The right diet can help you feel healthier and improve your overall quality of life. But which diet is best? In this guide on the healing diet, you’ll learn about the most effective approaches to reducing inflammation and pain without harmful medications or invasive procedures. Read on to discover some great tips and tricks that can lead to better health and reduced pain in less time than ever before!
The Healing Diet: Identify Foods That Cause Inflammation Pain
What you put into your body matters. Everyone knows this. But while most media and diet industry attention focuses on concerns such as obesity and high blood pressure, much less attention is given to how the foods we eat contribute to pain, stiffness and swelling throughout the body.
The body looks very different at the cellular level. When viewed under a microscope you can see that our bodies are covered with an inter-cellular matrix of connective tissue.
This tissue, called the extracellular matrix (ECM), forms a boundary between cells and is made up of collagen fibers. These fibers can be stiffened by inflammation.
When food particles irritate the gut lining or come in contact with cells through damaged intestinal lining, they release inflammatory chemicals that can cause both short-term and chronic inflammation throughout the body.
The foods we regularly consume have a profound effect on the structural integrity of these ECMs. For example, processed grains tend to cause the ECM surrounding joints to deteriorate because they contain too many gluten proteins which are difficult for those with celiac disease, and even WITHOUT celiac to digest. This is due primarily to the nature of wheat in the present day. It has been hybridized to beyond a ridiculous level (increasing the number of chromosomes to almost that of a human being), it is mostly genetically modified, and usually harvested too young. All of these contribute to the indigestibility of most wheat (and white flour, which is also wheat) foods.
Many other substances found in foods also induce inflammatory reactions like sugar alcohols and trans fats which reduce cell membrane capacity to take in healthy substances and eliminate unhealthy substances from inside the cell.
The naturopathic healing approach works towards healing at the cellular level, meaning liver cells, kidney cells, skin cells, nerve cells, etc. If the cell membrane is inflamed from bad habits of eating and toxin accumulation, it cannot accept the ‘healing signals’ received from nutritional supplements, hormone support, even food signals.
This is why we recommend a healing diet with protocols designed to reduce inflammation and pain naturally at a deeper cellular level, so that your body is finally able to fight back effectively against all the lesser problems that keep popping up!
What Foods Repair Cells
Just as there are foods that increase inflammation, there are other foods that aid in repairing cell membranes and connective tissue. Healing diet foods fall into several categories including building block foods and foods that reduce inflammation.
Foods That Reduce Inflammation
The first group of healing diet foods help reduce inflammation. These are foods such as turmeric and omega-3 fatty acids.
Omega-3s are well known for their wide ranging health benefits and can be pulled from many sources. The most common sources include flaxseed oil, hemp seed oil, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds (for vegetarians), soybean oil, walnuts and fish.
Turmeric, another inflammation-reducing food, is a spice commonly used in Indian dishes as well as tea blends. The taste may be unfamiliar but it helps reduce swelling in joints.
The healing diet protocols we design for our patients incorporate these and other inflammation reducing foods.
Building Block Foods
The second group of healing diet foods are essential nutrients that allow your body to make all of its building blocks—this includes vitamins B, C, A and E, amino acids, anti-oxidants, etc. Choosing the foods to source these nutrients can be tricky when you’re trying to avoid inflammatory foods.
For example, avocado is a fruit that has vitamin C and carotenoids which are powerful antioxidants that protect cells against damage. Avocado also contains ‘fat’ but there is little relationship between plant based ‘fat’ and weight gain. However, they DO help with essential fatty acid needs and are easier to digest than animal sources of such fatty acids.
Other good sources of vitamin C include citrus fruits such as grapefruit or oranges as well as kiwi fruit or green peppers if you want something with less sugar content. You may wish to augment your food based nutrient sources with a high quality nutritional support grown in organic soils and carries more concentrated support.
Vegetables like tomatoes contain lycopene which is also an antioxidant that protects cells against free radical damage and stimulates new blood vessel formation for wound healing, therefore helping to repair cells faster than usual.
Please understand and remember, the quality of the soils in the western world generally are poor and so the nutrients you seek in an orange, pepper or tomato for instance, is not as high as it could be due to deficient soils. Also, it is important to note that the USRDA of nutrient need is so low that it could barely keep a child alive if they weren’t getting more nutrient support and in a higher quality than that found on grocery store shelves, or places like GNC, Walgreens, Costco, etc.
At Synergetics Health and Wellness, this knowledge combined with information about your health history allows us to create a diet plan that provides the healing benefits you need while avoiding hidden pitfalls.
Adopt a Healing Diet to Improve Cellular Membrane Capacity
If the cell membrane is inflamed from bad habits of eating and toxin accumulation, then none of the healing we need can take place deeply enough to stop fighting the smaller battles.
Many larger health problems can be contributed to the body’s cell structure being in a less than optimal state to absorb the many different assaults it faces on a daily basis.
It is possible to obtain high dosing nutrition via IV and some complementary and naturopathic physicians can provide those. The body is more able to absorb them via bypassing a possibly compromised gut, but this is not the ideal way to provide them after perhaps 2-3 of them at monthly intervals. By that point, you should be much less deficient and able to continue to support via oral dosing.
B vitamins are available intravenously which boosts energy levels as well as reduces mental fogginess often found in patients with conditions like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.
When you support the cellular membrane, by reducing foods that contribute to inflammation, hydrate effectively (it’s not what you think), combine foods properly, avoid foods that are full of ingredients you cannot pronounce and shouldn’t eat, supporting the digestive process, and often utilizing a cellular membrane healing and detoxification protocol, amazing shifts in health symptoms can and do occur.
For more additional information about building a healing diet/protocol for yourself or a loved one contact Dr. Johnson at Synergetics Health and Wellness at 702-240-3533 to schedule a health consultation.