While you seek to incorporate more from our last post that can help decrease inflammation and pain, there are also foods you should stay away from. The fallowing products have all been shown to increase inflammation in the body. By increasing inflammation they can increase pain, chances of diabetes and heart disease as well. Keeping with the same theme of 6, the fallowing 6 products (not all these are foods) are ones to avoid to have a healthier life with less pain.
Sugar
From sugary drinks to tasty cookies or the many products that have added sugar we didn’t even realize excess sugar seems to be everywhere in our diets. This maybe one of the toughest to avoid because sugar can actually be addicting to our body. Too much sugar in our diets can cause our body to send out extra immune messengers called cytokines. That increased immune response will increase inflammation in our body.
Alcohol
Alcohol is just naturally irritating to our insides. Alcohol like others on this list turn immediately into sugar when metabolized and has similar inflammatory effects. While if just drinking modestly it can only provide a minor disturbance when you have too many drinks bacteria can more easily pass through your intestines lining leading to irritation and inflammation.
Trans fats
Trans fats have been slowly leaving our diets over the last few years as more information on their negative effects has come out. Many companies are cutting back on trans-fats to try and promote a more healthy image. Still trans-fats are still out there look for hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated oils on the labels to avoid. Trans fats can induce inflammation by damaging the cells that line the blood vessels.
Smoking
Smoking another addicting substance will cause vascular injury that creates an immune response to attempt to repair. That immune response being triggered several times a day can lead to chronic inflammation.
Milk
Yes, even milk can cause inflammation. Many people are aware of lactose intolerance that effects about 5 percent of the population (Northern European) up to 90% (East Asian) depending on where your ancestors are from. Many more people are not clinically lactose intolerant but have difficulty digesting milk, in fact it has been estimated 65% of adults have difficulty digesting lactose. This difficulty in digesting can lead to an inflammatory response.
Refined carbohydrates
When you think refined carbohydrates think of your white breads or pastas. These are products that have went under a little extra processing and have taken a lot of the positive aspects of the food out. These foods quickly turn into sugar in the body and therefore have similar effects to sugar itself. In a recent study when compared to people who eat more whole grains as opposed to refined grains lower concentration of two inflammation markers were noted in the group who ate more whole grains.
Avoid these 6 and seek out the previous 6 foods to decrease inflammation and pain!