Are you inflamed?

In the last several years, ‘inflammation’ has become a bit of a buzzword in various health spaces, predominantly in alternative health practices. 

There’s a handful of gurus pioneering the movement towards an ‘anti-inflammatory lifestyle’, and thousands of lay people claiming on social media to have discovered natural means to cure their inflammation-related problems.

The hashtag ‘inflammation’ has 1.3 million posts on Instagram alone.

But what even is inflammation?

The first things that come to mind for people seem to include bloating, skin concerns, feeling ‘puffy’, sore or stiff joints, painful cramps, fatigue, digestive issues, or getting sick often. 

The anti-inflammatory lifestyle is supposed to heal these concerns through nutritional and lifestyle practices, such as eliminating processed foods, consuming more ‘gut-friendly’ foods like sauerkraut and kefir, sitting in front of a red LED panel and using a gua sha.

Then, of course, some practitioners would advise patients to take things a step further and completely avoid storing food in plastic or buying food in either plastic packaging or in a can, only wear clothes of natural fibres, switch out all of your skincare, cosmetics, toothpaste, cleaning products and cookware (no Teflon pans around here), and pretty much never go out to eat at a restaurant or a friend’s house, ever. 

So, if your PCOS or your psoriasis hasn’t gone away by the time you next see your naturopath, they can say, ‘Well, I suppose you didn’t do all of those things properly, did you?’. 

And even if you did do all of those things and haven’t seen the results you were expecting, you’re then told that ‘you need to trust the process’, or even ‘perhaps it’s your stress levels then’ (as if you were supposed to be completely chill about the whole rearranging your whole lifestyle and completely isolating yourself thing). 

You can probably sense that I’m a bit cynical. 

Maybe because I’ve been there myself. 

When I was 14, I followed an anti-inflammatory diet, before I even knew it was a thing. I read about eliminating ‘inflammatory foods’ and ‘healing the gut’ in a book called ‘The Healthy Skin Diet’, with the hopes that in 8 weeks, I’d be free of the acne that so greatly affected my self-confidence. 

Fast forward, after following this very rigid plan as best I could, down to the niche grocery ingredients and time-consuming recipes, my skin looked no different. I felt defeated, wondering if I needed to be even more diligent, if the one or two ‘slip-ups’ I had might have been the reason, or if I just needed more time on the diet.

But I’d already lost a lot of weight when I didn’t need to; I was becoming frail and low in energy. After all, I was an active teenager with high energy needs. Even at that age, I got the sense that this kind of plan wasn’t written for somebody like me. So I stopped the diet, went on Roaccutane which completely cleared my skin, and haven’t looked back. 

Does this mean that I don’t believe in inflammation, or that diet doesn’t have an effect on our inflammation levels? Of course not. 

What I learnt at university is that in chronic health conditions, inflammation is a primary indicator of disease. It is the body’s way of repairing damage that has occurred through injury, stress or infection. It can be caused through multiple pathways and can be either chronic (such as in autoimmune conditions) or acute (such as when you burn your skin). 

With regard to where diet plays into the inflammation puzzle, there actually have been scientific studies correlating certain food components to how much they either increase or decrease inflammatory markers in the body. These food components have been ranked according to what’s called a Dietary Inflammatory Index, which has then been used in population studies to determine how dietary patterns contribute to total inflammation levels. 

That is how scientists came to the conclusion that dietary patterns similar to the Mediterranean Diet – i.e. lots of fresh produce, legumes, wholegrains, fish, small amounts of meat and olive oil - are helpful for lowering inflammation and reducing chronic disease risk. 

However, this does not mean that you can rid yourself of diseases or prevent them from ever happening, simply by having an anti-inflammatory diet. And this is the lie that I find so frustrating with the alternative health industry. It puts the onus back on the individual to be able to cure themselves, framing it as ‘empowering’, but really, it’s just gaslighting people into believing their health concerns are their fault. 

See Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ for a clear example of how the messaging of ‘if I just eat clean enough, I can rid myself of this illness’ is not only scientifically miscontrued, it can be life-threatening to forgo medical treatment in the instance of diseases. 

So, can you lower inflammation through diet? It depends what’s causing the inflammation to begin with and how it’s presenting. Maybe - if the inflammation is related to cardiovascular health and insulin resistance, but probably not if the inflammation is related to breaking a bone. Many people seem to greatly overestimate the role diet plays in inflammation, a lot of the time it’s related to things which might be out of our control. 

Is it good to eat in an anti-inflammatory way? In general, yes - but remember, an anti-inflammatory dietary pattern is about the overall diet, not individual components. You will not spontaneously combust if you eat pizza or icecream, or cook on a non-stick pan. 

Basically, remember to eat plenty of fruit and veg, and mostly stuff you prepare at home. Try not to get takeaways too often, (unless you’re really going through a tough time - I get it!). You don’t need to overcomplicate it, but also don’t rule out seeing a doctor or taking medication if you ever need it. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed at being healthy, in fact - it means you’re being responsible at looking after yourself!

Oh, and maybe swipe past those videos of people claiming to have ‘fixed’ their inflammation. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Lx