COPD Smoothie Recipes

Fun and Healing Smoothies to Drink When You Have COPD

If only your doctor had told you about the healing properties of smoothies years ago… maybe your COPD would not have progressed to the point where it is right now.

But we can’t blame your doctor. The truth is that you can now benefit from all this knowledge that has been uncovered in the past 20 years. You can take advantage of it by drinking smoothies and making it a fun activity in your life on a daily basis.

What You Need In Your Smoothies

Your top ingredients to add to smoothies when you have COPD are:

• foods with high levels of antioxidants
• foods that are fresh, cleansing, purifying and detoxifying

Foods with high levels of antioxidants are any from the citrus or berry family. This includes oranges, tangerines, tangelos, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries or blackberries. Foods that are cleansing and detoxifying are ones such as parsley (cleanses the kidneys), spinach (liver cleanser), dandelion leaves (liver and gall bladder cleanser), and liquid chlorophyll (liver and other organ cleanser).

Guidelines for Making Smoothies

Here’s how you’ll use these to make smoothies when you have COPD:

1. When using citrus fruits for your smoothies, start by adding these to the blender. Then add any other fruit, vegetable or other ingredient based on what will taste good with the citrus fruit. For example, think about what vegetables will go well with citrus fruit: cilantro will be great; spinach goes well because spinach salad with a few orange segments on it tastes refreshing; a sweet tangerine can mask the sometimes bitter taste of a few leaves of swiss chard or dandelion leaves; and just about anything goes well with a bit of parsley.

2. When using berries, consider that first you’ll need a base to make this type of smoothie. Your base might be coconut water for a tropical flavor, or apple for a subtler flavor. Apples always mix well with berries. Yogurt and dairy products such as kefir milk always mix well, too. Avocado is another good choice, but don’t add an entire half of an avocado or even a full one! That’s far too much of a dose of fat that will surely go to build new fat cells. Pineapple juice mixes well with berries, and so do many types of protein shake mixes.

If you keep these two guidelines in mind, you can make any smoothie taste great!

COPD Smoothie Recipes for You to Get Started

Now here’s an example of how to combine the ingredients together:

Citrus-Based Smoothie Sample Recipe Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup orange juice
• 2 handfuls spinach
• 1 pineapple ring
• 1/8 bunch parsley
• 1/8 bunch cilantro

In this recipe, the orange juice, which isn’t that naturally sweet is sweetened up a bit by the pineapple ring but not too much to cause a blood sugar rush. The vegetables will bring down the sweetness too.

Berry-Based Smoothie Sample Recipe Ingredients

• ½ cup coconut water
• ½ cup raspberries
• ½ cup blackberries
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup yogurt or kefir milk
• ¼ avocado
• 1 handful spinach
• 1 leaf kale
• ¼ bunch parsley

Now try some new COPD smoothie recipes on your own.