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Is Your Body Inflamed? How to Know Without Any Tests & How to Treat it · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  You've probably heard about the anti-inflammatory diet. Today's podcast episode
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  is going to be mostly about just inflammation in general.
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  How do we assess it? How do we determine whether you have it?
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  Are you at risk for this inflammation causing anything?
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  What is the anti-inflammatory diet that you could use to help offset it?
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  So, inflammation is the elevated chemicals in your bloodstream that create this
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  scene, this milieu of damage,
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  slow amount of damage to different parts of the body. So, we want to minimize that.
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  A little bit of inflammation is okay. Like sudden inflammation when you catch
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  a cold, when you get an infection, you get a sudden surge of inflammation.
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  That's okay because that's your body's ability to get rid of that infection.
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  The problem is low-level constant inflammation.
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  That creates a lot of problems in the body. and this
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  can happen from your body mass
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  being elevated so elevated weight too
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  much visceral fat i always refer to that as your
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  body composition being high it could be from a lot
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  of stress believe it or not it can be from a really bad diet ultra processed
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  foods i say bad diet meaning the diet that's just not good for your body that
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  your body just doesn't like some people will do great with meat some people
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  do really poorly with meat so we need to know what your individual risks are always.
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  So this is the inflammation that happens in your body.
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  It can manifest as low energy, brain fog, feeling super tired after eating,
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  not being able to think well, even your mood might be affected,
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  your hormones might be all over the place. That's inflammation.
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  If we were to go based on symptoms alone. If we go off of blood tests,
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  we can look for high sensitivity CRP, HSCRP.
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  Other markers are erythrocyte sedimentation rate, which is ESR.
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  Those are probably the two best ones.
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  Now, sometimes a homocysteine level can be used as an inflammatory marker,
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  but technically it's not really an inflammatory marker.
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  So once we know there is no inflammation.
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  As far as the blood test, we can focus on your symptoms. And if you have the
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  symptoms of inflammation, we would still assume that there is probably some
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  inflammation in the body.
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  And we can correct that with an anti-inflammatory diet.
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  The key parts of an anti-inflammatory diet is to make sure that your sugar is
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  well balanced, that you're not getting a lot of ultra-processed foods,
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  which can also contribute to the sugar,
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  but they also carry with them a lot of chemicals that our bodies just may not respond well to.
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  Third, we can now think about, so the first level, second level,
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  third level, third level, we can really think about adding in certain foods,
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  turmeric, ginger, and removing certain foods.
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  For some people, it might be nightshade plants. For some people,
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  it might be gluten, dairy, eggs, or nuts that can create some inflammation.
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  Now, this is kind of the functional nutrition space. It's a little bit on the
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  fringes, as in, this doesn't work for everyone.
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  And the data behind it is a little bit weaker, but it is nevertheless something
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  that we use for our patients. And it has been very effective for certain people.
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  Step one, blood sugar. So if you're eating a lot of processed carbs,
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  sugar, dessert, if you're having a lot of alcohol, it's a lot of carbs,
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  a lot of calories in that.
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  It's going to drive up your blood sugar. Elevated blood sugar is going to lead
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  to inflammation. So number one, we have a balanced diet, good amount of fiber,
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  good amount of healthy lean proteins, a good amount of healthy fats.
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  Great. That's going to create a good situation for your gut to not absorb excess blood sugar.
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  That's level one to control inflammation through your diet.
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  Level two. So Twinkies, ultra processed ice cream.
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  We're talking about white flour, so white bread flour. That's ultra-processed.
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  When it's ultra-processed, it's going to create problems.
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  Not only does it create problems with the blood sugar, but it can have other effects in the body.
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  And those are all the additives and preservatives that are in the food that
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  can be problematic. So we try to switch mostly to a minimally processed diet.
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  A little bit is okay. I usually tell people if maybe 5% or 20% of your diet
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  is coming from ultra-processed foods, it's not the end of the world.
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  You're probably not going to notice a lot of changes. But if you're 50% ultra-processed,
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  that's definitely going to be a problem.
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  Now, number three, the first thing we start with is removing foods that might
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  be causing you inflammation. For a lot of people, that's going to be saturated fat.
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  That's going to be dairy. that includes yogurt, cheese and milk it's going to
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  be eggs very few people will have inflammation because of eggs alone.
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  And the other big one is going to be, well, again, not for everyone, but alcohol.
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  Alcohol can create inflammation in some people. And just cutting back on it
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  can make a big difference. But those are the big ones. I would focus on those first.
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  So remove first before we add something. So what do we add?
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  Well, we could add turmeric, ginger.
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  Those two are known to be anti-inflammatory.
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  There are certain other spices and foods that can naturally be anti-inflammatory.
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  For some people, berries can be anti-inflammatory. For some people,
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  cruciferous vegetables can actually be anti-inflammatory.
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  But going back to the things that could be inflammatory, some people,
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  when they have tomatoes, when they have potatoes, when they have broccoli or
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  even cauliflower, they can get a little bit of inflammation.
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  And sometimes we call that the FODMAP diet.
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  And so you can try experimenting with that
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  where wheat and gluten for some people
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  can be inflammatory and so you can cut that out for a month see if your symptoms
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  improve and then kind of slowly add it back in to see at what level your body
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  can tolerate things that's the overall that's overall kind of big picture of
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  inflammation and of course when you decrease your inflammatory state in the body,
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  you decrease your risk of cancer, diabetes,
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  heart disease, dementia.
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  That's what we've seen. We don't have a lot of good medications yet to decrease inflammation,
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  but there are actually strong, solid studies to show that for some people,
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  aspirin and even anti-inflammatory medications like ibuprofen, Motrin.
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  Can decrease your risk of inflammation related diseases like dementia.
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  The problem is if you take those medicines long-term, they have their own side effects.