Lockdown Newsletter – Week 6

Inflammation is a natural part of the immune response; essential to managing immune threats, pathogen invasion and damaged tissue and sore muscles. It’s also not something I think we talk about enough, especially in the fitness world or where nutrition is concerned.

Inflammation should be a temporary state: after a hard WOD or strength session you might feel sore or get the DOMS aka delayed onset muscle soreness. But a couple of days later, if your body is working well, you should feel back to your chipper self.

…sometimes this response persists.

This is known as chronic inflammation. It can be the cause or contributor to a wide range of conditions such as allergies, depression, aches and pains, digestive conditions (IBS/IBD) and inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis. Further down the line studies have shown it to be a contributing factor to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers, metabolic disease, obesity, heart disease, autoimmunity, osteoarthritis and Cancer.

…the take-away from this is that inflammation is not to be sniffed at (excuse the pun).

Amongst the factors that contribute to chronic inflammation is poor diet and eating behaviour. Our western lifestyle and typical diet lend itself to this. Over-eating, high carbohydrate, high sugar, high fat especially trans fats and poor omega balance and even late-night eating all lends themselves to activating inflammatory pathways: our body signalling to the brain that it is managing threat.

More specifically the types of foods that we eat can turn on these pathways. Pre-processed food such as your go to Pot Noodle (apologies to the fans out there) and less likely culprits such as ready sliced vegetables (e.g. diced onion) or packaged foods that easily spoil (e.g. beansprouts).

…ok so there is more to this that meets the eye.

With the above considered we can find that our body becomes pretty sensitive especially where food is concerned. Gluten is often the victim of this, considered a threat and a good opportunity to spend more money on specific ‘gluten-free’ products. The problem is we often overlook the bigger question: Why? Are there other undermining factors that we haven’t addressed which is causing our body to become sensitive? In my first article I spoke about the GUT and how integral it is to our immunity. An unhappy GUT may become inflamed through food components such as gluten and other cross-reactive foods but also from other substances such as anti-inflammatories (Ibuprofen etc) or even lectins (protein found on plant and animal-based foods).

And then there is our general living environment. Air pollution, pesticides and chemicals in our cleaning products, upholstery and food packaging; cigarette smoke, alcohol and medication all add to oxidative stress that can put pressure on our bodies especially if we aren’t giving our bodies the correct fuel to detoxify them. Add to this a stressful lifestyle, insufficient sleep and a heavy training regime and there is no wonder why our bodies’ start to complain.

I can’t tell you how to live your life and I’m certainly not planning on becoming the fun police…but what I can do is pass on what I have learnt to empower you to be the healthiest, best version of you that you can be.

…but for that folks, you will have to wait until next week.