Anti Inflammatory Foods and Diet

							I've been doing a lot of research recently into inflammation and how it affects our
lifestyles and quality of living. Eating anti-inflammatory foods and herbs seems to be
an overarching way of increasing the quality of a person's life over a long period of
time. In the modern day and age, people are living longer than ever before. But is the
quality of that life improving as well? One has to ask themselves the question, it really
worthwhile to live till I'm 90 if the last 15 years of my life are filled with things like
chemotherapy, alzheimers, and arthritis? It seems that even though people are living
longer and longer, the amount of illnesses and ailments present in the modern world
seem to be on the rise as well.

One of the big proponents of this is our diets. No one will argue that the Standard
American Diet is absolutely replete with unhealthy foods. The amount of processing,
preserving, artificial coloring and sweetening in the Standard American Diet is pretty
staggering. Many of the foods we eat actually seem to cause a state of general
inflammation in the body. Inflammation in and of itself is actually a protection
mechanism the body uses to isolate harmful things and process them. Inflammation
happens when a person gets bit by a poisonous bug, or when a sudden impact causes
blunt force trauma to a particular region of the body. By swelling and isolating the
region, the body can best protect itself from further harm and take steps to repair the
damage.

The problem occurs when our bodies are encouraged toward an inflammatory state
due to the foods that we eat. Foods in general are said to either be anti-inflammatory
or pro-inflammatory. As you can imagine, foods that are pro-inflammatory will
increase the amount of inflammation a person experiences in various parts of their
body. Pain will generally increase, and the risk of many chronic diseases also seems to
go up. Foods like junk foods, fast foods, sugar, processed foods and high fat meats are
at the top of the list of anti inflammatory foods. When a person's body is in a state of
higer inflammation, things like arthritis seem to grow especially worse and the
corresponding pain also seems to go up.

Eating foods that are generally anti-inflammatory and adding in herbs and spices that
have anti-inflammatory effects are a great way to boost overall health over a long
period of time. There is a lot of literature that has already been written about
anti-inflammatory diets and anyone interested in the topic should definitely continue
to do research on the subject. I originally began doing research when I found out that
arthritis runs in our family. I wanted to see if there was anything that I could do that
would help stop the arthritis before it ever started. That led me to the realm of
anti-inflammatory herbs and foods. I found that in general, to keep a mindset of
avoiding foods that caused inflammation in the body would lead to an overall state of
wellness and would help the body fight chronic diseases like arthritis and other things.
So in a way, having a heritage of arthritis in my family was almost a blessing because
it led me to research about ways to improve my overall health.