But by incorporating all (not just oneremember, there’s no easy way out!)
Focus on your diet.
Taming chronic inflammation starts with what you put on the end of your fork.
In other words, your best defense to fight inflammation starts with your very next meal or snack.
Researchers find that a pro-inflammatory dietsignificantly increases weight gain1and your risk for being overweight or obesity.
The best way to shift that balance is to eat fewer inflammatory foods and much moreanti-inflammatory food.
You cannot fix inflammation withoutfixing the gut.
When your gut lining is disturbed, it cannot absorb nutrients optimally and inflammation develops.
Eventually problems like leaky gut lead to food sensitivities and even autoimmune disease.
Supporting a healthy gut requires time and patience.
Get the right nutrients.
But combined with the right diet, supplements can help support normal inflammatory processes.
- Among the favorites I use in my practice daily are:
4.
Many of theover 80,000 chemicalswe are exposed to daily have not been tested for human safety.
Thesetoxins create all sorts of problems7.
Chronic inflammation plays a role in all of these problems.
Just like we are all inflamed, we are all toxic.
And agut cleanseis a great way to clean out the pipes and dump some of those accumulated toxins.
Yours might include yoga, brisk walking, or weight resistance exercises.
Moderate exercise reduces inflammation, but extreme exercise (like marathon training and Tough Mudders) will increase inflammation.
The important thing is that you do something that challenges your body without abusing its limits.
Stress increases inflammation10, regardless of how good you’re being with your diet.
It activates the fight-or-flight response that makes you feel like you’re under attack when you’re not.
Essentially, they’ve ceased to notice what a huge impact stress has on their lives.
Start by saying “no” and creating more space in your life for rest and relaxation.
Forty percent of Americans get less than the seven hours of recommended sleep per night.
That’s outstanding considering modern technology should be making our lives easier, not harder.
The problem is the health ramifications of sleep deprivation.
Studies support what I see regularly in my practice: Sleep deprivationcan trigger or exacerbate inflammation11.
Multiple mechanisms are at work here.
Keeping inflammation under control requires eight to nine hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep every night.
Sleep hygiene is important.
Dedication without expectations is the key to healing.
