Barbara Rowe - Anti-Inflammatory Foods for Health: Hundreds of Ways to Incorporate Omega-3 Rich Foods into Your Diet to Fight Arthritis, Cancer, Heart Disease, and More

Hundreds of Ways to Incorporate Omega-3 Rich Foods into Your Diet to Fight Arthritis, Cancer, Heart Disease, and More

BARBARA ROWE
M.P.H., R.D., L.D., C.N.S.D .
and
LISA DAVIS
Ph.D., P.A.-C., C.N.S., L.D.N.

Increasingly, we are becoming aware that inflammation underlies many of the worlds most common diseases, even the process of aging. Clearly, inflammation is associated with such obvious inflammatory conditions as rheumatoid arthritis, but did you know that inflammation is a risk factor for developing heart disease and cancer, our most common killers?

Given this, shouldnt we all be trying to do something to reduce inflammation? One thing we all can do is to eat healthier foodsfoods that help combat inflammation.

Let this recipe book serve as your guide to preventing or combating inflammation and improving your health through diet. The calorie-controlled recipes you will find in each chapter will not only help fight inflammation, but they will also help you control excess body weighta major risk factor for inflammation.

OBESITY AND INFLAMMATION

Too much body weight is one of the clearest links between inflammation and disease. Carrying extra pounds, particularly around the middle of your body (abdominal obesity), is a risk factor for inflammation. The reason is that fat (especially abdominal fat) is metabolically-active tissue. Metabolically-active fat tissue releases all kinds of inflammatory molecules into our bloodstreams, which travel to target organs, such as the heart.

Table 1: Health Conditions Associated with Inflammation

Inflammatory molecules released by fat tissue dont affect just the heart, though. They affect the cells of all body organ systems, from the lungs, to the joints, to the central nervous system. They present as a number of different diseases, including cardiovascular disease (high cholesterol), asthma, diabetes or metabolic syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and cancer, and they can even affect our moods. If you are suffering from any of the diseases listed in ), this nutrition and recipe guide may be of special benefit to you.

Often, these disease states arise from too much oxidative stress in the body as a result of all of this inflammation. All too often, a vicious cycle forms because too much oxidative stress also worsens inflammation. Oxidative stress also is a serious concern because it triggers the formation of free radicals. Free radicals change your bodys cells in negative ways and make you susceptible to such illnesses as cancer and heart disease. If you consume too much fat (especially in the form of saturated fat, trans fat, and omega-6 fat), too much sugar, too many calories, and are carrying too much extra body weight, you are likely to have too much inflammation and oxidative stress in your body ().

Figure 1: The Formation of Inflammation and Oxidative Stress

If you think you might be at risk for having too much inflammation, either because you have diabetes and high cholesterol or have a strong family history of heart disease, you can ask your doctor to order a special test called C-reactive protein. This is one of a number of chemical markers in your body that increase in response to inflammation. C-reactive protein levels are normally elevated acutely in response to injury. However, persistently low levels of C-reactive protein set the stage for such chronic diseases as cardiovascular disease and diabetes and tend to indicate that ill health effects are brewing.

There is a strong relationship between our Western diet and inflammation. Over the last century, food industry practices have changed such that we are increasingly exposed to inflammatory foods without our knowledge or understanding. Two of the main nutritional influences in the body that are inflammatory include the types of dietary fat we eat and the amount of highly sugared carbohydrates we consume.

Clear relationships exist between dietary patterns and inflammation. Some of the main staples in our diets are quite inflammatory: Sugar-sweetened soft drinks, refined grains, processed meats, and a low ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats are all associated with inflammation. Things we know that help to reduce inflammation include fish, vegetables, fruits, walnuts, olive oil, and even red wine. Lets take a closer look.

FATS IN OUR DIETS

The concept of good fats and bad fats is not new. But, as we continue to conduct research, more and more is learned about the role different types of fat play in our diets and health. provides an overview of the types of dietary fat.

Table 2: Good Fats and Bad Fats

THE GOOD FATS

Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFAs)

There are two main types of PUFAs: omega-3 fats (linolenic acid) and omega-6 fats (linoleic acid). Both omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats are essential fatty acids (EFAs), meaning that while they are important and necessary, the body doesnt manufacture them so they must be obtained through our diets. That gives us an opportunity to choose our PUFA fats wisely and have some control over how much inflammation we introduce into our bodies through this dietary source. What we have learned through research is that fatty acids of the omega-6 variety have more inflammatory properties than the omega-3 type. Omega-3 fatty acids are therefore considered less inflammatory (or anti-inflammatory).

There has been a shift in the types of PUFAs in our diets over the last centurya shift toward more inflammatory fats. Before modern processing methods modified our diets to contain more processed foods, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids was approximately 4:1. Today, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in the average American diet is approximately 20:1, proportionately far more omega-6 fatty acids than in the past. Lets examine these PUFAs and see how they are related to inflammation ().

Figure 2: Omega-6 and Omega-3 Metabolism in the Body (How They Break Down)

You can see the relationship between omega-6 fatty acids and their highly inflammatory breakdown products and omega-3 fatty acids and their less inflammatory breakdown products. You may be wondering how these inflammatory breakdown products cause harm. One concept to understand is that each cell in our bodies has a cell skin (called a membrane) that is composed, in part, of fatty acidsof both the omega-3 and omega-6 types, as well as others. Fatty acids are readily incorporated into cell membranes, so when it comes to fats, you are indeed what you eat. This means that consuming too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3 fats can alter cell-membrane composition to be more inflammatory. The reason this happens is because omega-6 fatty acids lead to the production of more arachidonic acid (as does saturated fat), which in turn leads to an inflammatory series of events in the body. By contrast, consuming omega-3 fat stimulates the production of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which generates a series of anti-inflammatory molecules called prostaglandins and leukotrienes.