Everyday oatmeal contains a powerful substance that could substantially strengthen your immune system and possibly protect you from any opportunistic viruses that happened to be sneezed or coughed in your direction.
Beta-Glucans:
Beta glucans are polysaccharides that are found in the cell walls of bacteria. When detected in the human body, they serve as an immunological call-to-action.
However, beta glucans are also found in plants like barley and oats and by ingesting them, they punk your immune system into thinking that it's being attacked by bacterial pathogens.
As a result, macrophages start to stir. They're killer immune cells that destroy and then eat the corpses of invading pathogens. These angried-up macrophages, while laying waste to biological miscreants, also release cytokines, which immune cells use to communicate with each other.
These cytokines then provoke lymphocytes – aggressive and lethal white blood cells – into joining the mayhem. They bind to tumors or viruses and drag them off to hell, screaming all the way.
It's an incredibly simple strategy and it only takes a little oatmeal every day to make it work, as just a half-cup of Quaker Oats contains a hefty 2-3 grams of beta glucans.
Of course, that amount doesn't mean anything unless you put it into context: The human equivalent to the doses of beta glucans used in a couple of animal studies worked out to be far less than a gram a day.
If those studies are to believed, a half-cup of Quaker Oats, with its 2-3 grams, constitutes beta-glucan overkill, but that's okay as there doesn't appear to be any kind of negative feedback from taking larger-than-needed amounts.
Oh, yeah, as a bonus, beta glucans have also been found to increase swimming time to exhaustion in mice, which, if it translates to humans, means that these polysaccharides could reduce workout-induced fatigue.
Beta-Glucans:
Beta glucans are polysaccharides that are found in the cell walls of bacteria. When detected in the human body, they serve as an immunological call-to-action.
However, beta glucans are also found in plants like barley and oats and by ingesting them, they punk your immune system into thinking that it's being attacked by bacterial pathogens.
As a result, macrophages start to stir. They're killer immune cells that destroy and then eat the corpses of invading pathogens. These angried-up macrophages, while laying waste to biological miscreants, also release cytokines, which immune cells use to communicate with each other.
These cytokines then provoke lymphocytes – aggressive and lethal white blood cells – into joining the mayhem. They bind to tumors or viruses and drag them off to hell, screaming all the way.
It's an incredibly simple strategy and it only takes a little oatmeal every day to make it work, as just a half-cup of Quaker Oats contains a hefty 2-3 grams of beta glucans.
Of course, that amount doesn't mean anything unless you put it into context: The human equivalent to the doses of beta glucans used in a couple of animal studies worked out to be far less than a gram a day.
If those studies are to believed, a half-cup of Quaker Oats, with its 2-3 grams, constitutes beta-glucan overkill, but that's okay as there doesn't appear to be any kind of negative feedback from taking larger-than-needed amounts.
Oh, yeah, as a bonus, beta glucans have also been found to increase swimming time to exhaustion in mice, which, if it translates to humans, means that these polysaccharides could reduce workout-induced fatigue.