The wider the variety of fruits and vegetables you eat, the more distinct anti-inflammatory phytochemicals you consume, Julia Zumpano, RD, LD, a registered dietitian with the Center for Human Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF. In fact, multiple studies have found that people who eat a greater diversity—not just quantity—of plants also tend to have lower inflammation levels than their less culinarily adventurous counterparts, Dr. Ravella notes.
Another major benefit of a plant-heavy diet comes from fiber, which is found in not only fruits and veggies but also whole grains, nuts, and legumes. You might know it for its gut-friendly properties, like helping you poop and feeding the vibrant community of bacteria in your colon—but it may serve an inflammation-busting role, too: Research links a high-fiber diet to both lower levels of inflammatory markers (substances in the blood that are associated with inflammation) and less risk of related conditions like heart disease. All the more reason to get your garden variety.
2. Cut down on ultraprocessed foods.
Processed foods—ones that have been altered from their whole, or totally natural, state—have been villainized in the wellness world for some time now. But let’s get one thing straight: Not everything canned, frozen, dried, or preserved is terrible for you. The real inflammation troublemakers are the ultraprocessed foods, which bear little resemblance to whole foods and are mass-produced via industrial techniques (think: packaged cookies and chips, sodas, frozen meals, and instant noodles). They tend to be loaded with sugar, salt, and fat, as well as a bunch of non-nutrient additives like artificial sweeteners and emulsifiers—all ingredients that have been linked with various inflammatory responses in the body.
Ultraprocessed foods can prompt even more inflammation by screwing with your microbiome, which is the community of healthy organisms that live in your digestive tract. When these gut bugs only have access to such foods (vs. the fibers that they love to chow down on), they behave differently; some of them may start munching away at the healthy mucus layer lining your gut (which can spark inflammation), while others spit out more inflammatory byproducts, Dr. Ravella says. There’s also the opportunity cost of filling up on super-processed stuff. “It’s not only that what you’re eating is inflammatory, but also, there’s a big chunk of anti-inflammatory foods that you’re not eating because the processed items are taking up all this space in your diet,” she says.
3. Spice your meals with a heavy hand.
For their relatively tiny size, spices can pack a powerful inflammation-busting punch. “Even if you sprinkle just a little bit of cinnamon or cumin into a dish, for example, you’re greatly enhancing the anti-inflammatory potential of that food,” Dr. Ravella says. Why? Research suggests that a diverse array of spices can quiet the signals that tell cells to pump out inflammatory chemicals. Plus, a good deal of them—like turmeric, clove, nutmeg, red pepper, and ginger, to name a few—also contain potent antioxidant compounds, which may help negate the inflammatory power of those nefarious free radicals. The question of how much of these you’d have to consume to see a benefit, however, is still up in the air, given a lot of this research has explored the effects of spices on cells in petri dishes or animals.
4. Cool it on the alcohol.
At a basic level, “alcohol is a toxin,” Zumpano says, so it can set off alarm bells in the cells lining your stomach as soon as it arrives there. Plus, consuming alcohol on the reg can wreck the balance of your microbiome, depleting your numbers of good bacteria and prompting excess growth of the bad guys that can inflame your gut. But its potentially toxic effects aren’t just limited to your GI tract. Research suggests that heavy drinking may compromise the lining of your gut, which could allow more inflammation-inducing components of bacteria to seep through and enter your blood, too.
Read the full article here
