Foods To Stop Inflammation

Do you suffer from chronic joint pain? Are your chronic injuries not healing? If you answered yes to these two questions you may be suffering from long-term chronic inflammation.

The following post talks about what to eat and what to avoid in order to start managing your chronic inflammation, get some joint pain relief, and avoid the vicious cycle of painkillers and anti-inflammatories.

The unfortunate reality is that everyone will at some point in their lives suffer joint injury and pain.  Whether the source is an acute injury point or simply a long term nagging pain the sooner you learn to manage it the sooner you get your quality of life back.

Acute injuries follow the time-honored protocol or RICE. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation… and then some time to heal all the damaged tissues. But chronic joint pain arising from systemic inflammation is a different beast, so I want to give you some things you can work on to deal with your chronic inflammatory aches.  Note* while these recommendations are more geared towards dealing with systemic inflammation control and helping to reduce joint pain from those inflammatory processes, all the below mentioned tips are also great at helping to speed recovery from acute injuries… so take some notes.

Consider why you are inflamed.

Systemic inflammation is highly correlated to your diet, and the health of your digestive tract. So if you’re eating poorly, not getting hydrated, destroying your intestinal lining with alcohol and pain killers, and eating sugar-laden flour based foods, you are well on your way to guaranteeing some joint pain problems, together with a host of other related health issues.

The fact is that our modern diets promote inflammation. That’s it.  Nothing further to discuss.  Lifestyle and dietary habits of the modern-day human lend themselves to promoting inflammation of the body and wrecking the health of your digestive tract, and when that goes on long enough, your joints will suffer.

Stopping Chronic Joint Pain

The first step in reducing chronic inflammation is getting rid of foods that promote the inflammatory processes, and eliminating the foods that could potentially damage the digestive tract.  Essentially what this means is that you need to start consuming real whole foods. 

Foods to Avoid:

• trans-saturated fats

• vegetable oils  (olive oil is ok)

• deep fried foods

• soda

• grain fed meats

• sugar

• most grains

• flour based products

• fast food

• alcohol

I’m not going to dwell on why the above foods are bad for you – the take home message is that these foods aren’t good for you body, aren’t good for your tummy, and play a big role in exciting the inflammatory processes. 

If you’ve got chronic joint pain it’s time to make some dietary changes…. and the above list is a good place to start.

Foods That Kill Inflammation

Food can be one of the quickest roads to achieving and maintaining good health, wellbeing and vitality.

What you put in your mouth is directly related to your health or otherwise. 

There are food choices that can help positively impact systemic inflammation and have properties similar to those of the major pain relievers and anti-inflammatories, and they’re natural!

• Turmeric, ginger, oregano -  these little spice powerhouses have undergone a myriad of studies, all of which have confirmed their benefits in mitigating inflammation, that they should absolutely be included in your diet on a consistent basis if you’ve got some systemic inflammation.

• Pineapple- contains a substance called bromelain that is an enzyme which can help stop inflammation. This compound is actually widely used in many arthritis medications.

• Papaya – contains a digestive enzyme called papain which helps to reduce inflammation and help your digestion.

• Kiwi- a cheap and excellent source of vitamin C (along with pineapple and papaya), and gives you lot’s of anti-oxidants which are necessary for offsetting systemic inflammation.

• Grass fed beef- quality raised meat has a very beneficial ratio of omega3 to omega6 which is helpful in halting the inflammatory cascade your joints are going through.

• Salmon- as with grass fed beef, cold-water fish tend to have a higher concentration of omega3 fatty acids.

• Bone Broths-  learn how to make these!!! they are so ridiculously simple to make, and deliver so much nutrition and healing properties that I insist every one of my clients start making and consuming them.  Bone broths offer up easily digestible nutrients and minerals, a list of amino acids, gelatin and collagen structures, helping to heal your stomach.

• Veggies-  eat your veggies…do we really need to say more?

• Sleep!   Sleep is essential for all your bodily systems to function optimally, and has a direct effect on your mental and physical health.  It is during sleep that your recovery and repair processes take place.  If you’re not getting adequate, deep sleep, you’re not healing and recovering as well as you could be.   Get some sleep.  This can have far reaching benefits besides helping to heal that chronic joint inflammation.

The key to mitigating disease, be it of a chronic or inflammatory nature and getting healthier is learning to identify and remove inflammation causing food and incorporating a more positive set of choices into your diet.

I challenge you to eat clean in order to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to do what you want in life.

Cris Mills, Momentum for Life