Does what you eat impact inflammation in your body?

Every week here on Total Information a.m. We look at our nutrition with Michelle Wilson. She is a registered dietitian with Brands Nutrition. Good morning, Michelle. Good morning. I would like to talk today about anti-inflammation diets. I see a lot of stuff on social media. I hear a lot of people talking about inflammation in their bodies. So I feel like we could really benefit from learning more about this. inflammation in your body a real thing. Of course, yeah, absolutely. Inflammation in your body is a real thing and it's not necessarily a bad thing. So our body has natural inflammatory responses. So things like having a fever or our blood clotting or swelling, you know, those are all inflammatory responses and we need those things for our body to function. So there are benefits to having inflammatory responses. But there are also things that, you know, can cause inflammation and having like inflammation. inflammatory diseases like arthritis that can cause a lot of discomfort. So we definitely naturally have them and we have some diseases and disorders related to them as well. Can we help our bodies with what we eat when it comes to inflammation? Absolutely. So incorporating a wide variety of nutrition can help our body to have a good balance of having like these good inflammatory responses and maybe reduce down on this discomfort that we feel from some diseases and disorders. However, there is a little bit of a fad where we want to have like no inflammation at all. And I think that that's where things get a little tricky. What would happen if we tried to reduce? inflammation too much in our bodies? So if we're trying to reduce it too much, we might not naturally have those responses that we're, you know, I was talking about that are healthy and helpful for our bodies, but also we could be. accidentally too restrictive with our diet. So I've heard a lot related to reducing down or eliminating gluten and dairy and then people getting these inflammatory tests done where they feel like, oh, I'm allergic to green beans and I can't have those anymore because of these inflammatory markers. And that can cause diets to be way too restrictive. And it can be a bit of misinformation because an allergy is very different than an inflammatory response. And so then people are eliminating things that they might not need to eliminate. and being severely restrictive with their diet. One of the other things that I've heard people say, and I've had several people recently said, they cut out sugar because of inflammation. Is that accurate? Is that a myth?

Yeah, so our bodies naturally need carbohydrates. It naturally needs sugar. So I would say that cutting out sugar would not be something that I would advise. There can be ways to add nutrients into your diet to reduce down inflammation. However, cutting out sugar that, you know, for one... That might not be very easy. But for two, we have that satisfaction factor that comes with having a good variety of things and having spontaneous experiences like with friends and getting like having your own birthday cake. I feel like those things are important to incorporate that enjoyment piece too. So how do we know when maybe we don't have? healthy levels of inflammation in our body. What would be some signs that we would know or ways we would feel? Yeah. So the main thing would be like if we're not having regular digestion, then that could be something that could be concerning. So having that good balance, like if you're incorporating more fruits or vegetables because you're wanting to reduce inflammation, then we want to give our body time to adjust for absorbing. those nutrients well and digesting fiber. And so we might naturally have bloating. Part of our digestive system is to bloat and that's okay too. But having those things regularly move through would be very important. And like I was saying with like the blood clotting factor. So getting enough vitamin K helps with blood cladding for instance. And so if you're, if you get cut and then it just seems like, oh, this is just like bleeding forever. It's not scabbing up. So that would be a. a reason to be concerned about something like that. No, I don't want to beat a dead horse because I feel like you've kind of answered this, but I want to ask it in another way, you know, are there foods that trigger inflammation? So I would say that those... Vitamin K containing foods can cause inflammation in a positive way. There can be some responses naturally in the body to like sugar or dairy or gluten. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I would say that if you cut out something like dairy and gluten, then our body doesn't have the digestive enzymes to break that down anymore. And so if you eliminate dairy and gluten but then reintroduce it, then that can cause a whole heck of a lot of responses in your body. And then you can think, oh, well, this was causing all of these problems. But really not having it and then having it is going to cause an imbalance. So I would say that all foods definitely fit. They all have a great way to incorporate them. And our body knows what to do with them to digest them. But if you have allergies or intolerances or you know that with. inflammatory bowel diseases or things that you have certain trigger foods, then that would be what to pay attention to. So everybody as an individual has their own things that their body just doesn't settle well with. Like if you have acid reflux, then you're going to have these responses to certain foods if it's high in citrus or high in spice or you have like a lot of tomato on something, you know, that doesn't settle well with me. So that individualization is actually what's important rather than demonizing a category of foods. How important is it to have a conversation?

about this with either your doctor or someone like yourself who dives deep into nutrition. I would definitely say talking to a dietitian about it can be important because doctors... are not experts in nutrition. They have a little bit of knowledge, but they get a lot of misinformation just like the general population does. So they might think, oh, yeah, well, you can try eliminating dairy and eliminating gluten and see how that goes. But that's a pretty intense way to respond to, like, whatever your concerns are. So I would say definitely working with a dietitian can be helpful for individualization for those nutrition needs. Fantastic. Michelle, thank you so much, as always. Thank you. That is Michelle Wilson. She's a registered dietitian with Braille. Trans Nutrition.