if glucans could have a beneficial effect on influenza infection.
In the experiments, young mice were split into a number of different groups.
One group of mice was given a supplement of glucans from mushrooms.
The second group did not get any glucans.
All of the mice were infected with a strain of H5N1 influenza, which can cause a bad flu.
This strain usually kills mice.
All of the mice that did not get mushroom glucans had died from the influenza virus.
60% of the mice given the mushroom supplement survived the usually fatal flu.
“By day 12 all untreated mice had died, while 60% of glucan treated mice survived.”
Increasing mortality rates from 0% to 60% is quite something.
Many people don’t know that viruses like the flu work partly by attacking the immune system.
They weaken our defenses — something called immunosuppression.
This was another thing that the researchers looked at in these experiments.
“We focused on possible effects of glucans on immunosuppression caused by influenza infection.”
The researchers carried out various tests looking at different aspects of the immune system.
The results of many of these tests showed improved immune system function in the animals given the mushroom supplements.
The supplement boosted the immune response.
“These effects are caused by stimulation of both cellular and humoral immune reactions.”
Increased immune system performance from multiple angles resulted in lower viral loads.
The mushroom supplement helped the immune system to kill the virus.
“The stimulation of the immune reaction resulted in lower viral load.”
Immune cells produced more virus killing chemicals when animals were given glucans.
Antibodies — which search out and destroy viral infections were much higher in the glucan group too.
The treated mice lost less weight during their infection and began to rapidly regain lost muscle.
Untreated mice lost weight more rapidly before they all died from the infection.
“In summary, the current study showed that dietary glucan can significantly reduce the effects of influenza infection.”
So we can add increased protection from flu and other infections to our list of reasons to eat mushrooms.
“These results suggest that consumption of dietary mushroom glucan may be potentially useful as a complementary or alternative approach to treatment of influenza infection.”
You do need to be a little careful with mushrooms.
Raw mushrooms are toxic — some are very toxic.
For the most part I think it’s best to stick with well cooked white button mushrooms in your diet, rather than taking questionable mushroom supplements.
Boil mushrooms for more than 1 hour on an open stove you will remove most of the toxins — longer boiling is even better.
Then you don’t have to worry about whether or not a mushroom supplement is properly prepared.
—-Important Message From Matt—-
What they’re not saying — this is the real reason men are dying from the virus
You may be wondering: “Why are some people getting deathly ill from this virus while others stay immune?”
And the answer may surprise you…
In fact, it’s the complete opposite of what the media’s been saying.
Glucan Supplementation Enhances the Immune Response Against an Influenza Challenge in Mice