Inflammatory foods: gas in the fire
In my previous article titled Inflammation… It’s a Vessel. I discussed how inflammation cooks the body like an egg or a piece of meat in a crock pot. This article goes on to describe the particular foods that can ignite that fire and accelerate the degeneration of tissues and organs in the body. This can lead to increased back pain and joint pain, as well as other damage, as you will see. I’ll keep the food list short and sweet (no pun intended) to make your dietary changes easier to remember.
The three main sources of gas (no, not that type of gas)
1) Sugar: Blood sugar in the wrong amounts negatively affects our hormones, especially insulin. So don’t eat simple sugars in large amounts and focus on carbohydrates that are very complex, like colorful fruits and vegetables. It is important to note that grains and breads are also sugars and increase blood sugar and also increase insulin response. So limit the amounts of breads and starchy foods as much as you can. Try, if you can, to stick to whole grains as they are more anti-inflammatory, but they can be a problem due to the gluten content, which in some people can cause even more problems. If you want a starchy food, potatoes are our top choice: sweet, red, white, and sweet potatoes.
2) Meats: Proteins should be eaten with every meal as they create a balance with carbohydrates and help keep blood sugar levels regulated, but try to eat fish or grass-fed beef or lamb and try to avoid fatty meats. The main reason meats can be bad is that omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids can go one of two ways. Omega 3 fatty acids which are mainly found in fish follow a non-inflammatory pathway and actually reduce inflammation but omega 6 fatty acids can follow two pathways and one of them is very inflammatory so obviously fish is one good source of protein.
Diets that are low in Omega 3 and high in Omega 6 fatty acids will tend to result in higher levels of inflammation, especially if the diet lacks important nutrients such as magnesium and B vitamins. Remember that both Omega 3 fatty acids and Omega 6 are essential fatty acids and both are necessary for the body to function properly. The American diet can have an Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio as high as 20:1 or even 40:1. A healthier ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 is around 4:1 or as low as 2:1. As you can see, a healthy diet still has more Omega 6 fatty acids than Omega 3 fatty acids, but certainly not the ratio that we commonly see in our diets here in the US.
3) Vegetable oils: (soybean, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, and cottonseed oil) and trans fats found in almost all packaged foods and fried foods like potatoes fries. Push your Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio the wrong way so you are damaging your inflammatory levels as described above.
The human body is disturbed when we eat the wrong foods and in the wrong combinations. Biochemical and inflammatory tissue damage occurs when we eat a diet that is deficient in fruits and vegetables, and contains excess sugar, meats, vegetable oils (not olive oil), and trans fats found in almost all packaged foods and fried foods like French. French fries Inflammation associated with a poor diet can initially start without symptoms, making it very difficult to detect; however, over time, this diet-driven chronic inflammation can lead to the chronic diseases that affect us all, causing chronic aches and pains. and endless suffering. Every time you eat the wrong foods, you create inflammation in your body that will slowly but surely lead to chronic pain, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and many others. Therefore, your diet and supplements are key to preventing and treating this problem. In short, we need to eat vegetables and grass-fed meats and fish and take proper supplements (like Omega 3 supplements) and reduce our intake of sugars and grains and bad oils and wrong meats and we need to exercise more…these are the things what we should do to promote an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.