Reduce Inflammation in 5 Easy Steps

There’s probably someone you know (or even you) that has some level of inflammation in their body. Inflammation is one of the major causes of disease, yet most of us don’t even realize that we can change that through the foods we eat and the lifestyle we choose. I worked in a restaurant for a decade, so living on poor diet choices and pollution (when they used to allow smoking indoors) was not the best for my health. The one thing I had going for me was all the exercise I got running around all day-though, that gave me a bad back. Most of us out there probably lead some kind of crazy lifestyle that could result in chronic inflammation, pain and disease over an extended period.

Why is keeping inflammation low so important?

Inflammation is more than just a nuisance; it can wreak havoc on our bodies. Inflammation is connected with most diseases. Diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular and arthritis.

Are there types of inflammation that are temporary?

Low levels of temporary inflammation from the result of an injury or infection is a natural and healthy response to recovery. On the other hand, chronic inflammation  that  slowly causes cell damage on a daily basis is what we want to avoid.

Now that we’ve determined that we must keep inflammation down, let’s look at five easy steps we can do to reduce inflammation AND improve our health at the same time.

1. Reduce Sugar

Reducing sugar can solve so many problems in the body!  But if you are like me, it’s probably impossible to totally eliminate all sugar from your diet. There are many ways to reduce the refined sugar in one’s life, like changing out your refined white sugar to a better alternative, and it’s okay to still have an occasional treat. My go-to for such cravings are usually a raw dessert, or a smoothie bowl.

Additional tips:

• Cook up a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner-this will help lower the urge to snack on something bad.
• Give up sodas-Changing over to healthier drinks like, tea, water, or nut milks will help with sugar cravings.

2. Add More Fats/Omega-3 Into Your Diet

Eating more antioxidant rich foods you eat, the more weapons your body has to fight inflammation. Eating more organic fruit and vegetables is a great start. Another step you can take is to include omega-3 fatty acids into your diet as well. You can find natural anti-inflammatory nutrients in fish, nuts and avocados.

3. Reduce processed  foods

Processed foods can contain a ton of inflammation-causing substances. More often then not we don’t really even know what chemicals are in the fast food and store bought processed food we eat. There’s trans-fats used in most which is a big inflammatory culprit. Processed foods are often labeled with the word “hydrogenised”.   Check the back of food packages for words you struggle to pronounce, and when you do find them, put it back! Your body only wants food that doesn’t contain the harmful chemicals that are put in there to make it last longer and taste better.

4. Walk

Simply 20 minutes of walking (or any exercise) a day has amazing benefits to your health. Exercise can reduce blood sugar levels in our body and pulls glucose into our muscles for energy. So some exercise every day can help protect you against chronic disease that inflammation brings on.

5. Get A Good Night’s Sleep

Getting a proper night sleep can actually help reduce inflammation. Giving your body extra relaxation time promotes the reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokines. While you sleep, your inflammatory stress hormones start to wind down. Getting more sleep gives our body it’s best chance to recover from inflammation that our daily stressful waking hours cause to our body.

When we realize how easy it is to change just a few things to our lifestyle to help switch the balance between inflammation-causing bad habits and treating our bodies better, we really don’t have any excuses not to!