Are we in flames? (Road to Healthy part 8)

Hello, it's me... :)

Today I have another addition to my road to healthy series, which I personally quite enjoy writing. I imagine the title may confuse some, but the general idea was to write about chronic inflammation. I've touched the subject slightly on my Why eat healthily? post, which in case you haven't read yet, then you can read it HERE. I have to do a presentation on a subject of my coice for my english class as well, so i thought i'd do a little blog post about it, while I'm researching the subject.

So the main things I talk about in this post are the dietary causes of chronic inflammation, there are some other causes to it as well, which I may talk about in another post.

Before  I get into the subject I'll briefly say what chronic inflammation is. It's the type of inflammation, that slowly damages the tissues, depending on where it occurs, it can pretty much damage any tissue in our body and therefore it has been proven to be the main cause of many age related diseases. I obviously am not yet at risk of diseases related to old age, but I think the earlier to start with healthier lifestyle choices, the more benefitial it'll be. I'm definitely not yet at the point, where I could say that my diet and lifestyle are as good as I'd like them to be, but I'm on the road there and educating myself is probably the first step, I think...anyway, lets get to the actual subject now.

The main dietary causes of chronic inflammation are:

 Too much Omega 6, not enough Omega 3 -  basically what this means, is that the ratio between Omega 6 and Omega 3 is not ideal for our body. The ratio that is considered healthy is 3:1 to 1:1, but with the diet that people nowadays have is very strongly tilted towards Omega 6. These fatty acids are used in our body to create hormones, that control inflammation. Omega 6 creates the type of hormones, that promote inflammation and Omega 3 creates hormones, that are anti-inflammatory, so from there it is quite easy to understand, that if we have more of the fatty acids that create hormones, that are pro-inflammatory, then the levels of inflammation rise.

 Not enough fruits and vegetables - I'm sure all have heard, that we should eat more fruits and vegetables, they're high in vitamins and minerals, but in addition to that, they contain flavanoids, which also help decrease the amount of inflammation, that is in our body. So the more fruits and vegetables the more we're decreasing inflammation. Wonderful, I love my fruits and veggies.

 Pro‐inflammatory cooking methods - the way we cook our food, also plays an important part in the quality of our food. When foods containing proteins are cooked at high temperatures, the protein binds with  glucose or other sugars in the food to produce compounds called Advanced Glycation End  products, or AGEs.  These compunds are very pro-inflammatory. Another compunds are created, when fats and oils are cooked at high temperature, those are called ALEs, in other words Advanced Lipoxidation End products, they are also pro-inflammatory. So the less of those compounds in our body, the less inflammation.

As with all things, I recommend balance, I think that a certain amount of pro-inflammatory foods are ok to eat, as long as most of the time I'm eating well and keeping the levels of inflammation low.

So that's it for today, since I'm making this presentation on the subject as well, then I might make some more post about it, we'll see.

Kaiela :)