Your Food and How it Can Cause Inflammation

Does your food cause your inflammation?

Do you like it spicy, oily, caramelized, food cooked for hours in that mmm yummy sauce? Or you're a rainbow eater, a vegetable juicer, or a raw food lover?

The food you eat will either cause inflammation or help you combat inflammation in your body. How?

• Your food will help your body by feeding you with nutrients and also feeding your microbiome that will digest your indigested part of that food. The byproduct of that digestion will feed your cells who will produce energy that your body needs. Thus increasing your overall health.

• Your food containing too much sugar, fat and processed food, will overwork your body, harm your intestinal lining, which may cause inflammation. These types of food will promote the growth of unfriendly microbiome. This microbiome will in turn feast on your undigested food, which will make them proliferate in your gut. This will promote inflammation, making you sick, overweight etc.

How does food cause inflammation?

The food you consume plays an important role in your body it can cause inflammation. The digestive microbiome release chemicals that may promote or suppress inflammation. The type of your intestinal microbiome that populates your gut contribute to your health through biosynthesis of vitamins and essential amino acids.

Your microbiome also, through fermentation generates important byproducts from your undigested food(fiber), Like Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA), vitamin K and B. SCFA vary according to the food you eat.

SCFAs Butyrate and Propianate play a role in regulating your immune system and controlling intestinal inflammation.

Acetate, another SCFA, is a major energy source for your intestinal wall cells. They contribute to strengthening your intestinal barrier.

The main source of SCFA are carbohydrates, thus a diet of high fiber low fat, sugar and meat is the optimum.

However, a diet of low fiber and high in FAT, sugar and processed food will produce less SCFA. Since this diet will promote the growth of the unfriendly bacteria, it will hence cause or exacerbate inflammation leading to more complex health issues.

Which food cause inflammation?

• Diets that high in sugar, refined starches and trans fat cause inflammation.

• Food cooked in high temperatures, chemical preservatives, and unnatural ingredients will cause inflammation

Sugar

It's referred to as white 'death'. Unfortunately, sugar is almost in every processed and packed cooked food you can get out there!

Sugar can be considered addictive, the more you eat food that has sugar the more you want to eat again. Food industry has known how to play this trick on people by adding sugar in food. The more you consume that kind of food, the more you buy, and the more money they make.

High sugar intake reduces immune systems cell activities due to lack of vitamin C.

Since cancer cells can easily synthesize carbohydrates for themselves by using glucose and fructose as their food, therefore sugar promotes cancer and weakens the immune system.

High glucose promotes pro-inflammation cytokines (cytokines are small proteins produced by cells to facilitate cells communication).

Animal products

Meat, processed or non processed are associated with high CPR (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein).

High consumption of red meat and high proteins are suggested to increase the risk of inflammation in polyarthritis.

A study performed on mice showed that methionine, in red meat, pork and lamb can cause heart dysfunction by increasing oxidative stress and cause inflammation.

AGEs

Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs) or Glocotoxins, are created through the reaction between reducing sugar and free amino acids of proteins, lipids or nucleic acid during the cooking process.

This reaction is known as Maillard; you know, that brown-caramelized color that makes you salivate on bread, biscuits, cakes, and meat? It's this chemical reaction that browns food during cooking at high temperatures.

You already have AGEs in your body. You acquire additional from food. They're naturally in uncooked meat. Cooking meat results in the formation of more new AGEs in the meat.

Though AGES are high in fat per gram, but meat will contribute to more intake since it's served in large quantities than fat.

Grilling, broiling, frying, roasting, and baking propagate and accelerates the formation of new AGEs.

When high levels of AGEs reach into body tissues and/or circulatory system they become pathogenic. These pathogenic effects are known to have the ability to promote Oxidative Stress and cause inflammation. AGEs bind to the cell surface or cross-link with body proteins altering their structures and functions.

Avoiding AGEs in food will help delay chronic diseases and aging. Eating a plant-based diet is one way of reducing AGEs, as carbohydrates contain low AGEs due to high water content and the presences of vitamins and antioxidants.

But, Nevertheless, you should avoid cooking them in high temperatures to avoid the formation of AGEs.

Trans Fats

Trans fats are found in food originated from animals and are also found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
Take note; partially hydrogenated oils contain transfats while fully hydrogenated oils don't.

Hydrogenated means adding more hydrogen in oils altering their chemical structure. This prevents rancidity and prolongs oils shelf life. This process transforms the oils into saturated fat which is not good for your health.

A lot of processed foods and a lot of fried foods have trans fats in them. Some dairy and meat foods have trans fats (naturally present) but in a small amount.

Margarine, shortening, and butter are well-known solid fat containing trans fat.

Heating Vegetable Oils Create Harmful Oxidation Byproducts!
High-temperature like stir-frying and deep-frying can cause the formation of trans fat in oils through oxidation. The higher temperature accelerates the reaction rates of oxidation and then more trans fat is generated.

Excessive trans fats in your food may cause inflammation, as a result, increasing a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and other chronic conditions.
Trans fats promote the risk of developing cancer. They contribute to insulin resistance, which increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Grains and lectins

The most modified and processed grains are wheat and corn, which can cause some health issues.

Gluten from wheat is the most studied due to it's known to cause inflammation in many people's health like diabetes, celiac disease, obesity etc.

We, humans, don't have enzymes to completely break down gluten into amino acids.

According to Dr. FASANO, Gluten will increase intestinal permeability in everybody, but this, however, doesn't mean that everyone will have health issues related to gluten.

Nevertheless, intestinal permeability may lead to other diseases like liver; When toxins get into the bloodstream through the leaky gut, the toxins might cause inflammation in your liver during the blood purification.

Lectin is found in all food. Unless you are having any allergy with any given food, you can't be allergic to every food, can you? Then please don't board the anti-lectin wagon.

Whole grains are beneficial to your health, they don't cause inflammation but rather reduce it. Include them in your food rather than the processed ones.

Omega 6

I have believed for a long time, through past studies that a high intake of polyunsaturated fat that contains omega 6 is bad for you. As I compose this post, I have read many medical articles from different journals. There's some contradiction as to whether omega 6 cause inflammation or not. Some articles attest that the theory is not true.

I, therefore, can't give you any caution here but I will do further research.

Nevertheless, I can advise you on is to restrict the use of high fats and oils in your diets, as this can add a load of work to your precious liver.

You can use COLD PRESSED Olive oil, I have done good research on olive oil, and it's known to promote health and helps in fighting inflammation.

To sum up

The role of food is to provide you with enough macro and micro-nutrients to fulfill daily requirements and well being. I feel like saying, the role of food is to help you fight inflammation, especially when you're dealing with chronic inflammation! Limiting the food that can cause inflammation is the best thing you can do to your health.

There's no magic bullet when it comes to food sensitivity in Rheumatoid Arthritis. As you have found in the article Microbiome, we all have a unique microbiome. This will determine how you break down the food you eat.

But optimizing for healthy food will obviously help you alleviate some inflammation and also improve your general health.

I, personally have found changing diet a game changer in dealing with my RA since I don't take any medication. I limit any food that can cause inflammation as much as I can.

Hope you'll find this content helpful and thus improve your way of eating to help yourself reduce inflammation as that is my sole goal. Leave a comment to help others as well.

Sending you my love Githu.

Resource
-EJC....https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-017-0009-6
-Oxford Academic....https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/147/1/78/4630424?searchresult=1
- Mind Body Green....https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-14098/7-scary-ways-meat-is-messing-up-your-body.html
-PMC....https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4424767/
-Root Cause Medical Clinic..https://rootcausemedicalclinic.com/blog/is-gluten-damaging-your-liver/...
-Havard Medical School..https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/fighting-inflammation-at-the-meal-table...
-The Lectin Report...http://www.krispin.com/lectin.html