Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (17 page)

By the time I completed
medical school and residency, these were a few of the things I had been taught:

• Inflammation plays a role in only a few chronic diseases.

• Diet is important in heart disease and diabetes, but otherwise doesn’t make much of a difference.

I’ve since learned that inflammation has a role in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, and on and on. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if every chronic disease has some inflammatory component. Now, you might be wondering if that is good news or bad news. I think it’s good news because it means there is something you can do about it: Eat an anti-inflammatory diet.

You may be familiar with the throbbing feeling you get after a paper cut, or the warm, red swelling that comes with a sprained ankle. These are the white blood cells and other molecules that come along to attack and destroy the cells causing the problem and then clean up the debris. But sometimes this process goes awry.

To describe it simply, if the wrong signals are sent to your immune system, perhaps by eating inflammatory foods, the inflammatory cells and other molecules may mistakenly get called into action and instructed to attack healthy parts of your body. The more time they spend in circulation—because you’re eating inflammatory food throughout the day, for example—the more opportunity they have to damage your blood vessels and lead to a heart attack, or destroy cartilage and cause rheumatoid arthritis, or alter DNA and change healthy cells into cancerous cells.

An easy way to control this activity is to add more anti-inflammatory foods to your diet. The first three foods on the list are vegetables, vegetables, vegetables! For anyone who disregards dietary recommendations because they are always changing, remember this: No one ever said, “Don’t eat your vegetables!” They are healthy in so many ways, including the fact that they decrease inflammation. Veggie sprouts are great, too. Ounce for ounce, they are even healthier than the full-grown vegetable. And you can grow them on your kitchen counter.

Fruits also have a wonderful array of nutrients and are anti-inflammatory. They get second billing because some are really sweet, like dates and tropical fruits. Go for the fruits with the least natural sugar, such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples, and grapefruit.

One of the most talked-about components of an anti-inflammatory diet is omega-3 fatty acids. These are healthy fats and one reason fish gets promoted so heavily. In fact, cold-water fish are full of omega-3s, but they are also often full of toxins such as mercury from the waters they live in. There are a number of vegan options for omega-3 fatty acids, like algae (I know, not everyone is going to think this is vegan or even sounds appealing). Nuts and nut oils are in general anti-inflammatory because of their high omega-3 content. Flaxseeds and oil, hemp seeds and oil, chia seeds, walnuts, and marine phytoplankton are all high in omega-3. Extravirgin olive oil is anti-inflammatory, too, probably because it is high in monounsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid.

Spices such as turmeric (the ingredient in curry powder that makes it yellow), ginger, and hot red peppers are anti-inflammatory, as is garlic—so don’t be afraid to flavor your food! One last anti-inflammatory food to mention is green tea, which is great in moderation.

Now on to inflammatory foods. I’ll start with sugar. In medical school I was thrilled to learn that, unless you had diabetes, the only problem with sugar was that it caused cavities. Ah, if that were only true! In a 2004 study of patients with diabetes that appeared in the journal
Metabolism,
participants were given a sugar drink, and then their blood was tested for inflammation.

Within one hour of drinking the sugar, the level of inflammation in their bodies rose, and the effect lasted three hours. You can just imagine what might happen if you are snacking on sweetened foods throughout the day for months on end.

Refined grains come next as an inflammatory food because, once they are digested, they are almost the same as sugar. When you eat a piece of white bread or white rice, the food turns into blood sugar so quickly, the effect on your body isn’t much different from eating sugar itself.

Trans fats are also among the worst inflammatory offenders. These fats are created when vegetable oil has been partially hydrogenated to become solid at room temperature, like stick margarine.

Heating food to high temperatures is also proinflammatory. A 2002 study in the journal
PNAS
looked at two groups of people with diabetes. One group was fed food heated at a low temperature; this decreased the amount of inflammation in their bodies. The other group was fed the same exact food, but heated to a high temperature; this increased the amount of inflammation in their bodies. So even if you are not eating a raw vegan diet, at least try not to grill, roast, or fry your food. Instead, simmer, steam, or gently sauté food over medium to low heat. Use a slow cooker to cook dried beans. You are better off cooking something
at a low temperature for a long time than at a high temperature for a short time.

Being overweight is inflammatory. Fat cells, especially the ones that sit around your waist and belly, are the most dangerous because they actually produce inflammation. Keeping your weight in check is a great anti-inflammatory move—and an anti-inflammatory diet will help you do that, including the Crazy Sexy Diet.

Lilli B. Link, MD
, is a boardcertified internist currently practicing as a nutritional counselor in New York City. She specializes in raw foods and integrative nutrition. Visit her at
www.llinkmd.com
.