If you’re planning on traveling soon, it’s important to find superfoods for boosting your immune system before travel. Immune support for traveling can help you fight off any of the common conditions that might exist in other countries and make your trip more enjoyable. Changing your diet to include superfoods and healthy snacks for immune system health is critical here.
People who boost their immune systems before travel typically focus on those superfoods that enhance immune system function and improve their overall health. These foods are typically packed with a variety of vitamins and minerals like vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin B complex, zinc, probiotics, and much more. Taking zinc, in particular, can help before you travel.
Vitamin D foods, in particular, are the best immune booster before traveling, and the best superfoods for boosting your immune system before travel should include them. Before planning your dietary changes, it’s important to read through your options below to learn more. Doing so can help you change your diet and boost your immune system before travel plans.
Why Immune Health Matters for Travelers
Travelers should boost their immune system before travel and find great immune support for traveling due to the unique challenges they may face when in other parts of the world. The world is a big place, and it’s common to run into a variety of diseases that you might not see in your part of the world. Common health risks and issues that you might face when you travel include:
- New Diseases: As mentioned previously, there’s a chance you might run into new diseases or variations in common cold and flu cases that could affect you while traveling.
- Unusual Foods: While traveling, you might not enjoy the foods you find in new countries, which could make it harder for you to maintain your immune system health properly.
- No Health Insurance: Without travel insurance, you might struggle to get high-quality healthcare in other countries, which means you could struggle to overcome health issues.
- Little Time to Recover: While you’re traveling, there’s a good chance that you’ll have little time to recover from health issues, which could impact your overall health.
- Disease Swapping: If you’re traveling with a family who has a poor immune system, expect to swap diseases back and forth several times before you get home from your trip.
Avoiding these issues might seem impossible, but understanding the connection between immune system health and nutrition can help you reduce your dangers. Simply put, a healthy diet introduces you to a variety of great vitamins and minerals that can reduce your risk, enhance your immune system, and ensure that you don’t experience any long-term health issues. Let’s check out some of the most common superfoods that boost immune system health.
Superfoods for Immune Boosting
The best superfoods for boosting your immune system before travel not only provide immune support for traveling but also give you a diverse and engaging range of meals to enjoy. You can also create healthy snacks for immune system health to boost your immune system before travel and keep yourself strong and safe. Let’s look at the five best superfoods for your immune system to help you choose some that fit your taste and make your travel a lot easier to handle.
1. Yogurt
Over the years, yogurt has become a very popular snack due to its variety of rich tastes and health benefits. Research has shown that yogurt’s healthy bacteria and microbes help to boost your digestive tract health and make it easier to resist various diseases. Specialists suggest eating Greek yogurt with minimal sugar to get the most benefits from this food.
Furthermore, yogurt has just 61 calories and only 3.3 grams of fat and is packed with 3.5 grams of protein. With a high level of vitamin A, vitamin C, and calcium, it’s a great immune system booster. Try to eat at least a serving or two a day before your trip to boost your health and enhance your immune system. Doing so can help you fight off many diseases.
2. Garlic
Garlic is one of those superfoods that might seem hard to get into your diet. However, you can add minced garlic to eggs, meat, and vegetables when frying or baking. You can also add garlic to various seasonings to improve their flavor and give your food an extra bite. As for immune system health, garlic helps by adding extra probiotics to your diet.
These nutrients help to improve your immune system by increasing immune T cells and natural killer cells. The latter are particularly important because they can help reduce cold and flu symptoms, decrease illness length when it does occur, and destroy viruses. Garlic is also a low-calorie food that can reduce your cholesterol and minimize heart-attack risk.
3. Blueberries
Blueberries are a superfood that contains a variety of vitamins and minerals, including something called anthocyanin. This flavonoid is known for its immune-system-boosting abilities and may radically boost the amount of natural killer cells in your body. That’s a huge benefit if you’re traveling and reason enough to integrate blueberries into your diet.
Beyond these benefits, blueberries also have low calories (just 57 per 3.5-ounce serving), a decent amount of protein, a strong amount of fiber, minimal fat, good levels of healthy sugar, and vitamin C, manganese, vitamin E, vitamin B6, copper, and vitamin K1. All of these nutrients can improve your overall health and make travel a much easier prospect.
4. Kiwi
Kiwis are an amazing source of vitamin C, vitamin E, folate, carotenoids, and polyphenols, as well as other important and healthy vitamins. As a result, they’re great, healthy snacks for immune system support and should boost your immune system for traveling. Try to keep them clean and serve them with a salad and other types of foods to make them even healthier.
5. Mushrooms
Mushrooms are a very diverse food type that can boost the immune system before travel. That’s because they contain high amounts of various beta-glucans and have minimal calories. They also provide high levels of protein, zinc, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin C, and iron. All of these nutrients can help boost your immune system and even eliminate free radicals in your body.
Incorporating Superfoods into Your Pre-Travel Diet
If you’re short on time and need to boost your immune system in 24 hours, focus on these foods and exercise to improve your overall health. It’s not likely to do a lot, but it may help a little. Instead of desperately trying to improve your immune system the day before your trip, just make sure that you plan ahead and get these foods into your diet ASAP.
Tips for Integrating These Foods Into Your Diet
- Start your day with a cup of yogurt and add it to each of your meals
- Take garlic supplements or add them to your food prep steps, such as frying meat with garlic
- Eat a handful of blueberries with every meal, add them to salads, or cook them in baked desserts
- Slice up kiwi for snacks and eat them between meals to keep yourself satiated
- Include mushrooms in foods like chop suey and pizza to improve your diet plan
Recipes and Meal Plans for Pre-Travel
When using these superfoods to boost your immune system before travel, it’s important to create recipes and meal plans that boost your overall health. Here are a few recipes to consider that make these foods much easier to enjoy:
- Greek Potato Casserole with a tangy yogurt and feta topping
- Garlic Prime Rib with a juicy middle and rich garlic-drenched coating
- Creamy Layered Blueberry Ice Pops to make healthy snacks for immune system health
- Apple Kiwi Smoothie with a rich flavor and minimal extra sugar
- Chicken With Mushroom Puree and Swiss Chard to add extra protein to your diet
Lifestyle Tips for Travel Wellness
Though superfoods for boosting your immune system before travel are a great way to stay healthy, they’re not the only factor you need to consider. There are many other things that could affect your health while you’re traveling, and you need to make sure you consider them before you plan your big trip. Just a few concerns you need to understand include:
- High Stress: If you live a stressful life, your immune system is likely to suffer, so it’s important to find ways to reduce your anxiety. It’s particularly important while traveling because you’re likely to experience a higher-than-normal amount of potential stressors.
- Sleep Issues: Sleep is a great healing factor that can improve your health in so many ways. Strong sleep can minimize your anxiety and also help you recover from health conditions more effectively. Make sure that you’re getting some great sleep before you travel.
- Lack of Exercise: Living a relatively sedentary life is likely to cause real problems with your immune system. Exercise is critical for your health in so many ways. While you’ll definitely get some exercise on your trip, you need to create a routine before you leave.
Talk to your doctor about these factors before your trip to make sure you take them seriously. For example, you may need anti-anxiety medicines if your stress simply gets the better of you. Furthermore, an exercise plan and a smart sleep-based schedule can also help. During your trip, you should also take steps to keep yourself as healthy as possible, including:
- Avoiding aisle seats on planes, as they increase your risk of sickness
- Practicing deep-breathing exercises to minimize stress as you travel
- Staying hydrated by drinking two glasses of water at every meal every day
- Sticking to a healthy meal plan and avoiding overeating as you travel
- Keeping yourself active with regular movement throughout your trip
- Getting vaccinated against common diseases wherever you’re traveling
Comparing Immune-Boosting Supplements
Taking immune-boosting supplements can help you get a high concentration of healthy vitamins and minerals that you might struggle to get in your diet otherwise. Most doctors suggest taking supplements for specific vitamins to improve their effectiveness. While their effectiveness is debated, it can’t hurt to take supplements like:
- Renew Life Ultimate Flora Probiotic
- Hilma Immune System Support
- Nature’s Bounty Echinacea
- Amazing Grass Vegan Protein Powder
- New Chapter Elderberry Force
- Nordic Natural Omega-3D