What is inflammation?

Happy Morselicious Monday, belated birthday Dad, a.k.a. Mac and  pre-Halloween!

Are you dressing up for Halloween? Please share your costume ideas and photos on

www.facebook.com/macnmos  Looking forward to seeing all of your creative ideas.

I may dress up as a MORSELICIOUS RAINBOW to walk my walk!  Speaking of rainbows, many of my clients ask me about inflammation and what causes it, what it really does to our bodies and how to prevent it from becoming chronic.

A little Morselicious P.R.: this article was published earlier this month in www.examiner.com/article/what-is-inflammation

What are auto-immune disorders?

Auto-immune disorders are a condition where the body attacks itself.

Diabetes, Celiac, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, .Chron’s, Lupus, Fibromyalgia are just a few of the more well known auto-immune disorders.

At the root of all disease, including heart disease and all cancers, auto-immune disorders is inflammation.

Since we’re so close to Halloween and thinking about costumes, I couldn’t resist this pic.

What is inflammation?

Swelling, inflamed tissue. Our body protects itself by sending inflammation to our injured area to protect it to heal, which works well in an acute condition or sprain type injury.
Think of a time when you sliced your finger and the area around the cut gets inflamed to begin the healing process. That’s a good thing.

Then, think of chronic inflammation, when our bodies are constantly inflamed, for example, our arteries. Not good.

According to Dr. Mark Hyman in his Elimination Diet book,

Lifestyle-induced chronic disease is on the rise and accounts for nearly 80% of our health care costs. Nearly 70% of our population is overweight or obese. Almost 1 in 4 teenagers have pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes, up from only 9% in 2000 and almost zero in 1960.

How do we get rid of inflammation?

We can begin to reduce it by consuming a low inflammation diet, exercising and reducing stress.

Think of yourself being under constant stress, never allowing yourself time to de-compress. NOT good for the inflammation factor.

Deep breathing, taking a walk, stretching, laughing, getting enough sleep, spending time with loved ones contribute to reducing stress, cortisol and inflammation. WIN/WIN!

What is a low inflammation diet?

Think eating a rainbow of produce every day.

I teach a workshop on this very idea.

If we consume every color of the rainbow in REAL food,

(skittles don’t count), every day, we are very close to getting all the micro and phyto-nutrients our bodies need. In addition, we will have less room for the white-processed junk, like white bread, pasta, rice, pastries, cookies, cakes, sugar, which also spikes our blood sugar, causing inflammation.

Do you see a connection? A rainbow connection? Name the singer for 2 points!

Hint: “It’s not easy bein’ green.”

Think: more color, more NATURAL color, more fiber, more nutrients, more plant-based foods.

Do your best to consume high ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) value antioxidant foods. ORAC is food’s antioxidant activity.

I will discuss this further in another post.

Here are just a few examples:

Red: tomato, beets, rhubarb, radish

Orange: pepper, carrot, sweet potato

Yellow: squash, pepper, lemon

Green: kale, broccoli, spinach, zucchini

White: onion, cauliflower, garlic, jicama

Blue: corn, potato, moon watermelon (from Japan)

Indigo/Purple: cabbage, eggplant, cauliflower

The closer we eat to nature, the happier and better our bodies will respond, thus treating us better. What’s in YOUR  Rainbow?

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