The plant-based revolution is here, and it’s taking fitness and health to a whole new level. From boosting the immune system to exercise recovery to nutrient intake, plant-based nutrition is associated with a variety of benefits.

Here are a few of them.

Boosting the Immune System with Exercise

You can achieve a 25–50% reduction in sick days. It has only good side effects. Studies find that if you let kids run around for just six minutes, the levels of immune cells circulating in their blood increases by nearly 50 percent. Regular exercise can also help prevent age-related immune decline. Approximately 95 percent of all infections start in the moist surfaces, including the eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

These surfaces are protected by antibodies called IgA which provide an immunological barrier by neutralizing and preventing viruses from penetrating into the body. Moderate exercise may be all it takes to boost IgA levels. Compared to a sedentary control group, those who performed aerobic exercises for thirty minutes three times a week for twelve weeks had a 50 percent increase in the levels of IgA in their saliva.

Exercise Recovery

Rest is how the tissues rehydrate. When you do heavy exercise you are driving the water out of the tissue in the same way that if you step on a wet beach you push the water out of the sand. When you pick up your foot the water seeps back into that sand. You’re doing the same thing with tissues when you’re really working out you are driving the water out of the tissue while you are working.

The routine of your fitness regimen needs to include some rest. When you take the strain off of the tissues, like a sponge they will suck up that water and be ready for more exercise.

Nutrient Basics (carbohydrates)

Carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars, which the liver makes into glucose for energy production. Most sugars come from plants. Sugars are also used to make DNA & involved in cell replication. If sugar is so useful to the body, why is it bad for our health to eat it?

We are designed by nature to eat mostly complex carbohydrates, which we have to digest before they become sugar in the blood. When we eat a carbohydrate meal, the sugar in it doesn’t all go straight into our blood. The sugar is released bit by bit, and the body has time to handle it calmly.

Pure sugar goes straight into the blood extremely quickly, giving us a huge spike of high blood sugar that the body must work hard to process; the pancreas releases a lot of insulin and the liver gets overworked dealing with it. Mood swings and energy dips commonly result. Sugar in the digestive tract upsets the balance of the gut flora, which throws everything off.

Do Plant-Based Eaters achieve enough nutrients?

Researchers looked at a day in the life of thirteen thousand people across America. They compared the nutrient intake of those who ate meat to those who didn’t. The study found that, calorie for calorie, those eating Plant-Based Diets were getting higher intakes of nearly every nutrient: more fiber, more vitamin A, more vitamin C, more vitamin E, more of the B vitamins thiamin, riboflavin, and folate, as well as more calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium.

Furthermore, many of the nutrients that are so rich in plant-based diets are among the very ones that most Americans normally don’t get enough of like vitamins A, C, E, not to mention fiber, calcium, magnesium, and potassium.