Ignition food: gas on the fire

Global Courant

In my previous article titled Inflammation… It’s A Crock. I discussed how inflammation cooks the body, much like an egg or a piece of meat in a crock pot. This article is a follow up to describing the specific foods that can put gas on that fire and accelerate the degeneration of tissues and organs in the body. This can lead to more back pain and joint pain, as well as other damage, as you will see. I’ll keep the list of foods short and sweet (no pun intended) so changes in your diet are easier to remember.

The three main gas sources (no, not that type of gas)

1) Sugar: Sugar in the blood in the wrong amounts negatively affects our hormones, especially insulin. So don’t eat simple sugars in large quantities and focus on carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. It is important to note that grains and breads are also sugars and increase blood sugar levels and also increase insulin response. So limit the amounts of bread and starchy foods as much as possible. Try to stick to whole grains as they are more anti-inflammatory but can be a problem due to the gluten content which can cause even more problems for some people. If you want starchy foods, potatoes are our best choice – sweet, red, white and yams.

2) Meat: Proteins should be consumed with every meal as they create a balance with the carbohydrates and help keep blood sugars regulated, but try to eat fish or grass-fed beef or lamb and try to avoid fatty meats. The main reason meat can be bad is that there are two pathways for the omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. The omega 3 fatty acids mainly found in fish go a non-inflammatory pathway and actually reduce inflammation but the omega 6 fatty acids can go two pathways and one of them is highly inflammatory so obviously fish is a good source of proteins.

Diets that are low in omega-3 and high in omega-6 fatty acids tend to cause more inflammation, especially if the diet lacks important key nutrients such as magnesium and B vitamins. Remember that both Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids are essentially 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 Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio is about 4:1 or as low as 2:1. As you can see, a healthy diet still contains more omega 6 fatty acids than omega 3 fatty acids, but certainly not the ratio we usually 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 such as French fries. Push the Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio in the wrong direction, so are detrimental to your inflammation levels as described above.

The human body changes when we eat the wrong foods and in the wrong combinations. Biochemical and inflammatory damage occurs in tissues when we follow a diet that is deficient in fruits and vegetables and contains an excess of sugar, meat, vegetable oils (not olive oil) and trans fats found in almost all packaged foods and fried foods such as French Chips. The inflammation associated with a poor diet may begin without symptoms at first, so it is very difficult to detect, but over time this chronic diet-induced inflammation can lead to the chronic diseases that plague us all and chronic pains , causing 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 and many others. So your diet and supplements are essential in preventing and treating this problem. In short, we need to eat vegetables and grass-fed meats and fish and take the right supplements (such as omega 3 supplements) and reduce our consumption of sugars and grains, bad oils and wrong meats and we need to exercise more… these are the things that we must do to promote an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.

Ignition food: gas on the fire

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