How To Nourish Your Lung Health To Lessen the Risk of Severe Colds & Flus

While in physiology class studying the lung during medical school, I had a professor recite the following Shakespeare quote:

“O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?”

He was marvelling that despite “batt’ring days” the base lung tissue of only one cell wall thickness (which is really thin!) holds back the world while it exchanges oxygen with the air.  The poet was lamenting our mortality, but our professor saw the beauty in the body’s design where “rocks impregnable are not so stout” yet the body endures.

Surely time decays - our days are numbered, and we need to make our peace with that.  But there is hope in the beauty of our design, and as Dr. David Servan-Schreiber so eloquently argues in his book Anticancer:  A New Way of Life, “all of us have the ability to protect ourselves from cancer and to contribute by our own means to healing it.”  There really is only one guarantee, as the poet laments, we will all meet our end, but until that time we are not helpless and lifestyle choices can foster a life of hope, joy, and love. It is important to remember that the human being is not simply a physical entity.  We have minds, we think. We have emotions, we feel, and we translate these feelings into meaning. We are spiritual beings. Take time to marvel at the beauty of our design and to care for it with movement, nourishment and being proactive in healthy lifestyle choices today (not tomorrow.) 

Here are some simple suggestions on how to nurture your lungs:

·       Purchase high quality air filters; I recommend Alen.

·       Incorporate deep breathing exercises everyday as part of your meditation routine.

·       Exercise daily.

·       Diffuse high quality essential oils; I recommend eucalyptus, Breathe Easy, and Pneuma by Imani in Nevis, MN.

·       Beets & beet greens, peppers, apples, pumpkin, tomatoes, blueberries, green tea, red cabbage, edamame, olive oil, oysters, yogurt, Brazil nuts, coffee, Swiss chard, barley, anchovies, lentils, cocoa, and fatty fish (salmon/tuna/sardines/mackerel/herring/cod) are all nourishing foods for your lungs.

·       Thyme, turmeric, ginger, mint, rosemary, oregano, sage are fabulous herbs for lung health.

·       Maintain hydration to keep the mucosal lung lining moist.

Happy Breathing!

Rachel Oppitz, ND