Inflammation: The Good & The Ugly

Inflammation has definitely been a buzz word for years now in the health and fitness circles. However, everywhere I look, read, and listen, there still seems to be a huge lack of understanding about what exactly inflammation is. Most people seem to think that inflammation is a big, bad, horrible thing. In fact, if we suddenly didn't have some form of inflammatory process in our body, we'd probably all die rather quickly. Why? Because inflammation is the immune systems' way of fighting infection and healing damaged tissues in our bodies. Here's the short of it:

When something gets injured, or a foreign substance enters our body, the system gets turned on and start sending a "cascade of events". In other words, basically a whole bunch of specialized cells and chemicals meant to either fight and destroy those harmful substances, or to repair and replace the cells that have been damaged during the injurious event, start racing around to where they need to go in the body to heal us up and keep us from getting worse. We need this to happen or bacteria would run rampant, and every simple sprain endured on the soccer field would get worse and worse, never getting better until we were all running around with floppy ankles. Not a pretty picture.

So, why does inflammation get such a bad rap? Unfortunately, as the good cells and chemicals rush around our body to heal us up, they also attract other chemicals to the site of injury which can cause cause those well known signs of inflammation that most of us don't really enjoy- redness, swelling, pain, etc. A certain amount of this tells us our system is working, but too much can indicate severe distress, auto-immune issues, nutritional deficiencies, or an inflammatory response that has gone out of control-just a few issues that can occur among a vast amount of other reasons.

If you've been experiencing severe inflammation, Functional Diagnostic Lab work, Dietary and Nutritional Changes, Antioxidants, Activity modifications, stress management, and certain specific temporary anti-inflammatory medications can all provide great ways to not only figure out what's going on, but get your condition under control. For more information specific to your situation, give us a call or talk to your health care provider about what you've been dealing with, and get to the bottom of it.

One last tip: Don't put off getting help until you're feeling and performing at your worst! The longer a condition has taken to develop, the longer it will often take to resolve. Pay attention to what your body is telling you-the sooner you seek help, the sooner you'll be feeling better again.

Antioxidants – Defenders Against Oxidation and Free Radicals

Found this great article explaining Antioxidants. For more information be sure to attend our Body & Mind Series Event #4: Wine Tasting! Celebrating Antioxidants & Sorting through the Hype- For more information on when and where, please visit our website!

Antioxidants – Defenders Against Oxidation and Free Radicals

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Interesting Tidbits on Sprouts

For those of you into raw foods or simply looking for a great way to spice up your usual food routine, I thought I'd share what I thought to be interesting information regarding the health benefits of sprouts. Personally, I've always thought they make a great topping to my favorite salad or sandwich, so when I found the following info from Nataliya Schetchikova, PhD in the April issue of ACA, I was pretty happy about it!

Here' a short summary of some of the benefits found in these tiny powerhouses:
*20grams of broccoli sprouts= amount of nutrition in 1 Kg of Broccoli
*Broccoli sprouts- high in isothiocyanates: chemopreventive agents that inhibit bladder cancer development and currently researched for potenial as bladder cancer treatment
* Buckwheat sprouts- tons of concentrated antioxidant capabilities, studies also have found they hold the ability to help reduce cholesterol and triglycerides; (Contain phenolics, quercetin, rutin, gamma-aminobutaric & citric acids, others)
* Wheat Sprouts- high quality source of phosphates and enzymes, potent antioxidant, may inhibit development of colon cancer. Powdered version has been shown in numerous studies to significantly prevents or delays senile cataracts in animal studies.

If I wasn't so unlucky with growing indoor plants lately, I'd probably try growing a batch on my own windowsill at home. I'll just have to leave that to those of you with the indoor green thumbs. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about sprouts take a look at the following websites:

http://www.sproutpeople.com OR http://www.isga-sprouts.org

For the full article see ACA News/April 2009 "Supplements in a Plant:Sprouts and Their Health Effects" by Nataliya Schetchikova, PhD