Key Nutrient FIGHTS Infection

Vitamin D, calcium, vitamin C, magnesium…

Nutrients like these tend to steal the spotlight.

But lesser-know nutrients are just as important for staying healthy—especially now, with the looming threat of COVID-19.

That’s why today I want to highlight a key nutrient that has a wide array of health benefits—like giving you more energy, boosting brain function, and even helping your body fight off infection.

It’s time to draw the curtain.

All eight B vitamins play critical roles in your body, but there’s one in particular I want to focus on today:

Vitamin B6.

Also called pyridoxine, vitamin B6 is essential for your metabolism, heart health, immune system, and brain function.

It benefits your metabolism by helping your body convert food into energy. One way it does this is by breaking down proteins into amino acids, which help your body grow and function properly.

It supports heart health by keeping your homocysteine levels from climbing too high. High homocysteine increases your risk of heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and atherosclerosis.

But taking B6 along with B12 and folic acid has been shown to lower homocysteine by one-third.

It also supports your brain health in numerous ways.

One way is by lowering homocysteine, which can also speed cognitive decline.

Secondly, it’s involved in the creation of neurotransmitters like dopamine, melatonin, noradrenaline, and serotonin, which are messengers used by your brain and nervous system.

Vitamin B6 can reduce your risk of anemia by helping your body maintain healthy hemoglobin levels, which is a protein that supplies your cells with oxygen.

It also plays an underappreciated role in immune health.

B6 is necessary for the production of two key components of your immune system: T cells and B cells.

T cells fight off foreign invaders, and B cells create antibodies that attach to invaders like viruses and kill them.

One study showed that supplementing with vitamin B6 helped to improve the immune response in critically ill patients.

B6 could also be important for helping calm the cytokine storm that’s a factor in critically ill COVID-19 patients.

The bottom line? You need plenty of vitamin B6.

All B vitamins are water-soluble, which means your body doesn’t store them. This makes it critical to get all of them—including vitamin B6—on a regular basis.

Fortunately, you can get plenty of it in delicious foods like chickpeas, salmon, and potatoes.

 

P.S. Even though there are vaccines among us, we’re still far from ending the pandemic. Which is why it’s still important to keep your immune system strong. Go here and read about 5 key ways to BOOST your immune system.