If you or someone you know are struggling with a chronic health issue, then, with out a doubt, the best place to start is with an anti-inflammatory diet. Essentially all chronic health conditions have inflammation at their core. Whether it be autoimmune disease (like Hashimoto’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Crohn’s Disease and Psoriasis), chronic fatigue syndrome, dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes or anything else, reducing inflammation can make a huge impact.
An anti-inflammatory diet should be considered first because the standard American diet (SAD) extremely inflammatory. Refined sugars, processed foods, industrialized vegetable & seed oils, and genetically modified foods can deplete the body of critical nutrients and lead to increased cellular inflammation.
Pesticides and herbicides, found on most non-organic produce, can accumulate in the body causing even more inflammation.
Consuming foods that you are sensitive or allergic to can be the final straw in triggering a chronic disease.
Over the pat 20 years working with thousands of patients, I can tell you that there is no single diet that will work for everyone. However, there are some foods that that seem to be the most problematic. Removing these foods from the diet can significantly reduce inflammation and, in many cases, help slow or even reverse chronic disease.
Here is a list of the 10 foods most likely to contribute to chronic disease:
- Gluten (by far the most inflammatory food we see)
- Dairy (a close second)
- Soy
- Corn
- Rice
- Eggs
- Nightshades (Potatoes, Tomatoes, Eggplant & Peppers)
- Legumes (Beans, Lentils, Peas, Peanuts)
- Vegetable & Seed Oils (Canola, Corn, Soybean, Sunflower, Safflower)
- Refined Sugar
Not everyone with a chronic health condition will be sensitive to all these foods, but I would recommend elimination them all for 30 days and seeing if there’s any reduction in symptoms.
What can you eat? The foods you can eat on this diet include:
- Poultry
- Fish
- Lamb, Beef, Bison, Wild Game
- Organic Vegetables (that aren’t nightshades)
- Organic Fruits (in moderation)
- Healthy fats like olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil
My guess is that after removing these foods for 30 days you will feel significantly better. From this point, there are a few options moving forward:
- Continue to eliminate these foods from your diet. (Some people will need to do this to continue to keep inflammation down and chronic disease at bay.)
- Consider food sensitivity testing to determine immune reactivity. (Food allergy testing has come a long ways but is not 100% accurate.)
- Reintroduce foods one at a time to see if any symptoms return. It’s best to consume the reintroduced food daily for three consecutive days before moving to the next food. If you experience any increase in symptoms after reintroducing a specific food, there’s a good chance you are reacting to that food. Symptoms to pay attention to include fatigue, brain fog, pain, headaches, gut issues, skin reactions, mood changes and runny nose- just to name a few.
