Let’s face it: losing your mind is a fate far worse than death.
This week, a good friend from high school died of Alzheimer’s disease at just 67 years old.
Unfortunately, no meds can appreciably change that process once diagnosed. And it’s doubtful there ever will be. (Some other time, I’ll address why I’m 99.99% positive about that opinion.) My friend didn’t learn soon enough how to prevent these devastating consequences. I visited her in October when I was back ‘home’ and it was truly heartbreaking. But the same needn’t be true for any of us. Science shows us that we have a lot more control over it than we think. Having just seen how heartbreaking that was for her family, I’ve recommitted my efforts to help you understand the role of diet and lifestyle and the simple steps to making a profound difference in your and your family’s future.
There is a simple analogy to help you understand the interaction between diet, lifestyle, and genetics.
Experts worldwide agree and statistics corroborate this fact. Genetics essentially load the gun but environment (diet & lifestyle) pulls the trigger.
This is true for almost every disease. Even if you inherit ALL the genes for many diseases (heart disease and cancer included), those genes are much less likely to be turned on if you adopt the appropriate diet and lifestyle.
The diet I refer to here is essentially an anti-inflammatory diet.
Today, I want to cover the essentials of that diet.
Michael Pollan, Journalist and Author stated it plainly, “Eat (real) food, mostly plants, not too much.”
Let’s break it down:
The most inflammatory products are “food-like” products or “ultra-processed foods.”
I recently found that there is a succinct accepted definition of “ultra-processed foods”. An ultra-processed food is a “packaged product that includes ingredients not normally found in a typical kitchen.”
When we’re discerning pro-inflammatory products, we may need to narrow this definition to say “any packaged product that contains ingredients not normally found in the kitchens of traditional cultures or modern cultures before 1900.”
I look at this date because corn oil, safflower oil, white flour, and white rice found their way into modern kitchens around that time. It is also the timeframe when companies began mass-producing and packing fried products thus increasing the quantity we eat.
It was after this time that the chemicals found in modern ultra-processed foods were introduced(preservatives, additives, dough conditioners, etc.). This multiplies the problem.
Another way of looking at this is simply eating a whole food (mostly plant-based) diet: fruits, vegetables, beans, and (whole unprocessed or minimally processed) grains is healthiest. Note that inherent in that definition are also legumes, mushrooms, and nuts.
I want to cite a couple of things most people don’t know about the value of whole plant foods:
- Eating mostly plants feeds the good guy bugs of our gut microbiome what they need to produce butyrate and numerous other highly anti-inflammatory nutrients that are then circulated throughout our systems.
These organisms also produce many of our hormones & neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin & acetylcholine.
Whole plant foods have several advantages over animal-based products and processed foods.
- One thing is that they are calorie-poor and nutritionally rich so they fill you up without a lot of calories. This helps keep you satiated for longer periods and gives you all the fiber you need for good gut health.
- A point of reference: paleontologists have found significant evidence that the diet of ancient humans contained about 100-200 grams of fiber daily. Today, only a small portion of Americans meet even the minimum requirement of 30 gms/day.
- In addition, the omega-3 fats in plants favor the production of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.
- Furthermore, saturated fats found predominantly in meats (including poultry and fish) favor prostaglandin production which is more pro-inflammatory and thus pain-producing.
I could cite numerous other reasons to not consume a lot of animal products but I’ll also save that for another article.
- Minimally processed grains like ground whole grain flour, pastas and more do not appear to be unhealthy if they make up only a small portion of your diet. If you’re allergic, that’s different. And I DO refer ONLY to organically grown grains here as other grains are grown with excessive amounts of pesticides that affect your gut microbiome and your overall health.
- I draw the same conclusion about small amounts of animal foods. I base this conclusion on the fact that most of our Blue Zone cultures eat small amounts of animal products. I suggest the way to mimic their intake is to reduce meat to a condiment-sized portion (up to 1.5 ounces daily). Another alternative is to eat 4-6 oz. of meat 1-2 times/week.
- Plant foods are also referred to among food chemists as alkaline ash producing. Simply, that means that after the digestive process is complete, you’re left with proteins and minerals that are slightly alkaline. An alkaline system favors better kidney & lung function. It also helps your bones retain the right mix of osteoclasts (bone-producing cells) and osteoblasts (bone-remodeling cells) leading to a decreased likelihood of developing osteoporosis.
- By decreasing chronic inflammation through an anti-inflammatory diet, you decrease the likelihood that you’ll need anti-inflammatory medications for day-in and day-out discomforts as well.
However, sometimes the addition of a natural anti-inflammatory is warranted either to hasten the process or because of injury.
Enz-Flame, a powdered orange-flavored drink supplement, by DaVinci Labs is one such product that I recommend.
It contains DMG (dimethyl glycerate), Curcumin, Boswelia (frankincense), ginger, quercetin, proteolytic enzymes and more. These products decrease inflammation but do it in a way that is far safer then NSAIDs or prescription COX-2 inhibitors.
On the rare occasion that I find I need something more than my normal diet because of an injury, this product is my personal go-to.
This blog naturally leads into recommended products for natural pain relief, which I’ll cover next.
(references for information in this article are available upon request
To order Enz-Flame or sign up for an account on my store, go here:
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