How to eat an anti-inflammatory diet

Podcast 6 – Part 2

http://media.blubrry.com/pledgetraining/content.blubrry.com/pledgetraining/Antiinflammatory_Diets.mp3

Link to Anti-Inflammatory Diet Plans Overvies: Anti-Inflammatory Diet Plans

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The two main dietary issues that cause inflammation are a high glycemic load from eating a large amount of high glycemic carbohydrates and a diet high in oxidized oils. Both of these create excess free radicals in the body causing that cellular ‘lightning strike’ style of damage, which causes the inflammation, to let the body know that damage happened and to begin the repair process.

 

That being said, there are two main strategies to counteract this – lower the amount of inflammation that our diet causes, and eat a diet that is high in anti-inflammatory compounds to soak up these free radicals.

 

I’ll begin with the foods to avoid in the two main categories of ‘inflammatory compounds’: high glycemic index foods and foods high in oxidized oils.

High glycemic index foods

 

The Glycemic Index, or GI, is a relative ranking of carbohydrates in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels. A higher Glycemic Index indicates that a carbohydrate is digested more quickly and raises blood glucose levels higher. A low Glycemic Index means that the carbohydrate is digested more slowly and raises blood glucose levels to a lower extent.

 

The GI value of a food is determined by feeding a group of healthy people a portion of a food containing 50 grams of digestible carbohydrate and then measuring the effect on their blood glucose levels over the next two hours. On a separate occasion, the same group of people consume 50 grams of the sugar glucose (which is used as the reference food to compare all carbohydrates to) and their blood glucose levels are measured over two hours. Glycemic Index is then calculated by comparing the blood glucose response from a food to the response to the pure sugar glucose.

Foods with a high GI score contain rapidly digested carbohydrate, which produces a large rapid rise and and then a rapid fall in blood glucose. Diets chronically high in GI result in a constant blood sugar spikes; this increases the amount of proteins that have glucose attached to them, leading to inflammation like Dr. Brooks talked about. In a clinical setting, this is measured by looking at the percentage of hemoglobin in the blood that has glucose bound to it, or Hemoglobin A1C; this is a common way that diabetes is monitored. It is also a good measurement of how much inflammation is taking place secondary to blood sugar.

Some foods are fairly obviously high on the glycemic index, and these would include anything with added sugar, like icecream, cookies, and sodas. Other foods that are high on the glycemic index include anything made from grain (bread, pasta, noodles), rice, starchy vegetables like potatoes, as well as fruits and fruit juices.

In contrast, foods low in GI score contain slowly digested carbohydrate, which produces a gradual, relatively low rise in the levels of blood glucose therefore keeping blood sugar and insulin stable. Diets that are high in low glycemic index carbohydrates promote stable insulin,