Long-lasting inflammation comes with a cascade of aches and pains and issues, but long-term it can increase our risk of a host of illnesses, including obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. 

Here are five quick, easy, painless (and even enjoyable and tasty) ways to curb inflammation in the body: 

1: Foods that reduce inflammation

Photo Credit: Public Domain Pictures / Pexels

Everything we consume has the potential for healing and strengthening the body or, unfortunately, causing us to go into an inflammatory response–which weakens the body.

In the last 20 years, Western medicine has started to catch up with what traditional and holistic medicine systems have touted for millennia: Kitchen Medicine: The food we eat can be our medicine. A daily intake of vegetables, fruits, certain herbs, and proteins can actually shift your body into healing mode. 

Think green:

Seek to make green foods like leafy greens a part of at least one meal a day. For an added boost to keeping the body healing. Foods like celery and cucumbers also cool the inflammation and provide much-needed hydration to the body. According to one study, regular intake of celery even lowers hypertension. 

Berries:

Did you know that all types of berries provide healing to the body? Numerous studies have shown that a regular intake of berries like blueberries, acai, strawberries, and blackberries can decrease the chances of metabolic disorders like diabetes and hypoglycemia? In addition to that, the chemicals in berries are anti-cancer agents. 

Proteins:

Omega 3s are essential for lowering inflammation! Think sardines, wild-caught salmon, mackerel, and cod. If you are vegetarian or vegan, spirulina brings extra protein to the diet and is packed with healthy fats. 

Herbs:

Adding herbs to meals increases the healing power of those foods. Experiment with bringing more fresh ginger into your rice and veggie dishes, garlic is incredible for the cardiovascular system, basil has been proven to help with pain management and gut inflammation. Studies have also shown that cinnamon is a powerful agent in preventing metabolic disorders. 

2: Mindfulness practices: Meditation, Yoga, and Tai Chi

Photo Credit: Cliff-booth / Pexels

There is increasing evidence that mindfulness practices like meditation, yoga, and tai chi have a remarkable ability to downshift inflammation genes and markers for inflammation.

Our yoga expert, Laura Gries, has used yoga for therapy in her own life – it was an essential component in her recovery after a life-altering car accident. And since then she has shared her knowledge of yoga to help others experience less pain and inflammation, greater emotional health, and increased flexibility and mobility. As one of Laura’s clients said, “I feel younger and I look younger!” Laura has combined yoga, Thai massage, and meditation for an incredibly soothing and healing experience for the body and mind. 

Which leads us to meditation. Did you know that studies of older populations have shown wonderfully shocking evidence that regular meditation in older populations not only decreases the chance of a cardiovascular event, like heart attacks or strokes but also dramatically decreases cancer? 

And the beautiful art and exercise of tai chi has been shown in recent research to have the remarkable ability to actually enhance the immune system–adding cells to the immune system, greater enhancing the body’s ability to fight inflammation and disease. Several lifestyle sites in the last couple of years have encouraged regular tai chi to prevent infection with the Covid-19 virus. 

3: Acupuncture and Cupping

Photo Credit: RODNAE Productions / Pexels

So often in standard Western medicine, extreme inflammation issues are tackled using pharmaceuticals–and pain management is important, but it’s crucial that we get to the root of what is causing our bodies to go into distress. Oftentimes the drugs used to treat the initial illness can cause troubling issues in the long run.  Dr. Adam Gries and Dr. Geng Wu have solved the pain and inflammation issues that their patients are suffering from through acupuncture and cupping. 

 As one patient who suffered a devastating accident stated, he went from having to take daily doses of opioids, in increasing amounts, to help him live with the overwhelming pain he experienced. This patient of Dr. Adam Gries’  has now been completely free of opioids for over and year and is experiencing greater health and vitality and no longer has to live with pain that curbs his ability to live. 

Dr. Geng Wu was able to help one of her patients actually be able to sleep again because his unrelenting chronic pain had him sleeping only three or four hours a night. The combination of acupuncture and cupping quickly got to the bottom of his issue and he is now able to sleep soundly every night. 

4: Massage Therapy

Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels

Though anecdotally massage has always been celebrated for its healing powers, massage therapy research has been given short-shrift as far as medically sound research studies, but that has fortunately changed in the last few years. There have been a number of studies in the last decade that show significant improvement in everything from inflammatory activity and pain around osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic back pain, and high cortisol conditions. 

Even one therapeutic massage can significantly increase the body’s healing chemicals that lower inflammation. And scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and McMaster University have produced research that proves not only is massage therapy able to offer a litany of anti-aging benefits and pain reduction but according to lead researcher, Dr. Simon Melov, Ph.D.

“Our research showed that massage dampened the expression of inflammatory cytokines in the muscle cells and promoted biogenesis of mitochondria, which are the energy-producing units in the cells.”

Our massage therapist, Chelsea Perry, has spent years researching the mind-body connection and how inflammatory conditions are triggered in the body. She states that the “complex interrelationship between our minds and bodies, along with her understanding of Evolutionary Psychology and the autonomic nervous system” has inspired her passion for healing through massage.

5: Tea Therapy

Photo Credit: Teejay / Pexels

Turn up a cup of tea every chance you get. It’s not just the myriad of flavors and the inspiring power of that pop of caffeine that has granted tea a place in the traditional foods kitchen medicine cabinet, but teas and tisanes (the herbal, non-caffeinated “teas”) have shown to exhibit noteworthy anti-inflammatory properties.

Green tea is high in an interesting plant medicine called catechins. The catechin is known as epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG has been shown to actually prevent oral and heart inflammation and even help the body’s metabolism to specifically target the damaging visceral fat that can lead to other more serious diseases. 

And the good old standby, black tea, dramatically and quickly lowers cortisol in the body–and quickly. And research has shown that cortisol, when not regulated, can cause serious damage to all systems in the body.

To schedule acupuncture, cupping, yoga, massage or to learn more about what your body needs to stay healthy, schedule here today.

Article by Deana Vassar.