Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle
Inflammation is a beneficial thing until it isn’t. Inflammation is a natural response from our immune system used to help fight off infections, protect healthy tissue, and promote healing. The trouble comes when our body is in a constant state of inflammation. This causes damage to healthy tissues, cells, and organs which over time can lead to chronic conditions. Inflammation also can exacerbate many conditions, some of which are related to our mental health, and affects the whole system.
Inflammation is caused by processed foods, sugar / sugary items, red meat, vegetable oils, dairy, and gluten. Now, don’t worry, you can still enjoy these things, but if you want to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle, it's better to use these things in moderation and / or not at all. I recently attended an Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle training and one of the things that the instructor emphasized was the importance of ensuring enough healthy nutrients. It isn’t a matter of taking away the inflammation causing foods, but making sure you are adding the anti-inflammatory foods. For example, let's say you wanted to eat pizza, it's best to make sure that the size of your vegetable served with it is larger than the slice(s) you are having. I'd like to introduce the 80/20 rule - as long as 80% of what you are eating is healthy (good for the body), it's ok if 20% is unhealthy (good for the soul).
Inflammation is also caused by lack of movement. It is recommended to have 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week (30 minutes broken up over 5 days), along with 2-3 days of weight training. If you can move more, then that's better. If you can move less, the trick is to keep going and do what you can. Think about taking a walking meeting, or stretching while you watch a favorite show.
Inflammation is also caused by environmental toxins, and unfortunately there are a lot of them. Most of which are out of our control, such as pesticides and heavy metals. Some of the things I do to avoid environmental toxins are: use stainless steel pans and water bottles, I avoid plastic to the best of my ability, I stick to the dirty dozen list and clean fifteen and I check all my products such as lotions and soaps. There are two apps that I like that help me along the way, they are: EWG Healthy Living, which can scan household items and it will tell you what is toxic within and give you alternatives. The other one is called Yuka, which scans food items and tells you what is in them such as additives and dyes.
Inflammation is also caused by stress, or rather the lack of coping well with it. Stress is going to happen, it's part of life. However, it's a matter of how well you manage it. Is it controlling you? Or are you controlling it? Here are some things I like to do: meditate (guided and unguided), yoga, exercise, talk to my support, journal, watch comedies, go to bed early, dance / go to concerts, take baths, sun bathe, be outside, have a fire, travel, read, etc. This is a matter of self care. Are you doing enough of what makes you feel alive?
Inflammation became personal to me and started to wreak havoc on my life. Truthfully, if you were to look at my college IDs from freshman year to three years later, you can easily see the inflammation. Around 2013, I peeled a clementine, decided I didn't want it, and placed my hand on my face to support my head - within 15 minutes, my face was swollen and I couldn't stop sneezing. I was having an allergic reaction to the pesticides and / or the Red #2 dye they use to make them look more orange, but I didn't know this at first. This started my journey in seeking out better products and food for myself. Also, around this time I had started exercising in a more serious way. By the time I returned to Ohio in 2017, I had a pretty good handle on things, but my body had plans for me to learn even more. In 2020-2021 I became very aware of all my symptoms and knew my body was trying to tell me something. In 2022, I noticed a pattern, two days after eating pizza, I would have a migraine. It felt strange, but the pattern was there. I went two months with no pizza, and tried it again. I had the worst stomach cramps, headache, nausea, and a migraine two days later. By July of 2022, I had gone gluten free. Another two months later, I had to go dairy free, and a month after that, no more peanut butter. Trust me, this was not by choice, but the pain and discomfort that was coming after ingesting these foods was no longer worth it.
As it turns out, I had endometriosis, a chronic inflammatory disease. My understanding is that my immune system was working so hard to fix the endo lesions, that it became a burnt out employee, overworked by inflammation (and things that cause inflammation), that it started to attack things like gluten, dairy, and even peanut butter.
I became dedicated to helping my body feel better. Technically I was first recognized as having endometriosis in January of 2022, but truthfully denial set in, and I set out to do everything I could to fix my body on my own. Once I realized not much had truly changed, I returned to the doctor in October of 2024 ready to face the music. At which point I fully switched to an Anti-Inflammatory lifestyle.
These are all the symptoms that have improved since making the switch: my anxiety is lower, depressive symptoms improved, my PMS is more manageable, my chronic pain improved (so much so that I thought about not getting surgery), my joints don’t hurt anymore, frequency of headaches went down, sleeping duration improved, and an overall sense of peace.
As I said before, it's a whole system that we are approaching. Doing all of this affects and heals your gut as well. There is more and more research coming out about how our gut health affects disease and our mental health. An unhealthy gut can lead to higher anxiety and depression, as well as issues with gaining or losing weight.
If knowing more about anti-inflammatory lifestyle is something that resonates with you, bring it up in our next session and I'd be happy to incorporate it as part of our treatment plan.
Sincerely,
Sarah
