What is an anti-inflammatory food diet and is it for me?
Ever considered giving an anti-inflammatory food diet a go? Or indeed, have you ever heard of an anti-inflammatory food diet?
This latest blog post delves further into the diet, what it entails, as well as examining the benefits, the drawbacks, and address the most important question, what is it good for?
So, what is inflammation?
We often hear the term ‘anti-inflammatory’ mentioned in pharmaceutical advertising, but knowing what it means will help you determine whether the diet is good for you. Crucial to health and wellbeing, inflammation is our body's biological response mechanism to injury, infection and other general nasties. The inflammatory system will work to fight anything harmful to the body, as well as assist with the healing process thereafter.
So if that’s the case, why would we need ‘anti-inflammatory’ medication?
As with all things in life, the saying ‘too much of a good thing is a bad thing’ is applicable here too. Sometimes, the inflammation process can go into overdrive and start attacking healthy cells and tissue, leading to chronic inflammation, and sometimes chronic diseases such as osteoporosis or cardiovascular disease, which can leave individuals in immense pain. To combat this, anti-inflammatory medication will often be prescribed.
At Amuure Holistic Healing, we are a strong believer in holistic healing and using foods and diet to control our own health, which is where an anti-inflammatory diet can help.
The Anti-Inflammatory Diet
In a nutshell, an anti-inflammatory diet encourages you to consume LESS of the foods that put the body under oxidative stress (more on this later!) and MORE of the foods that contain antioxidants - which reduce inflammation.
This might sound complicated, but actually it’s quite easy to distinguish the right food groups from the wrong. For instance, processed or refined foods and red meat are known to put the body under oxidative stress - a process whereby the body cannot neutralise atoms that could be potentially damaging to healthy cell tissue.
Therefore, is it recommended that such foods with high traces of saturated fat are avoided, or at least limited, and swapped with foods containing healthy fats (unsaturated), omega-3 fatty acids, protein, spices, lentils and grains.
These kinds of foods are so rich in other nutrients that the health benefits from swapping to an anti-inflammatory diet extend far beyond chronic inflammation!
Top anti-inflammatory foods include:
Berries! All of them. Berries are well known for being packed with antioxidants, making for a far better snack than a bar of chocolate.
Oily fish, such as tuna and salmon, which is filled with Omega-3
Veggie superfoods such as kale, broccoli, sprouts and spinach are bursting with Vitamin A and Vitamin C.
Flaxseeds, chia seeds and walnuts are a fantastic addition to salads or breakfasts. These little additions taste great and are full of fatty acids..
Ginger! The health properties in ginger have been spoken about for centuries. Not only does it taste great, it is also super versatile - pop it into cakes, drinks, breakfasts or stir-frys for your ginger kick. Why not start your day with a mug of hot water, sliced ginger, lemon and honey for a guaranteed stress buster?
