Antibiotics and cold medicine are quick fixes that can do more harm than good.
Antibiotics often seem like a great response to any annoying sickness – at least, that’s how many doctors and pharmacists portray them.
Antibiotics are effective against bacteria, but not viruses. And yet, viruses cause 95 percent of acute illnesses, including the common cold. So, antibiotics are useless in most cases. But it gets worse.
When taken unnecessarily, antibiotics destroy much of the vital bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract, which is also home to 70 percent of our immune cells. Painful digestive disturbances and immune-system dysfunction are both the results of damaged gut bacteria.
Rather than relying on antibiotics and cold medicine, we should maintain our health by eating the right foods. But what are the right foods for our body?
How should we choose what to eat? With countless diet books out there, it’s tempting just to focus on fats, carbs or proteins when assessing the foods available to us. But there’s far more to healthy eating than just those.
In fact, a healthy diet should feature lots of nutrients and few calories. Colorful vegetables, especially greens, count as nutrient-rich foods that help us meet our body’s needs for fiber, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got food like bread and pasta, with lots of calories but very few nutrients. Unsurprisingly, the consumption of such foods causes waste products to accumulate in our cells. This leads to premature aging as well as increased susceptibility to disease and heart attacks.
But what about carbs? They’re a sure sign of an unhealthy diet, right? Not quite! From beans, peas, tomatoes and berries to squash, quinoa, wild rice and potatoes, there are many healthy, nutrient-rich and delicious carbs out there!
Similarly, we needn’t fear the role of fat in our diets. The truth is that having less than 10 percent fat in your diet is actually bad for your health. A diet with 15 to 30 percent fat can be considered healthy, so long as you’re getting the nutrients you need!
Finally, it’s time to reconsider what we thought we knew about proteins. We can gain protein from animal food sources, as well as plants. But, while proteins from plants boost our health, too much animal protein is linked to cancer, decreased immune function and accelerated aging.