IS INFLAMMATION CAUSING YOU PAIN??
Understanding Inflammation:
Inflammation is a mechanism that stimulates healing and repair, it’s also your body’s way of protecting and defending from illness. Short periods of inflammations are beneficial and used by the body to threaten invaders and protect our health, for example your immune system becomes triggered when your body identifies anything that is foreign – such as plant pollen, microbes, toxins and chemicals.
Long Term Chronic Inflammation: Can Have Damaging Consequences
However, problems can arise when inflammation persists, even if the foreign invader poses no serious threat. This is when inflammation can become a danger to your health. Long periods of inflammation or chronic inflammation have been linked with many of today’s major diseases – including heart diseases, diabetes, arthritis, depression, autoimmune disease, cancer and Alzheimer.
Causes of Inflammation in The Body:
Foods:
The foods you eat can significantly affect inflammation in your body. “Many experimental studies have shown that components of foods or beverages may have anti-inflammatory effects,” says Dr Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. This means that one of the most reliable and powerful tools to combat and prevent inflammation does not come from the pharmacy, but from the foods we choose. Choosing the right anti-inflammatory foods, may assist you in reducing your risk of inflammation while constantly picking the wrong ones, could speed up the inflammatory process.
Lifestyle:
When you don’t eat healthy, don’t get enough exercise, have too much stress, or not getting adequate rest or sleep, the body responds by triggering inflammation. Continual internal inflammation that is not addressed can wreak havoc on the body’s overall health, leading to disease down the road and harming the proper functioning of the cardiovascular system, joints and more.
Foods That Can Cause Inflammation
- Refined carbs: such as pasta, white rice, white flour, white bread and pastries.
- Refined Sugar: often found in fizzy drinks, sweets, ice cream, like the kind used in cakes, biscuits, desserts etc. This is a powerful trigger of the body’s inflammatory response. Avoid stirring sugar into your hot drinks and avoid yogurts, salad dressings, breads and other packaged foods with added sugar listed on the label. Sometimes labelled glucose or fructose — any word ending in “OSE” is another term for sugar.
- Saturated fat: our bodies require both unsaturated and saturated fats to perform properly, but saturated fats, like those found in red meat, can promote inflammation. When you do enjoy red meat, choose grass-fed over grain-fed varieties as they contain higher levels of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids.
- Processed Meats: deli meats like sausage, and salami has preservatives, extreme amounts of sodium and a handful of mystery ingredients, it’s best to stick to real free range /organic meats, homemade and cooked from scratch.
- Artificial preservatives & Additives: avoid food dyes and preservatives that increase shelf life, most often found in packaged and processed foods.
- Vegetable oil: not the cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil you drizzle onto your salad, but refined vegetable oils like corn, safflower and soy varieties. Also found in store-bought mayonnaise, crisps, potato chips, and fried foods.
- Artificial trans-fat: often listed as hydrogenated oils. They are created by adding hydrogen to unsaturated fats to give them stability of a solid fat, most margarines contain trans-fat. Trans -fat is often added to process foods to extend shelf life.
- Alcohol: small amounts of alcohol can be part of an anti-inflammatory diet when you choose an antioxidant-rich red wine. Overconsumption of alcohol may have the opposite effect, especially when the booze is paired with sugary syrups.
- Gluten: many gluten-containing grains have been genetically engineered for greater yield, simultaneously becoming harder for our bodies to process and digest, which causes gut inflammation. These grains are also used in commercial bread making, by quickly fermenting the dough using powdered yeast, which is harder to digest.
- Diary: too much can lead to inflammation due to its saturated fat content and how its commercial produced. Dairy can also contain added sugar, as found in ice cream, milkshakes, fruit-flavoured yogurts, etc. Instead opt for natural goats milk, locally unpasteurised farmers milk and organic fermented milk which has friendly gut bacteria.