This week we started talking about anti-inflammatories. My article focused on a more natural approach to reducing inflammation. Marcelle Pick discusses ways we can reduce inflammation without the use of prescription drugs and its nasty side effects. There are several things you can do to help with inflammation but you would have to be willing to do some lifestyle changes. Such as changing your diet by adding more whole foods, exercising, taking a multi-vitamin, getting more rest, and avoiding foods that can trigger an allergic response. I decided to look more into natural remedies that can help with inflammation and I came across another article written by Dr. Mark Hyman. He talks about "hidden inflammation" and how taking anti-inflammatory drugs is dangerous because it interferes with our body's own immune system, which is true. We have our immune system for a reason and these drugs are messing with our body's natural response. At the end of his article he discusses 7 steps to living an Anti-inflammatory life to help reduce your inflammation. All of his same steps are pretty much the same as discussed in the article written by Marcelle Pick.
7 Steps to Living an Anti-inflammatory Life
1. Whole Foods
2. Healthy Fats
3. Regular Exercise
4. Relax
5. Avoid Allergens
6. Heal Your Gut
7. Supplement
So if several other people agree that with these lifestyle changes you can reduce the problem of inflammation without drugs and avoid the side effects of those drugs why aren't more people leaning towards this. Another good question was in the article and it asked if you think inflammation is at the core of your health? what do you guys think?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/is-your-body-burning-up-w_b_269717.html
I think that a natural approach to inflammation is a better approach than taking drugs, but it is very hard to change all of these aspects of your life. A lot of people aren't willing to give up eating fast food and start eating whole foods and healthy fats. Also, a lot of people don't want to take the time to exercise regularly.
ReplyDeleteIn this world today, I feel like it is very hard to be relaxed all the time. There is always something stressful going on in most people's lives, such as family issues, money problems, trying to find a job, or worrying about the future. I feel like it is almost impossible to not have some stress in our lives.
Yeah it definitely is hard to change your lifestyle to an extremely
ReplyDeletehealthy one. I think that is why most people don't want to consider this type of option and rather just take a pill. I also think it can be a money issue since healthy foods are much more expensive :(
I definitely think that inflammation is at the core of our health. As we have seen throughout this course, inflammation can have both positive and negative effects and is involved in every condition we have looked at from obesity and cardiovascular disease to stroke and Multiple Sclerosis.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a more natural approach outlined by those seven steps seems better than taking a pill, but because it requires commitment and a lifestyle change, less people will be likely to stick with it. I also think people are less likely to follow some of these steps because there are a lot of people that put a negative connotation on the words exercise and whole foods and are more comfortable with the quick fix that a pill can offer. It seems like it would be difficult for any one to stick to all seven of these steps, because like Nichole said, it is hard to completely eliminate stress from our lives. Maybe if people were able to pick one or two of the steps that you listed and work on modifying those aspects of their lives they would start to see little changes being made to help with this "hidden inflammation".
Like many others, I am also fairly hesitant and somewhat against taking drugs to treat ailments. I worry about the side effects and the damages it could have on my body. I also agree that our body has a natural defense system that might be negatively affected by prescription drugs. Although, the compounds in prescription drugs may resemble those seen in nature, it is often times synthesized and that just does not sit well with me. Rather than taking pills, I also look toward natural remedies and herbal supplements to treat anything from common colds to back pain.
ReplyDeleteThe seven steps to living an anti-inflammatory life will no doubt lead to a better quality of life with less illnesses relating to inflammation; however, it is unlikely that people will follow these steps without ever cheating. It all comes down to self-control and from experience; I already found it difficult sticking to a diet that only restricted one type of food. It will be seven times more difficult following seven different types of rules without straying. Most people have such hectic and stressful lives, they will not be able to avoid stress or find time to cook healthy meals or exercise regularly. Even though these steps are beneficial and helpful to achieving better health, I think people will take in the information but will not necessarily follow or incorporate them into their lives because it is hard to change the life style to which they are already accustomed.
I think this is a great article, although, most of his approach is very similar to most of the diets that are already out there. I believe it is necessary to emphasize on the long term effects of exercise and eating right. It is a harder approach than just having to take a couple of pills and so I feel like articles like this is a great reminder that it is important to make these lifestyle changes first before relying on medications. I also think this approach can help people avoid a lot of other diseases too in the process. Overall, I really liked this article and I think we should most often think about going back to the basics of preventing the disease rather than "fixing" it.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting article. I like how Dr. Hyman actually explained the difference between good and bad inflammation. As we've seen, fads like the "anti-inflammation diet" are not properly informing participants as to what they're doing, and can instill an idea that all inflammation is bad. I do think he was a little overzealous in his claim,
ReplyDelete"Common treatments such as anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen or aspirin) and steroids like prednisone -- though often useful for acute problems -- interfere with the body's own immune response and can lead to serious and deadly side effects."
I think this may unnecessarily scare people away from taking these very helpful drugs. I would like to play a bit a devil's advocate with the popular opinion in this post though. While I don't disagree that these 7 steps may be difficult to get started, they need to be followed if you want to stay healthy. I think it's kind of ridiculous that the answer is right there but everyone is too lazy to utilize it.
There is also a rather large debate going on currently about the usefulness of multi-vitamins as seen in this 2012 study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309636/
Bottom line is that people need to exercise and eat healthy. That would be a excellent start to fixing a plethora of health problems.
I just feel that people are looking for the quickest fix for their ailments nowadays, so complete lifestyle changes are things that people don't even consider. It's really quite sad that people would rather treat their bodies poorly and just rely on drugs among other treatments to keep their bodies running, when all they really need to do is take better care of themselves. I absolutely do believe that the immune system is at the core of our health. It is our natural protection and repair system. If we keep our immune system working properly and take care of our bodies, I feel that we probably wouldn't have to rely so heavily on drugs and other potentially harmful treatments. Medicine absolutely has its benefits(that's why I'm so interested in it), but prevention is truly the most effective form of treatment.
ReplyDeleteinflammation in the digestive tract can be quite painful
ReplyDelete