Inflammatory Foods Cause Chronic Illnesses

Anywhere you go today in the United States you will see that at least half of our population is overweight or obese. What you don’t see are the underlying health conditions this population faces every day: diabetes, asthma, heart disease, multiple types of arthritis, high blood pressure, acne, and irritable bowel syndrome, just to name a few.

One of the main culprits, or causes, for all of these health issues could be a diet high in inflammatory foods. In order to lessen inflammation and defeat chronic illnesses, there is a simple fix. Change your diet.

What Is Inflammation?

Inflammation is a normal process that our body uses to fight off bacteria, viruses, any foreign invaders, and infection using our natural defense system. It’s how we heal or how our damaged tissues are repaired.  

When Inflammation Becomes A Problem

Inflammation becomes a problem when the body “triggers an inflammatory response when there are no foreign invaders to fight off. In these diseases, called autoimmune diseases, the body's normally protective immune system causes damage to its own tissues (WebMD, 2016).”

Even with diseases that are not autoimmune, there can still be overreaction by the body in the form of inflammation. In this instance, the body is constantly trying to heal tissues in a certain area.

READ The Anti-Inflammatory Diet: Fighting Inflammation With Foods

In both types of inflammation there is a strong link between foods that are consumed and the inflammation. When people consume diets high in sugar, high in fat, high in calories, and full of highly processed foods, the stage is set for chronic illness including:

• Stroke
• Heart attacks
• Memory loss
• Vascular dementia
• Peripheral artery disease
• And more…

What can we do about this growing epidemic?

Change our dieting patterns.

What’s Known About Diet

Dr. Nicholas Perricone, a nutritionist who wrote a book about anti-inflammatory eating, recognized that regardless of where a disease originated and its cause, anti-inflammatories often solved the problem or at least diminished the symptoms (Effects, 2016).

Diet is a key factor in chronic disease prevention. With all the readily available information about the foods we consume, one would think that people would be able to decipher between choices that are healthy and unhealthy, inflammatory and anti-inflammatory, and make the right food choices. However, labels are misleading and unclear or maybe people eat based on life-long habits.

American diets are extremely high in sugar, and one of the biggest offending foods on the inflammatory list is sugar. Tons of products on your local grocery store shelves are saturated in the sweet stuff, and they may not be the ones you are thinking of.

READ Natural Anti Inflammatories

Watch the short video, Sugar, Hiding in Plain Sight by Robert Lustig. I included a link at the end of the article.  

• Misleading, Unclear Labels – Have you ever read a label and could not pronounce the ingredients? If the food label has ingredients that you can’t pronounce, don’t eat it!
  • According to Lustig (2014), sugar goes by 56 different names on nutrition labels. Would you be able to pick out even 10 of those names?
• Habitual Eating – Old habits die hard. Have you ever seen a two-year-old toddler running around with a soda and cringed? Sugar becomes a bad habit, and when we start kids at 2 with poor eating habits, it’s really going to be difficult for them to break the bad cycle later in their lives.

Bottom line is that we must take care of ourselves. Raw food diets, Mediterranean style eating, or eating produce that you don’t have to read a label is the best way to eat.

Avoid Foods That Cause Inflammation 

Refined Process Carbohydrates

First things first, all carbohydrates are not created equally. There are “good” carbs, like those that come from veggies and whole grains. There are also “bad” carbs, those that are processed, such as:

• white bread
• flour tortillas
• baked goods
• crackers
• white pasta
• bagels
• pretzels and other chips
• Basically almost anything that is white – nix it!

Here’s where you find all the bad stuff! Refined carbs are stripped of fiber that whole grain foods still provide.  Because the carbs are stripped of fiber, the body digests them more quickly and satiety is shorter, usually less than an hour after you consume them.

Stick to whole grain products like brown rice and whole grains in place of processed carbs.

Cooking Oils

If you cook with saturated and trans fats, you are not doing your body any favors – inflammation, inflammation, inflammation.

READ Healthy Oils To Cook With And Getting The Most Benefits Out Of Them

Many people may falsely believe that vegetable oils are great to use in the kitchen because their first name is “vegetable.” However, they are high in omega-6, which are pro-inflammatory, and low in omega-3 fatty acids, which are anti-inflammatory. This disproportion causes inflammation due to the higher amounts of omega-6 fatty acids.

It’s time to throw out all vegetable oils and replace them with a single superior cooking oil, olive oil. Olive oil is a monosaturated fat. It is a smarter choice because it has strong anti-inflammatory properties. All the good, none of the bad!

Artificial Sweeteners

Going sugar-free is a great way to control and manage body weight. Many people feel that as long as they are using a sugar substitute that they are staying “healthy.” Beware of the artificial sweeteners you consume.

Aspartame is one to avoid, and that may be difficult due to the fact that it’s used in over 4000 products found on store shelves today (Arthritis Foundation, 2016). The Arthritis Foundation (2016) states, “If you are sensitive to this chemical, your immune system will react to this “foreign substance” by attacking the chemical , which in return, will trigger an inflammatory response.”

What can you use then?

You can use natural sweeteners like honey, agave nectar, or blackstrap molasses. Just know that these are high in sugar and carbohydrates and must be used in moderation if you are on a weight loss program.

If you want to go sugar-free, the safest artificial sweeteners on the market to date are Stevia and Xylitol.

READ A Quick Guide to Natural Sweeteners

Alcohol

If you consume large quantities of alcohol each week, meaning more than one to two drinks per day, it’s time to scale back.

Alcohol causes changes to the intestinal lining which allows bacteria into the bloodstream, thus triggering inflammation (Kotz, 2009).

Conclusion

It’s time to get raw! Get back to the foods that nature intended for you to enjoy, veggies, fruit, lean meats, especially fish. Load your plate with color, nature’s color. Inflammatory foods are a bad habit, but one that can be broken over time. By staying away from inflammatory foods, you will live a longer, better quality life.