How a better diet can turn down the heat on life-threatening inflammation
American gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella recommends a plant-based diet or the Mediterranean diet, both rich in vegetables, fruit, leafy greens and legumes. Photo / Getty Images
When it comes to the battle of the dinners, the meal Shilpa Ravella ate the evening before we spoke ticked more anti-inflammatory boxes than the meal I ate.
Both our meals were meat-free, which is good – meat, and in particular red meat, has been shown to increase inflammation. But mine included an animal product (feta cheese), which is not quite so good. And while my meal had lots of different vegetables, including avocado and peas, which are both high in fibre, as well as olive oil and a few nuts, it had no whole grains or legumes.
Ravella’s meal, on the other hand, included both whole grains and legumes – quinoa and beans – as well as fresh coriander and a number of different spices. All these foods are known to prevent, and possibly even reverse, the hidden inflammation that is being linked to many modern chronic diseases. These include heart disease, cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
“I think we forget about spices and herbs,” says the author of A Silent Fire, which looks at the link between diet, inflammation and disease. “Spices and herbs are some of the most powerful anti-inflammatory foods that we can be eating, and it’s very easy to just throw in some spices and try to get some fresh herbs. It’s a great gain for a minimal effort.”
Ravella is a gastroenterologist who divides her time between New York, where she works at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Centre, and Hawaii, where she works in rural health care.
She says hidden inflammation is also linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and mental illness such as depression.
“Hidden inflammation, silent and sinister, lurks in heart disease and smoulders beneath developing tumours,” she writes in the book. “It is tied to many other chronic conditions as well, including obesity, diabetes and neurodegenerative and psychiatric disease.”
Inflammation in itself isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a vital part of our immune response as our bodies mobilise to fight challenges such as infection and physical trauma. When we stub our toe, for example, we often develop redness, pain, heat and swelling at the site of the injury – all signs that our immune system is doing what it’s meant to do.
Since ancient times
“Inflammation is actually an ancestral response. And it evolved to protect our bodies from things like pathogens, or poisons, and traumas. All of these things were threats that ancient human beings routinely succumbed to. So inflammation is a healthy response that evolved to defend us against these things.”
However, modern life – how we grow our food and what we eat, the stressful way we live, our lack of physical exercise and falling levels of social interaction – means our immune systems are turning against us. As well as mobilising against pathogens, poisons and traumas, our immune systems mobilise against things our bodies have not evolved to cope with, such as highly processed food or food high in saturated fat. Modern beef, for example, has as much as 35% saturated fat. In comparison, antelope meat has 7% and anthropologists think this meat is similar to the kind our Palaeolithic ancestors ate.