Turning Down the Heat on Inflammatory Diseases

Inflammation can be too much of a good thing becoming an awfully bad thing. Acute inflammation is beneficial when you have a cut or injury that needs an inflammatory response to jump start the healing process. When inflammation becomes dangerous is when it becomes a chronic inflammatory response in the body and starts damaging cells and tissue. Harvard University scientific research shows that even low-grade chronic inflammation contributes to cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and several other life-threatening diseases. Harvard Medical School published Fighting Inflammation a special health report explaining the threat of chronic inflammation on your health. Interesting reading, I would recommend taking time to check it out.

Major lifestyle contributors to chronic inflammation are eating saturated fats found in animal products, dairy products, sugar, gluten, and highly processed food, obesity, smoking, not getting enough sleep, regular alcohol consumption, and stress.

Ways to reduce chronic inflammation are eating a diet rich in antioxidants such as blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, broccoli, avocados, bell peppers, mushrooms, grapes, cherries, turmeric, goji berries, foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids, green tea, extra virgin olive oil, dark chocolate (70% cocoa). Consuming these foodsimproves your chances of reducing chronic inflammation as does getting eight hours of sleep, reducing your alcohol intake, reducing stress, and moving your body regularly. These are all ways to improve your cellular health and reduce inflammation.

Please note that eating fruits and vegetables laced with pesticides can sabotage the antioxidant benefit and nutritional value of your plant-based foods. If I offered you a tablespoon full of liquid pesticides and asked you to drink it, you would think I was crazy! So why would you eat food covered in pesticides? Go organic when you can.

Understanding chronic inflammation is critical to your health and quality of life. When you understand the cause, you can literally turn down the heat on inflammatory disease! My favorite resource for this is The Autoimmune Fix by Dr. Tom O’Bryan. This is an excellent read that will really help you understand the impact chronic inflammation has on your body and how to fix it. I am a huge fan of this book—I keep it close and refer to it often. I am overly impressed with Dr. Tom O’Bryan—he has authored several books in my library.