Most people are aware that nutrition plays a vital role in your health and wellbeing. It also plays a significant role in determining th amount of pain that you experience…
Robert came into my office in intense pain. “I had just been doing a bit of painting the day before and I woke up this morning and could hardly move. My back is killing me.”
“Have you had this before,” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he replied in a rather matter-of-fact manner. “I seem to have a very sensitive body. This seems to happen every couple of months. Nothing much has to happen to trigger it. If it’s not my back, next time it could be my shoulder or knee.”
Apart from the obvious physical signs I found in his examination, his medical history gave me an indication as to why his body was so sensitive to recurrent aches and pains… He had a history of asthma.
Now many of you may ask why is a history of asthma an indication of why his body is so sensitive to aches and pains.
It is because like aches and pains, asthma is an inflammatory condition. If you have more than inflammatory condition it could mean that you have a pro-inflammatory diet … a diet that encourages inflammation.
Here is a list of other inflammatory conditions that could indicate that you have a pro- inflammatory diet:
allergies
sinusitis
arthritis
morning stiffness and aches
heart disease
cancers
diabetes
asthma
acne
celiac disease
high blood sugar
ulcers
gum disease
psoriasis
eczema
skin sores
rashes
For good health you need to have a balanced amount of both inflammatory chemicals and anti-inflammatories. Inflammatory chemicals let you know when damage has occurred and helps your blood to clot. Anti-inflammatories help to keep this process in check. If you want to quickly reduce the pain and inflammation naturally it is important for your body to make your own anti-inflammatories. Yeah, that’s right. You don’t have to go to the pharmacy for anti-inflammatories. Your body can produce them. And it does so without any side-effects.
When you make anything, you must have the right ingredients. Unfortunately many of you become dependent on the dangerous drug store anti-inflammatory simply because you don’t give yourself the right ingredients.
A pro- inflammatory diet is involves eating too many foods containing the ingredients to make inflammatory chemicals. A pro-inflammatory diet doesn’t have enough foods used to make anti-inflammatory chemicals. As a result, your body makes too many inflammatory chemicals and not enough anti-inflammatories. This makes it more likely for your body to inflame and be extra sensitive to pain.
Having a pro-inflammatory diet is akin to walking around doused in petrol. One little spark is all that is required for you to go up in flames. Not only is your body more susceptible to aches and pains but your glands and organs are continually getting damaged from repeated fires of inflammation.
If you wish to reduce the severity of your aches and pains along with reducing the severity of many other health conditions you need to adopt an anti-inflammatory diet.
Fruits, vegetables and good fats like fish, olive oil and flaxseed oil are the essential ingredients in making your own natural anti-inflammatories so an anti-inflammatory diet is high in these foods.
Some of you may screw up your nose at the prospect of having to eat fish but it all comes down to whether you prefer fish or pain and illness. It’s your choice. Not eating fish regularly makes your body extra sensitive to pain.
And when I say eating fish regularly I mean eating fresh or canned fish at least three times a week and that’s when you are not in pain. If you are in pain you should be eating fish, fruits and vegetables every day. The more of these foods you can eat the quicker you’ll recover.
Red meat and dairy are the two main sources of ingredients that your body uses to make inflammatory chemicals. To help correct this imbalance it is ideal to starve yourself of all red meat and dairy products (or at least reduce the amount) until the pain subsides. Just replace them with fish and fruits and vegetables.
