#3 Chronic Inflammation: The Silent Killer and How to Combat It

Today's Heal Yourself on Chronic Inflammation, what it is, why it is so dangerous, and how we can get rid of it naturally. 

 

What is inflammation? Inflammation is basically the activation of your immune system in response to some threat. It can be some pathogen, virus, it could be that you cut your finger and that starts the inflammatory response of your body. The chemicals that cause inflammation in your body are called inflammatory cytokines and inflammation as such is not a negative thing. It's a positive thing that helps you heal.

On the other hand, chronic inflammation is extremely negative because chronic inflammation is an inflammation that is there all the time. It is also reacting to some stressor. It's reacting to something that you are doing all the time and this is creating a low level but permanent inflammation in your body and you keep your immune system active, just a little active but active all the time and this makes it really tired after some time it exhausts your immune system. So when there is some real danger to fight is not strong enough or it doesn't even have the resources because the resources are dedicated to fighting this chronic low level inflammation and it cannot be fighting what is actually needed to be taken care of.

Chronic inflammation negatively influences your entire body. It can take a very high toll on your physical health, on your mental health as well. Scientists observed that in people with depression is often also present chronic inflammation.

So what causes chronic inflammation? I will list six different areas. your life and each of them is again very broad area and there will be separate episodes on each category in the future.

So pro -inflammatory activity number one is chronic stress. Stress, if we take it really to the core of the meaning of the word, can be any of the following categories as well because wrong eating, sleeping enough, all this is a stress on your body and that all creates the chronic stress that you are facing in your everyday life and this is why some specialists even say that up to 90% of all chronic illnesses are actually connected to chronic stress because it can be everything but in this category we will be talking about the mental chronic stress that you are experiencing at work that you are experiencing in your relationship.

Here one of the best tools ever to manage chronic stress and to lower the levels of chronic stress in your system is long -term regular meditation number one but another thing that you can do because sometimes the things that are so stressful are just best taken out of our life. So I'm not saying that if you are experiencing some chronic stress you should leave your job tomorrow but sometimes the best thing we can do is actually to change the job or is actually to change the partner. There just get in touch with yourself and understand if it is actually something that you can manage with meditation and calming exercises and it is something that is really based mostly on your outlook or it is something that is actually really toxic. It's a toxic workplace, it's a toxic relationship and there it's the best thing to do and there the best thing you can do for yourself is to just leave it.

In this category of stress I will also mention supplementing magnesium. Magnesium is a mineral that we can get quite easily from food and drinks but in this stressful time it's actually not enough because what magnesium does to our body is that it calms down our nervous system but And because of this, when your body wants to get stressed, which happens very often because unfortunately our environment is now full of stressors, so it can be your boss, it can be your girlfriend shouting at you, it can be that you are walking on the street and the car beeps and it's a threat for your body. And because of this, when your body wants to start a stress response, it dumps the magnesium out of your system to be able to actually excite your nervous system to start the stress response. And because of this, most of us don't have enough of it. Not because we don't get enough of it, but because every time your body gets stressed, it actually gets rid of your magnesium. So you need to replenish your storage again, which will calm you down again and help you sleep better.

Another thing that works very well to lower the levels of your stress is breath work. And so in the end of this episode, you will find today's exercise, which is a breath work that will help you lower the stress that you are experiencing in the moment. So meditation works also in the moment, but more long term. This kind of breathing exercise will switch your whole body into the state of relaxation. It's like hacking your body just with your breath, switching off the stress and turning on the relaxation. So make sure to look at it.

Pro -inflammatory activity number two that I actually put on a second place because it is not every day. one's thing, but in terms how bad it is for you, it should be on the first place and it is smoking. Here I will not be spending time talking about all the negative effects. It's literally written on the box when you buy it, so I'm sure everyone is aware of what it is doing to your body and if you are serious about your health and you are smoking, you just need to stop. And I know that it is easier said than done and I know many of you are trying and have not been successful so far and because of that I am preparing a hypnotherapy recording that will be focused on your body. on quitting smoking that it is really effective method and if you are listening to this episode in the future it's possible it's already out so just go and look for it and if you are listening to this episode in a real time just be patient and it's coming.

Number three is the pro -inflammatory diet. Here it is not the same for everyone but there are few things that are pro -inflammatory for all of us. Number one alcohol. Number two processed sugar. Those actually cause inflammation in the metabolic tissues of your body and are directly damaging the structure of your cells.

When I'm talking about sugar I do not mean fruit. Fruit as it is made by the nature, perfect creation with everything so with the skin if possible with the seeds as well is actually one of the healthiest food on the planet and you should not be limiting fruit because it is actually anti -inflammatory so all sugar is not equal and the one that is already present in fruit as the fructose or glucose eaten together with all the fiber, with all the vitamins, with all the minerals, with all the things that come in the package with the piece of fruit is a perfect addition into your diet and it's actually anti -inflammatory. Refined sugar, different story that one actually causes the inflammation.

Still I don't want to demonize any group of food or I'll alcohol in general and here is really about the dosage and alcohol drunk in moderation having one glass of wine every so often. If you are healthy, can be perfectly fine and your body can take care of it very well. If you are not healthy, it might actually cause problems and you might need to wait for your body to recover until you can start drinking again sometimes. So here again just listen to your body and understand where you are and what kind of limitations are necessary in your case.

Next, there are highly processed vegetable oils like canola oil that now are almost everywhere and the problem there is that having higher amount of omega -6 than omega -3 creates the inflammation in your body. So here lowering omega -6 and increasing your intake of omega -3 is what you have to do.

And then highly processed food in general where there are not only these vegetable oils, but there are a lot of chemicals, a lot of additives and all these things again your body sees as something invading your body as pathogen is something that needs to fight against and this turn on this immune system turns on this inflammatory response to fight.

And then there are the food intolerances that are not the same for everyone. So some people can be eating all of these and be perfectly fine, but for many of us they are actually inflammatory and number one dairy. So here it can be lactose. So if you go lactose free you might be okay, but for many people is actually the protein in all dairy which is called casin. So there it would be just going completely dairy free. Then number two is gluten and number three would be eggs also quite common and then there are many others like histamine, peanuts, corn, but they are not as common, but if you exclude all of these and you continue having problems there are other foods to look at.

The problem with intolerance is that it doesn't react the same as allergy when you feel the response straight away. When you eat it, you might be sick in your stomach, you have some other reactions, but intolerance actually works almost secretly and often, even though you might be lactose intolerant, you will not feel any problems in your stomach after eating. Sometimes you do, which is great, then you have a lot more clues to understand that this is something that is not good for you, but for many people it actually causes no problems at all and instead there are secondary problems and with lactose is the skin very often, so acne, eczema very often connected with dairy intolerance or gluten, it might be things like depression, anxiety, even those can be the symptoms of some food intolerance so that the best bet is really just try to go sometime without them, seeing how you feel and then you can try to bring one of them back and see if you have any negative reaction or you might be actually okay eating it.

So which foods are actually anti-inflammatory and here it is important to understand as we now know what is the mechanism of inflammation that it is not enough just to start eating the anti-inflammatory ones without actually getting rid of of the pro -inflammatory things because even though you will be lowering the inflammation on one end you will be then doing things that create inflammation on the other end and it will be just this continuous circle so what you need to do to low inflammation is to stop doing the pro -inflammatory activities and you can also add some anti -inflammatory actions of food that will speed up and support the process of lowering your inflammation so what to eat to lower inflammation.

Number one as I said fruit and vegetables this is something that we just keep hearing over and over and it is for a reason because it is actually one of the best food health advice that you can give just to eat more of them. Then lowering omega -6 and instead upping your intake of omega -3 which can be done with foods or also with supplement and then you can add curcumin curcuma in your diet which is really an important part of your diet. anti -inflammatory powerhouse. There is a study where in some cases for some people the curcumin was actually more anti -inflammatory than ibuprofen which is really incredible if you think about it. So eat as much curcuma as you can. It is quite strong the taste of curcuma so you can add it in food which is amazing but to actually take some substantial amount you can also take supplements.

Or you can drink something that is called the golden milk which I love. If we take in in teaspoons it would be a teaspoon of curcuma it would be half a spoon of cinnamon which is anti microbial and also anti -inflammatory so another amazing spice then a third of a spoon of a ginger another anti -inflammatory and then grinding freshly grinded black pepper because black pepper is there to activate the kurkuma and make it actually more available for your body. So that's a very important addition and then if you are really hardcore you can just add lukewarm water and drink it. If the taste is a bit too strong for you as it is for me you can add honey. I love using manuka honey which is not on the cheap end of the selection of honey but it is actually also anti -inflammatory itself so you're just upping the effect of this whole drink and if you want to have it really fancy you can add some plant -based milk and then adding some lukewarm water and yeah that is just really really yummy really nice drink that you might take instead of your coffee who knows but it works wonders to lower your inflammation.

Number four is poor sleep quality or not enough sleep. Here again I will create a separate whole big episode on sleep because there is a lot to talk about but one thing first thing that I would recommend as most of the time is meditation because long -term meditation again is like a magic for sleep and one of the reasons why it is so effective is that most common reason for insomnia or not being able to fall asleep fast is that you lie down most of us know it and your brain just goes nuts and just gives you this problem and this thing you have to think about and this thing you said one week ago and It's just constant, it just goes and goes, goes on, goes on and what meditation does is that teaches your brain to just shut up. When it's time to sleep, you will just have silence and be able to fall asleep, it improves the overall quality of the sleep, it's just amazing and it goes hand in hand with the stress reduction, you reduce your stress through other means, through meditation as well and then this will usually improve the quality of your sleep by itself.

One more thing you can do as I said before, supplementing with magnesium, this is also amazing for the quality of your sleep and when I talk about sleep, in this category there is also rest, so it's just not the time that we spend in bed at night but it's also knowing how to effectively. rest your body so doing enough restful activities are extremely important giving your body time to relax.

Number five is not having enough movement and here again we have to be careful because sometimes the cause for your chronic inflammation can be too much movement and not enough rest because what happens during the time that you exercise you actually create inflammation in your muscles and what we need then for the muscle to grow is some time to rest when you can actually recover so physical activity by itself is not anti -inflammatory sometimes can be even pro -inflammatory is how you manage it so not enough of it creates inflammation this is for sure and moving your body is extremely important for your physical and mental health having too much of it can be also bad so there is important to have balance and my most favorite way to move my body are some low impact exercises like yoga hiking cycling something that moves your body gets your heart pumping even strengthen your muscles but it's still quite gentle and as yoga includes already in the practice itself the rest period.

And here I just want to say if you have to choose between sleep and movement always choose sleep sleep is the most important base that your entire life gets built on it determines how much stress you will be that day it It governs how much junk food you want to eat, it governs your mood, your mental health. It is really so fundamental. So if you have to choose, sleep would be the first option. If you feel you don't have enough of it. Because sometimes when I used to teach the early morning yoga lessons, it was 7 am, sometimes would happen that a girl would come in and would tell me, well, I didn't even sleep tonight, so I could make it to this class or I just slept like 3 -4 hours, but I really pushed myself to wake up, so I make it for this class. And my answer would always be, yeah, that's really wonderful, but next time please just continue sleeping, because this is the end of this video. yoga class will never ever do as much for you as this two or three hours of extra sleep that you would gain would. And even in our retreats, I always tell everyone at the beginning, it is your holiday, it is your well -deserved break and I understand that you wanna experience as much as possible, but if on any given day you wake up and you just feel like you need to sleep more, just sleep in, just skip that morning yoga class and just come for the breakfast.

And the problem number six is a toxic environment, which is something that cannot be completely avoided. Unfortunately, we built most of our cities the way that is not really healthy for us and just being in the city, unfortunately, is pro -inflammatory. It is all the chemicals that we breathe, it's all the electromagnetic waves that we experience through our entire day, it's all the noises, it's all the colors, it's all the lights, it's all the billboards that are flashing into your eyes. All of this is some kind of danger for your body, it perceives it as a danger. So the best anti -inflammatory thing that you can do for yourself is to spend as much time as possible in the nature. Because nature, on the other hand, is extremely anti -inflammatory, is extremely good for calming your nervous system and only spending few hours in the nature can already lower the inflammatory cytokines in your system and the effect actually carries on. It stays with you for some time when you actually return to the city.

I know that for most of us who live in the city, it is not possible to just every other day go and spend a few hours walking in the forest, but most cities have beautiful parks and what you can do to hack your brain to think that you are actually in the nature is first walking in the park and actually watching the trees, making sure that your eyes just land on the green, not watching the concrete sidewalk that you are walking on and then you can take it even step further and actually Play some sounds of the nature in your ears, so just the sound of leaves and birds singing, not listening to any music, not even podcast, but just being in the nature and using all the possible senses that you can use.

So to recap, one chronic stress, two smoking, three pro -inflammatory diet, four not enough sleep, five not enough movement, and six toxic pro -inflammatory environment.

And now at the end, I would like to add two anti -inflammatory things that you can do, but as I said, you need to first take care of those things that actually cause inflammation and then you can add these or together, but taking care of the negative ones, add the positive ones that will help you and speed it up.

So the first one is cold exposure and again, go slow. So not having any experience with that and jumping into ice cold water will likely only create stress and not the hermetic positive one, but the negative that actually rises your inflammation. So step by step, starting with cold showers, this is the best thing you can do in the morning and also increasing the time, start with one minute, continue two minutes, three minutes then maybe you can do only cold without even doing the hot one before and then you might be ready to just immerse yourself in some cold water tub and then you will be ready when there is minus 10 outside to actually make a hole in the eyes and get in and cold exposure is amazing for lowering inflammation in your system, in your joints, in your muscles and it is actually so effective that it is not considered to have cold shower straight after you worked out. If you work out to actually build muscle because the way you actually grow your muscle is that you first break it, create the inflammation and then healing this inflammation later on actually expands the muscle and makes it stronger and if you take the cold shower straight after you worked out you actually don't even let the inflammation to start and you just stop the process of growing your muscle at the beginning. So it just shows how effective it is and that sometimes it can actually work against you.

And the last thing is having sex. And here it is specially for women because stimulation of your nipples, stimulation of your clitoris, the female orgasm are one of the most effective anti -inflammatory things that you can do for yourself. So having an orgasm with your partner but also just with yourself will decrease your inflammation, calm you down. It's relaxing for your nervous system, for your body. It's just incredible for you. So if you are a woman, have sex alone or with someone, it doesn't really matter. It will lower your inflammation regardless.

Thank you so, so much for being here with me today. If you liked this episode and you found it useful, I will be extremely grateful if you can share it with your loved ones, if you can share it publicly in your social media, it will be of a tremendous help to me. Don't forget to try the breathing exercise that you will find in the description of this episode and I wish you wonderful rest of your day and I am looking forward to seeing you again in the next episode.