Inflammation is your body’s reaction to an injury, defined as something that causes your body to have an inflammatory response. An injury can range from a seasonal cold or allergies to a sprained ankle or a broken bone. This then stimulates the lymphatic and immune system, sending a swarm of white blood cells to try its best to defend us and to keep us from getting sick or protecting or healing the injury. Inflammation causes pain; pain doesn’t cause inflammation.
Inflammation happens when your body rushes fluid to the site of the injury, causing swelling. In some cases, this is to isolate and dilute infection, while in others, it is to pad a joint to prevent further injury (as with an ankle sprain).
Chronic inflammation directly affects your immune system and can open the door for a health crisis. This is because inflammation creates the “ideal environment” for the immune system to begin to malfunction! Once chronic inflammation has started, it forms a damaging rippling effect most people are unaware of until they feel the aches and pains!
Most people don’t know that chronic stress and lack of sleep are significant causes of chronic inflammation affecting the immune system.
However, not all inflammation is harmful. Long-term and chronic inflammation is harmful, and that is what we want to protect ourselves from. Our body’s natural defense system often creates an inflammatory response to shield the body from further harm. For example, if you injure your knee, it will become inflamed, swollen to prevent the joint from further trauma and to act as a “splint” of sorts. This is all part of the natural healing process. When we “catch” a seasonal cold or flu, our body fights to heal itself. The symptoms we experience are forms of inflammation.
Chronic inflammation affects many, many people and has numerous causes:
| Chronic stress
Sleep issues Use of certain medications Hormone imbalances and insulin resistance Emotional and physical stress |
Poor diet choices
Food sensitivities and allergies Exposure to chemicals and toxins Nutritional deficiencies Excessive alcohol consumption |
Leaky gut syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), certain cancers, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, eczema, and asthma all start with inflammation. Therefore, to achieve optimal health and wellness, we must address the issue of inflammation.
How do we deal with inflammation?
Avoiding foods that trigger chronic inflammation is one of the most mindful things you can do to protect your body. Common food sensitivities and allergies can go undiagnosed for an entire lifetime and can be the root cause of many diseases and illnesses. If you know what these are for you, you should remove trigger foods for two weeks (or even longer for up to 3 months) to reduce triggering inflammation.
Dairy, wheat, gluten, soy, corn, tree nuts/peanuts, eggs, caffeine, and processed foods are the most common culprits.
If other food allergies run in your family history, you may want to avoid those during this time as well. You will want to reintroduce food items one at a time every three days to test their effect on your body. The elimination-reintroduction of trigger foods will help you pinpoint which ones you should keep out of your diet.
Fighting inflammation is not just about avoiding certain foods; it is also about settling the inflammatory reactions that are already occurring!
There are many ways to achieve this, but most importantly, you must commit to healing your gut and stick to a program long enough for it to work for you. Many people want to see the result right away, but healing takes time. So don’t be discouraged and stay focused on the goal of reducing inflammation; the results are worth it!
Did you know adopting an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating (intermittent fasting) also reduces inflammation in the body? Eating for 8 hours of your day and fasting the other 16 is the most common. It is the simplest, most sustainable, and easiest to stick to.
Another helpful solution is adding turmeric, which is super easy in the form of Super Curcuminoids. It contains the most potent natural extract of turmeric and can inhibit inflammatory factors in the body. Inflamagone is a powerful anti-inflammatory botanical formula that is also a great addition to your supplement regimen.
Regularly detoxing is key to overall good health and especially helpful with inflammation and gut issues.
The importance of detoxing and a clean diet with various fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, and healthy fats is crucial to help build your body’s immune system. In addition, supplementing your meals with digestive enzymes and a probiotic like Nuzum’s Digest and Gut health have great benefits. They will help your body properly digest your food, feed your gut healthy bacteria, and grow a colony of beneficial flora and fauna in your digestive tract. As overall inflammation is reduced, you may see symptoms disappear as you begin to heal your body from illness and disease.
The best diet for those suffering from chronic inflammation
Nature provides us with an abundance of healing foods that we can include in our diet to help reduce inflammation within our bodies. We strongly urge you to move away from processed foods that are full of preservatives and stripped of essential nutrients.
Implementing a diet high in omega-3 rich (one of the most potent anti-inflammatory substances) foods, organic fresh vegetables and fruits, wild meats, and sprouted seeds is crucial. These foods contain high amounts of antioxidants, minerals, and essential fatty acids attributed to attacking inflammation.
Making small adjustments over time, eliminating processed foods from your kitchen, and replacing them with clean, whole foods is the best way to change your diet slowly. Hopefully, it will feel less shocking and help you adopt a new lifestyle—a permanent diet change versus a short-term one.
Some of the most beneficial anti-inflammatory foods that you should be adding to your diet are dark leafy greens, celery, broccoli, pineapple, bone broth, coconut oil, ground flax seeds, ginger, bok choy, beets, blueberries, chia seeds, walnuts, and salmon. Dark leafy green foods alkalize our bodies, helping to reset our body’s pH. They also assist the body in its modulation of pH, enhancing its ability to adjust. Celery has a high potassium content, a mineral that is helpful in flushing toxins out of our bodies. Broccoli is also high in potassium and magnesium and contains key vitamins, flavonoids, and carotenoids. Pineapple is a citrus fruit packed full of bromelain, a digestive enzyme associated with positively regulating your immune response to unwanted inflammation. Finally, bone broth is a magical, easy-to-absorb elixir that is rich in many different minerals, including calcium, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur, and others.
There are high levels of antioxidants in blueberries and coconut oil. Coconut oil has lipid fat that contributes to fighting not only inflammation and arthritis but also osteoporosis. Ginger is an immune modulator that reduces inflammation caused by overactive immune responses in all forms, whether fresh, dried or in supplement form. It has been shown through various testing methods that it contains over 70 antioxidant phenolic substances. In addition, beets help to repair any cell damage that inflammation may have caused.
Chia seeds reverse the effects of inflammation, lower blood pressure, regulate cholesterol, and benefit your overall heart health. Walnuts are high in protein and omega-3s. Last but not least, salmon is one of the richest omega-3 foods available. Wild-caught salmon is higher in nutrients and is preferred over farmed fish. Omega-3 fatty acids are known to inhibit some 6,000 pro-inflammatory enzymes in the human body. As a result, omega-3 fatty acids help lower the risk of heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.
Inflammation is something we all deal with from time to time and is part of our body’s natural defense system. However, long-term chronic inflammation is not healthy and is something we should work to avoid. If left untreated, it can cause permanent damage and lead to long-term illness, leaving us vulnerable to a multitude of diseases. By eliminating troublesome trigger foods, eating clean organic foods, detoxing, and adding probiotics to your diet, you will start to see reduced inflammation and result in a healthier you. If you would like help, please reach out to us, and we will gladly assist you in getting to your optimal health naturally.