Calm inflammation in your body and improve your overall health 

If you are feeling tired and sore all the time and have digestive troubles and sleep problems, you could be suffering from chronic inflammation. You wouldn’t be alone. A University of Florida study found that 34.6 percent of adults in the U.S. suffer from this condition.  

There are several types of inflammation that occur in the body and they are not all bad, explained Miguel Prieto, MD, an internist with Cape Cod Healthcare’s Bourne Primary Care.  

“There’s a good kind of inflammation,” he said. “For example, let’s say you go on a hike and then the next day you feel a little soreness. You have a little inflammation in the muscles as they repair. That kind of repair also promotes extra muscle formation and muscle strength, and that’s what helps you get conditioned and fit.” 

Then there is acute inflammation that helps your body fight infection and repair injuries. Both of those inflammatory responses are short-lived, so they are beneficial instead of detrimental, he said.

But when your body has chronic inflammation, it is on a high-alert overdrive that causes harm. This occurs due to a condition called insulin resistance, which prevents insulin from working the way it is supposed to because your cells are basically full of fat or excess protein and there is no room for the sugar to enter. That causes pro-inflammatory molecules called cytokines, leukotrienes and interleukins to develop and adversely affect your body cells and functioning.  

“In the meantime, that cell is processing all of that fat and sending it to the fat tissues and the cells begin to get bigger and sometimes they burst. When they burst, they release all these chemicals that bring up macrophages (a type of white blood cell) to try to clean up, and that triggers another inflammatory response. It’s one inflammation after the other all the time. That’s chronic inflammation.” 

Ditch the Processed Foods 

Untreated chronic inflammation can cause hypertension, pre-diabetes, diabetes, fatty liver disease, leaky gut syndrome, dementia and heart disease. 

“The best way to decrease chronic inflammation is to change your lifestyle,” Dr. Prieto said. The first step you should take? Stop eating processed and ultra-processed foods. 

“You have more bacteria in your gut than cells in your body. And when you eat, you’re not just feeding yourself, you’re feeding that bacteria. So, when people eat these highly processed chemicals (in many processed foods), like emulsifiers and food coloring and artificial sweeteners, the bacteria get poisoned, and they release toxins that then go into your body and they are absorbed and they hurt you.” 

The good news is that if you change your diet, you can cut chronic inflammation in just a few weeks. The best diet to fight chronic inflammation is a whole-food predominantly plant-based diet with no processed or ultra-processed foods, he said. Even making some adjustments like eating five servings of colorful vegetables and fruits a day can have tremendous results. 

For those who want to switch to a predominantly plant-based diet, but aren’t ready to commit to entirely giving up meat, Dr. Prieto refers to the EPIC study in Germany that included more than 21,000 people. The study participants had to commit to eating five one-half-cup servings of fruits and/or vegetables a day and exercise 30 minutes a day. They were non-smokers and could be overweight but not obese (having a BMI<30). 

“If they met those four criteria, there was a 93 percent reduction in the incidence of diabetes, an 80 percent reduction in the risk for heart attack, 50 percent reduction of strokes and 36 percent reduction in the risk for all cancers,” he said. “These were not fully plant-based diets and yet they had significant improvement.” 

Keys to an Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle 

Dr. Prieto said there are four things that are the cornerstones of an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. They are:

• Maintain a healthy weight. You can be overweight but not obese, because obesity is pro-inflammatory. 
• Exercise for 30 minutes a day. Exercise in and of itself is anti-inflammatory and you don’t need to go to the gym. A 30-minute walk meets the requirement just as well. 
• Don’t smoke. 
• Eat five servings of fruits and or vegetables a day. 

“If you can have the rainbow on the plate with two or three different vegetables and fruits in different colors, it can be extremely helpful for you,” he said. 

Dr. Prieto summed up his philosophy for maintaining our health this way:

“Eat plants, keep moving, sleep well, stay calm, be present and, above all, love people.”