Module 3 – Inflammation
What is inflamation?
Inflammation is the body’s attempt at self-protection; the aim being to remove harmful stimuli, including damaged cells, toxins, irritants, or pathogens – and begin the healing process.
Inflammation controls our surrvival, and even our lives. Have you dealt with pain, joint stiffness, sore muscles, swelling of extremities, obesity, ADD/ADHD, peripheral neuropathy, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, headaches, migraines, fatigue, thyroid issues, dental issues, or cancer? Painful heavy menses and issues with your menstrual cycle? Sleep issues? Well then, inflammation has played a part in all of them and your life. Inflammation affects our gut, our brain and every single cell in our body.
Many scientists and doctors believe, if we can control inflamation, we can control disease. That statement may be somewhat controversial but something to think about, and not too far off the mark in my opinion.
A lot of inflamation can be solved through controlling insulin, carbohydrates, meal timing, fasting and the use of the supplements, super foods and herbs. Along with good clean water and supporting sleep, oxygen, lymph, blood and fluid flow through the body.
Inflammation is involved in all diseases and illnesses on some level. IN FACT aging is a symptom of inflammation AKA “inflammaging”.
If you answered yes to any of the disorders listed above, you are dealing with or have dealth with, inflammation.
Foods contribute a big part towards inflamation, as does high intensity and stressful exercise. Foods like –
Trans fats (which I believe to be the #1 contributor), these fats occur when vegetable oils are chemically altered, which gives them a much longer shelf life including margerine, canola oil, sunflower oil and peanut oil, but not including extra virgin olive oil. These fats are also oxidized easily during processing, which creats oxidants that tear our cells apart.
Excess sugar
Excess carbohydrates and refined flours
Whole grains
Fat and carb food combinations (which create inflammatory chemicals called lipopolysaccharides. Read more here.)
MSG or monosodium glutamate (usually found in Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese foods, Cheetos and Doritos, and other chips.)
Alcohol
Smoking
Fried greasy foods (back to those trans fats)
Dairy (especially A1 dairy)
Casein
Synthetic sweeteners (not natural)
Artificial additives
Gluten (in some people)
Hard, intense or strenuous exercise (not a food obviously)
Lack of sleep
Dehydration
Chemical and toxic exposure (including the constant use of hand sanitzers and cleaners)
Toxic overload due to skin care products, perfumes and other.
Side note;
With SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19, one of the main concerns around the virus or the driving factors behind severity and fatalities, is inflammation… and what is called the “cytokine storm”. Where the immune system is ‘already’ compromised, and inflammation becomes totally out of control.
How does inflammation effect insulin utilization?
Well we can stimulate a cell with any sort of toxin or harmful molecule (lipopolysaccarides, bad bacteria, car fumes, chemicals etc) and they will cause inflammation of that cell and surrounding cells. This inflammation in turn will cause a cell to increase “ceramide” (a fat molecule found in the cell), which in turn blunts the insulin signal and the cell becomes in insulin resistant.
This could explain why anti-inflammatories and blood thinners (like Willowbark and Aspirin) can improve insulin resistance. Your mitigating the inflammation and reducing the ceramide in the cell, and thus restoring insulin sensitivity.
How does inflammation effect fat loss?
If you banish just one particularly notorious biological variable that is present in most people eating a standard Western diet, then you can actually induce fat cells to not only die, but to get transformed into other physiologically useful tissues, such as muscle cells, stem cells and neural cells. So what is this variable? Yep you guessed it … inflammation.
That’s right: inflammation – particularly from exposure to a toxin-laden environment, consumption of heated and rancid vegetable oils, and a stressful lifestyle combined with not enough sleep, can make fat cells resistant to dying and resistant to conversion into other tissues, particularly because excess inflammation creates that insulin resistance, and insulin is the hormone responsible for shoveling calories into fat tissue.
So, to achieve lasting fat loss, one potent solution is simple: shut down inflammation!
Then, in the absence of inflammation, fat cells can die or get converted into energy with the help of a proper diet and lifestyle practices of course.
How does stress drive up inflammation?
When you’re stressed — emotionally or psychologically — your body goes into what’s colloquially called the “fight-or-flight response,” as it readies for, well, fighting or fleeing.
One effect is the release of the stress hormone “cortisol”. Cortisol works to suppress nonessential-in-an-emergency functions, like your immune response and digestion. Another hormone, “adrenaline”, is also released, which tells the body to increase heart and respiratory rate, and to expand airways to push more oxygen into muscles. Both of these hormones when constantly elevated, increase insulin resistance and fat cell formation.
The fight-or-flight response itself is meant to be short term and adaptive, which makes sense: When your body goes into that mode, your normal immune functions are temporarily shut down, becuase the main objective is “survival”.
If you think of fight-or-flight as triggered by something like a tiger chasing you, your body devotes energy and resources to running away, not to digesting the last thing you ate, or to sending immune-fighting cells to kill a cold virus.
When you’re in that chronic stress state, that cascading inflammatory response is perfectly set up.
And lastly in case you weren’t convinced that lifestyle factors play a big part in inflammation… People that have a lot of gut inflammation tend to not have a lot of energy because they are not absorbing a lot of nutrients out of their food, and because their immune system is sucking up a lot of resources trying to put out the fire and obtain homeostasis.
After a poor nights sleep inflammation increases because the body has not had the time it needs to remove toxins, remove plaque from the brain and do clean up properly. Inflammation and plaque then block the signal of “Leptin” to the brain. Listen to the clip on “neuroinflammation” below. This is the hormone that tells us we are satiated. Ghrelin levels are also elevated. Ghrelin is a hormone that is produced in the gut and stimulates appetite, or increases hunger! This is part of why you may experience increased hunger after a poor nights sleep.
Insulin resistance is also increased by up to 90% in some people after a poor nights sleep too! And this is where we see increased sugar cravings after a poor nights sleep, as the body and brain search for a quick source of energy. See video below.
Progesterone is our main anti inflammatory hormone after cortisol...understanding that long term cortisol IS inflammatory is important though.
Aspirin. Aspirin is one of the best anti inflammatories out there and has been used for thousands of years. Message me if you would like to try this.
Glycine has MOUNTING research on its anti inflammatory benefits. AND its anti aging and anti cancer benefits. Also stacking glycine with Aspirin can be very effective, and the glycine has gut protecting properties.
Cloves, Ginger, Rosemary, Turmeric.
Walnuts, Brazil and Macadamia nuts.
Krill oil
Berberine stacked with Krill makes a powerful anti inflammatory stack! You would take 1000mg of krill in the morning with 500mg of Berberine, and then 2000mg of krill in the evening with 1000mg of Berberine.*Some people may need more.
Salmon and cod liver.
Leafy greens...actually all green vegetables.
Blueberries.
Tea (Medicinal, herbal, calming teas) and organic high quality coffee.
Fermented foods - including Kombucha, Kefir, pickled vegetables etc.
Garlic (contains a powerful anti oxidant called Allicin).
Coconut (the caprylic acid).
Chlorophyll is another powerful anti-inflammatory .
*Not a food per se but "Molecular hydrogen" might be the best anti-inflammatory in the world!
*Other add ins would be vitamin D, direct sunlight, even a few minutes in a tanning bed (3/4) to bump vitamin D and warm the tissues, sauna, walking, low deuterium water and Epsom salt baths.
*Grounding, not a food either, but is a great simple free technique that has been shown to improve inflammation almost instantly! When you touch the earth…every cell in your body, specifically red blood cells become negatively charged and equally charged with the earth. An inflamed body is positively charged , which is bad.
*REST! If you are chronically stressed, have over trained/exercises, or pushed your body too hard for too long with renovations or hard labor, then the best thing you can do is allocate "rest" times or days, and sleep lots! Sleep and rest are very effective tools for inflammation!
Inflammation is involved with all diseases and illnesses on some level.
PS; Try consume at least 2-3 servings of good fats a day (use the list above) and don’t forget carbohydrates and fats combine, create inflammatory molecules.
RESOURCES;
Neuroinflammation