A recent study published by Cambridge University Press indicated that, based on self-reported habits, 57% of American adults consume a diet with “a high potential for supporting pro-inflammatory processes.” While the study only requested self-report data over a 24 hour period, the data nonetheless highlights a concerning trend that a high percentage of Americans are choosing to consume foods with the potential to cause harm to their bodies and compromise their mental and physical performance.
The Findings
The study requested self-reports on the content of diet from a group of 34,547 participants in a study designed to analyze socio-demographic differences in the contents of the diets of Americans, and how their diets had the potential to affect the levels of inflammation they experienced. The study used the Dietary Inflammatory Index, a rating scale designed to provide people with useful information about the impact of the food they eat on their body, specifically how much inflammation it usually causes. Since inflammation is linked to a wide variety of health conditions, studying the intake of associated foods can help us learn about the relationship between inflammation and adverse health outcomes — precisely one of the goals that the study in question provides useful information to work towards.
The study found that 57% of Americans consume a relatively high amount of foods that can increase inflammation. This number was consistently higher among men, younger people, non-Hispanic black adults, and people with lower incomes and less education. With the exception of young people, there is some correlation with the demographics of those with higher incidence of chronic heart disease — something that would likely be of little surprise to anyone studying a DNP program online, MSN to DNP programs online, or similar courses, who would have a strong understanding of the relationship between inflammation and chronic illness.
What is inflammation?
Inflammation is the process of your body’s immune system reacting to an infection, trauma, or some other malady. This normally involves some degree of tissue swelling (sometimes visible, sometimes not so much) or even discoloration as red and white blood cells and other components of your body’s immune system rush to the site of the irregularity and begin work to isolate and destroy unfavorable foreign bodies and begin the healing process. The common types or signs of inflammation that you’ll be familiar with are bruises, swelling around an injury, or a fever.
While some inflammation is a normal and healthy part of your body’s immune response, excessive or chronic inflammation can cause serious issues — indeed, chronic inflammatory diseases are the most significant cause of death globally. Chronic inflammatory conditions include diabetes, allergies, arthritis, and conditions related to heart function and blood flow, like CVD and COPD that cause strokes and heart failure.
How does a pro-inflammation diet affect health?
Foods that promote inflammation are almost certainly the ones you already don’t think very highly of. The worst culprits are high-calorie foods such as sugar, refined carbohydrates, processed meats, deep fried foods, and alcohol. While all of these foods have bad reputations for reasons beyond inflammation, like being bad for your teeth or high in cholesterol, their tendency to cause inflammation might be their worst attribute. Indeed, some foods, especially those high in cholesterol, are bad for you not only because they contain an excess of something better enjoyed in moderation, but precisely because they set off inflammation — it’s just that we’re more accustomed to hearing about the first order effects, like cholesterol buildup in arteries, rather than the second-order inflammation they’re causing that is often the real source of danger. In the case of cholesterol, a heart attack is most often caused by inflammation that encourages the accumulation of plaque in the arteries, which then causes a loose blood clot flowing through your veins to become stuck and cause a blockage of blood flow. Your heart responds to this blockage by increasing your heart rate, and ultimately damaging the soft tissue in the heart, leading to a weakening of your heart. This weakening of the heart muscles makes it harder for your heart to pump blood through your body, making future blood clots more likely, and thus increasing the risk of future additional heart attacks.
How to make your diet more anti-inflammatory
To reduce your risk of inflammation-related illnesses, it’s important first and foremost to limit your intake of the foods that are likely to contribute to inflammation. But eating well isn’t a purely defensive game — you can take the fight to the inflammation directly by incorporating more foods that promote healthy blood flow and encourage natural, full functionality of all of your organs and bodily systems. The foods best positioned to help you feel better and reduce your risk of inflammation-related chronic illness are, again, the usual suspects: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and fatty fish like salmon, which all contain the vitamins and minerals your body needs to function at its best and ensure that any necessary inflammation doesn’t get out of hand.
It’s important to remember that, just like the foods that contribute to it, some inflammation is normal — in fact, just like red meats and sugars, your body needs some inflammation to function at its best. But too much of a good thing is almost always a bad thing, and that’s why maintaining a healthy, balanced diet that consists mostly of the good stuff is so crucial.
