One condition explains your stiff fingers, aching muscles, and arthritic joints. One condition lies at the root of your your troublesome allergies and asthma. And one condition describes the underlying cause of heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and some types of cancer.
It is inflammation.
Most of us understand inflammation as something that causes redness, tenderness, stiffness, and pain. It is the core of inflammatory "-itis" diseases, and it is also intertwined in every disease, including obesity, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis.
Inflammation is why professional athletes and weekend warriors often development muscle aches. It is why some people's gums bleed whenever they brush their teeth. And it is why some people develop stomach ulcers.
Despite their different symptoms, all of these health problems are united by the same thread: they all have runaway inflammation in common.
And as you may well realize, many people suffer from more than one inflammatory disorder. Such a a constellation of related diseases, such as the combination of heart disease, arthritis, and periodontitis, can be best described as the inflammation syndrome.
Millions of North Americans suffer from inflammatory disorders,
some of which have only recently been recognized as inflammatory in nature.
| Allergic and nonallergic rhinitis | 39 million |
| Asthma | 17 million |
| Cardiovascular diseases | 60 million |
| Arthritis (all types combined) | 44 million |
| Osteoarthritis | 21 million |
| Rheumatoid arthritis | 2 million |
Everyone experiences inflammation at one time or another, and we actually need it to survive.
But chronic inflammation is a sign that something has gone seriously awry with your health.
Instead of protecting and healing, chronic inflammation breaks down your body and makes us
older and more frail.
Most people treat inflammation with one or more over-the-counter and prescription drugs. At best, these drugs temporarily mask the symptoms of inflammation, not treat its underlying causes. Worse, the side effects of these drugs can often be extraordinarily dangerous, causing weight gain, severe stomach pain, bone deformities, and heart failure.
Unfortunately, a physician's diagnosis of many -itis diseases, such as dermatitis or gastritis, is often meaningless. The doctor might feel proud of his diagnosis, but it is merely a description of the symptoms, not of its cause.
To understand the cause of the modern epidemic of inflammatory diseases, we have to look at how the average person's diet has deteriorated over the past two or three generations. The bottom line is that the foods you eat have a powerful bearing on your health and, specifically, inflammation.
How does food influence your inflammation, your aches and pains?
Your body is a remarkable biological machine, designed to make an assortment of pro- and anti inflammatory substances. What you eat - proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and vitamin like nutrients, and minerals - provides the nutritional building blocks of these substances. Some nutrients help form your body's inflammation-promoting compounds, which normally help fight infections. Others help produce your body's anti-inflammatory substances, which moderate and turn off inflammation.
Until relatively recently, people ate a relative balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory nutrients. Today, because of extensive food processing, our diet has become seriously unbalanced. The typical Western diet now contains at least 30 times more of pro-inflammatory nutrients than just a century ago ago. As a result, people have become nutritionally and biochemically primed for powerful, out-of-control inflammatory reactions. An injury, infection, and sometimes nothing more than age-related wear and tear create the spark that, in a manner of speaking, sets your body on fire.
The Inflammation Syndrome reveals many of the hidden dangers in foods that set the stage for inflammation, worsen aches and pains, and increase the long-term risk of debilitating and life threatening diseases. This book will explain how and why inflammation eats away at your health.
For example:
It didn't. By the next morning, my entire foot was literally turning black and blue. Although no bones were broken, I did give myself a serious muscle strain. A couple of days later, on the next leg of my trip in France, I hobbled around at a scientific conference on antioxidant vitamins. Climbing into the shower was an ordeal, as was putting on my socks and shoes. My foot had swelled, its color was awful, and I was taking aspirin several times daily to reduce the inflammation, swelling, and pain.
Weeks later, at home, my foot had regained its normal color and, by all outward signs, had healed. However, I still felt a sharp pain in the foot whenever I walked. I realized that this injury, if it did not heal soon and properly, could lead to a lifetime of chronic inflammation and pain. Frustratingly, all of the vitamin supplements I had been taking for years didn't seem to help. And then it dawned on me. That scientific meeting in France was about a well-known herbal antioxidant made from French maritime pine bark (called Pycnogenol®), and the scientific literature showed it to have powerful antiinflammatory effects. I started taking it, and within days the pain went away. To rule out the power of suggestion, I stopped taking the supplement for a few days, and the pain returned. I started taking the supplement again and the inflammation and pain went away and have never returned.
The Inflammation Syndrome does not simply dwell on the problem of inflammation. Most of this book coaches you on how to avoid the foods that make you more susceptible to inflammation and to instead select foods that can reduce inflammation and your risk of many diseases. The Inflammation Syndrome describes a new way of viewing inflammatory disorders as a consequence of eating an unbalanced diet.
You will learn plenty of practical information about how to prevent and reverse inflammation. The book's Anti-Inflammation Diet Plan describes
The reason is simple, though it may surprise you: while I believe the majority of physicians are sincere and well meaning, most do not understand the fundamental role of nutrition in health. Medical schools teach virtually nothing about the practical, preventive, and therapeutic uses of nutrition and supplements. The doctors I write about in this book are notable exceptions to this rule in that they are both sincere and have an understanding of nutrition.
For more than 25 years, I have been reading scientific and medical journals, talking with nutritionally oriented biologists, biochemists, and physicians, and writing about how vitamins, minerals, and other aspects of nutrition can greatly improve health. I have also published original research articles in medical journals, something rare for nutrition writers. Though I am not a scientist, I have a solid understanding of the science behind the health benefits of nutrition and supplements.
In many ways, The Inflammation Syndrome expands on the concepts described in my previous best-selling book, Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance. Far more than genes, poor eating habits are at the core of most modern degenerative disorders, including chronic inflammation. The Inflammation Syndrome is supported by hundreds of scientific studies and by successful clinical experiences, many of which you will read. Some of my scientific references are located at the back of this book, and I encourage you to share all of them with your physician.
Ultimately, you alone are responsible for your own health. You cannot ignore your personal responsibility and simply turn your body over to a doctor the way you might ask a mechanic to fix your car. This book provides a plan for you to empower yourself to safely prevent and overcome inflammatory disorders. You will discover how easy it is to take charge of your diet and your health - and to feel better than you ever imagined.