Inflammatory processes are part of the body’s defenses to combat disease-causing agents and recover from injuries. However, when they are chronic and recurrent, they are linked to various problems and risks to our health.
At this point, day-to-day diet care should be prioritizing healthier items and avoiding foods that inflame the body. Those that accumulate harmful substances in the body favor chronic inflammation.
To help you put together a healthier diet without this meaning of restriction or cravings, we have created a list of inflammatory foods, with the main reasons to avoid their excessive consumption. In addition, we include anti-inflammatory foods, that is, that help to prevent this risk.
Enjoy reading!
What Are Inflammatory Foods?
In general, foods that cause inflammation (inflammatory) overload the metabolism and usually bring an accumulation of substances with the potential to irritate the body’s tissues and generate a degenerative process linked to oxidative stress.
Thus, they stimulate the action of free radicals, causing damage to cellular structures, while preventing the body from adequately combating these effects, impairing the maintenance of tissues and cell groups in the body.
Why Avoid Inflammatory Foods?
It promotes the dilation of blood vessels in places where it detects the presence of microorganisms, toxins, or injuries that may harm health.
Inflammation is part of body care to prevent damage to health, recover from injuries, or cure illnesses like flu and colds. If it’s beneficial, why avoid inflammatory foods?
The problem is that inflammation also has adverse effects, mainly due to increased local sensitivity, which is usually very painful.
With excessive consumption of foods that inflame the body, our cellular structures can be in a constant state of stress, decreasing their useful life and the effectiveness of their biological functions.
At the same time, they impair the body’s ability to properly handle the process, preventing the affected tissues from recovering.
This means that the cause of the pain sensation was not adequately tackled, even if you felt relief, causing it to inflame frequently.
As a result, we are at greater risk for diseases and chronic conditions, such as:
- diabetes;
- heart diseases;
- vascular problems;
- heart attack;
- arthritis;
- sinusitis;
- nervous system diseases.
Five Foods That Inflame The Body And Should Be Avoided
It’s time to check out our list of inflammatory foods which should be avoided or cut out of your regular diet. This depends on their possible effects on your body and the risk of more severe health problems.
So let’s go, get to know five foods that inflame the body and why it is recommended to avoid excessive consumption:
Sugar
Our bodies cannot process sugar quickly. In this way, when we eat excessive sweets or items with a lot of sugar in their composition, the body cannot break it down properly, causing a harmful by-product to this process in the form of cytokines.
Cytokines are proteins that regulate the immune response and indicate the need to initiate the inflammatory process. Thus, excess sugar caused by irregular sugar consumption causes an imbalance in the body, which is believed to be threatened and becomes more susceptible to inflammation.
The idea is to avoid eating excessive sweets and drinks with a lot of sugar in their formula, such as soft drinks, for example.
Alternatively, we can opt for natural sweeteners like those extracted from fruits. Another recommendation is to eat plenty of fiber to help the body process sugar and prevent the accumulation of cytokines.
Saturated Fat Or Trans Fat
Next are saturated fats, which are found in excess in certain types of red meat, dairy products, and fried foods. When ingested, this type of fat promotes inflammation of the fatty tissue in the body, favoring the emergence of vascular and heart problems.
In the case of industrialized foods, in particular, we find high levels of trans fat obtained by hydrogenating liquid vegetable oils to change their consistency and make them solid.
In addition to being inflammatory, they increase the risk of diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, and heart disease.
Refined Carbohydrates
Here we have mainly white rice and traditional noodles. They are rich in carbohydrates, which give the body energy but cause a spike in glucose and insulin, which can be extremely harmful when consumed in excess.
The process of refining wheat and rice grains removes the fibers and proteins that coat them. Therefore, they decrease the body’s ability to process them properly. As a result, there is an increased risk of chronic inflammation, diabetes, metabolic syndromes, and obesity.
The tip here is to exchange these conventional items for whole-grain pasta and brown rice when possible. Another suggestion is to decrease your portion by increasing the number of foods like beans, sweet potatoes, or peas, which are highly nutritious and contain fiber that helps break down carbohydrates.
Alcohol
Excess alcohol in the body increases fat accumulation in the liver and stimulates the metabolization of proteins that act as inflammatory markers. This generates an imbalance in the body and favors destructive processes for the digestive system, significantly affecting the liver, pancreas, and intestines.
Ultra-Processed Meat-Based Foods
Finally, we come to sausages and ultra-processed products obtained from meat, mainly red meat, such as salamis, hams, links, and sausages, among others. The manufacturing process for these items usually adds preservatives, nitrates, dyes, and other components that increase oxidative stress in cells.
Its excessive consumption can be associated with an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer, especially in the stomach and intestines.
Six Anti-Inflammatory Foods
We’ve come to the end of the list of foods that inflame the body, but we have a bonus tip for you.
Check out which anti-inflammatory foods, that is, they help the body to conduct these processes properly, increasing the chances of a complete recovery and preserving cellular structures:
- tomatoes;
- fruits, such as strawberries, oranges, lemons, and pineapples;
- nuts;
- extra virgin olive oil;
- vegetables such as spinach, kale, broccoli, and lettuce;
- fish like salmon, tuna, and sardines.
These foods provide natural antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals essential for the proper functioning of the organism and the prevention of oxidative stress, which causes premature cell aging.
In this way, they prevent the harmful effects of oxidants, help maintain biological functions and cellular structures in the body, and improve how our body deals with inflammation.
The most important thing is to have balance; that is, consuming foods that inflame the body is not necessarily prohibited, but they must represent a smaller portion of your diet compared to more nutritious and beneficial foods.
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