Inflammation: The Silent Killer

Apr

16

Inflammation – The Silent Killer

Filed under: health and nutrition; Tagged as: Antioxidant Level, antioxidants, blueberries, free radicals, Fruits And Vegetables, green tea, heart disease, natural diet, nutrition, ORAC, Orac Rating, Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, Reduce Inflammation

Several years ago this heading was on the cover of Time Magazine. The article was about how heart disease, Parkinson’s and cancer and many other diseases are caused by inflammation. Antioxidants reduce inflammation and protect cells from damage which obviously lowers the risk of these diseases and improves the immune system.

So how do you measure how many antioxidants you’re getting? There is a measurement of a food’s antioxidant level we call ORAC which stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. So the higher the ORAC rating, the more “free radicals” and therefore, inflammation a food can fight. However, keep in mind, a food’s ORAC and it’s ability to fight free radicals can change based on whether the food is cooked, dried or raw.

What foods are high in antioxidants? People often think first of fruits and vegetables. That’s true, they are, especially fruit such as blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, spinach (notice they are all dark colored ). However, nuts, especially pecans and beans, primarily the dark colored ones (pinto, red, kidney) are all great sources of antioxidants as well as many herbs and spices. As far as beverages, green tea and pomegranate juice are both in the spotlight as studies are showing their potential benefits in protecting against many diseases.

While being aware of what ORAC means is good information, more important is to eat a widely varied natural diet, remembering that we were meant to be hunters and gatherers. If you choose your diet based on that, you’ll most likely get the nutrients your body needs and combat the free radicals you’re being bombarded with on a daily basis.

Keep in mind that it must be a varied diet as all antioxidants are not the same – they combat different types of free radicals in the body. So if you just loaded up with spinach, you would miss out on the enormous benefits of something like curcumin. Recent studies show that curcumin has enormous anti-inflammatory capabilities and may even be able to suppress cancer at various stages. In fact, there are ongoing studies on curcumin and it’s potential affect on atherosclerosis, high cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease. These are exciting studies and may give us a natural way to combat some of the most deadly diseases we face.

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2 Comments

2 responses to “Inflammation – The Silent Killer”

Karen April 18th, 2009 at 20:25

I agree that it would be great if eating a balanced diet would give us all the antioxidants, etc. that we need but with the nutritional value of our food declining and the amount of free radicals that we are being hit with increasing, I’m not sure that a balanced diet is enough. I’d like to think it was but when you consider that the number of free radicals that we get hit with in one day is equal to the number our ancesters were hit with in their entire life, I think it’s beyond just a balanced diet. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are hunters and gatherers and if we look to a diet that emulates that we will supply our body with much of it’s needs.
memory foam April 18th, 2009 at 04:25

Thanks, great article. I think this area of inflammation is perhaps the most important area where just simple diet changes can make a huge difference. Eating a balanced diet is usually more helpful than taking supplements due to better absorption.