Inflammation is a huge issue in terms of internal health. Unlike the good inflammation that happens when you cut yourself, internal cellular inflammation is fire in the body. It is generally accepted at this point that inflammation is an important part of the cause of such chronic issues as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity. The good news is that we can affect inflammation with our food choices. The bad news is that we probably have to make different food choices than we have been making (but now you know how to tap!). The good news is that when we do make those choices, we start seeing changes quickly.
Finally, there is neurological inflammation, fire in the brain, especially the hypothalamus. This is caused by the Standard American Diet, stress and anxiety, environmental toxins, and chronically low levels of crucial nutrients. The result of neurological inflammation looks like what we think of as typical aging: energy loss, cognitive disorders, lack of concentration and focus, as well as depression and mood disorders. If that weren’t enough, the hypothalamus is the regulator for the “set point” that tells the body that it has had enough food to maintain optimal weight. When you have inflammation there, the set point goes up, and you are literally fighting your own systems trying just to maintain weight, never mind getting it to go down. The program I suggest offers alternatives to the Standard American Diet, the easiest way to lower stress and anxiety in the body, and specific supplements with nutrients that address brain health.
Story: I had a client who was having panic attacks. She had been to the doctor who said he didn’t know what to offer her other than anti-depressants. She was quite clear that this was not depression. “Been there, done that!” she said. She was quite overweight, and unhappy about that. In addition, she seemed to be losing her mind. She couldn’t remember the smallest things. And she was constantly exhausted.
I suggested she do a strict anti-inflammatory diet for 3 weeks. Because of the exhaustion, I wanted her to eat every couple of hours. She was to eat as much as she wanted at every meal and snack time. However, all of the food had to come from the anti-inflammatory food list. I asked her to weigh herself, because I knew she would anyway, but also, I asked her to measure her waist, and to write both numbers down. Then she should put that piece of paper away for three weeks.
The first thing she noticed was that she had more energy. The second was noticed by her co-workers, who wanted to know if she had suddenly started working out, because she was clearly losing weight. (Actually, she wasn’t!) She was still doing the half hour of walking that she had before starting the diet, and nothing more. They were confused, because they could see that she was eating often, and a lot of food. She got her brain working again pretty quickly. The panic attacks went away.
At the end of the three weeks, I told her it was time to check the numbers. She stepped on the scale, and she had lost 4 pounds, not a bad amount for 3 weeks. However, when she put the measuring tape around her waist, it registered that she had lost 9 inches. This is what the co-workers had seen. This is what happens when you reduce inflammation.
So what was going on here? She was eating a lot of food, but none of it was inflammatory food. Also, none of the food that we figured out over time that her body was intolerant of was in the mix. Eating food that the body has a reaction to automatically causes an inflammatory reaction of some sort. By cutting out inflammatory food, food that caused a reaction in her body, we gave her body time out. Specifically, we gave the immune system time out.
The anti-inflammatory food list and directions are with the other food options.
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