It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (11 page)

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So from here on out, when we say “inflammation,” we’re not talking about the kind of inflammation you get when you sprain your ankle (acute localized inflammation) or the kind you get when you have the flu (acute systemic inflammation). We’re talking about the most damaging kind of inflammation—the unhealthy kind—
chronic
(long-term)
systemic
(full-body) inflammation.

Before we discuss how chronic systemic inflammation can be devastating to your health, let’s go back to how the immune system controls inflammation, both good and bad. Your immune system is actually a highly interconnected complex of tissues and circulating cells that protect you from all the mean, ugly stuff out in the big, bad world: bacteria, parasites, fungi, viruses, and more. The world is chock-full of nasty little buggers that would love to use your insides as home sweet home, and your fork is the easiest vehicle for them to hitch a ride on.

In order for your immune system to properly protect you, it must be able to accurately differentiate between “you” and “not you.” (Immunologists call it “self” and “non-self.”) When your body senses something that is “non-self” where it doesn’t belong, it will perform an immediate evaluation, which may then trigger one of two immune responses: a nonspecific suspicion of something unfamiliar or a specific, aggressive response to a known troublemaker.

Let’s use another analogy.

If you woke up and found a strange man hanging out in your kitchen, you’d feel threatened and anxious. You’d be suspicious of his motives and would probably react in an anxious, defensive manner, asking him what the heck he’s doing in your home, and then taking appropriate action—inviting him to stay if you discovered he was a family friend, or asking him to leave if he didn’t belong there.

But if this man was in the process of vandalizing your kitchen, you’d immediately know he wasn’t a good guy, and would respond strongly to his presence by calling the police or chasing him out with a golf club. And if you happened to see him in your kitchen again the next day (persistent, isn’t he?), you’d immediately remember that he was a bad guy, and would launch an even more aggressive response to get him out of your house.

Your immune system operates in a similar fashion. Anything that doesn’t belong in your body is assumed to be a threat, so it’s trapped and assessed—questioned, if you will. If it’s determined that the substance may cause you harm, it’s immediately dealt with and “logged” as a troublemaker. Your immune system will then respond to future encounters with this same substance in a more specific, targeted fashion—with antibodies and a SWAT-team level of aggression.

So, identity matters. Being able to tell “you” from “not you” matters. Keeping things in their rightful places matters. This is where the third and fourth Good Food standards come back together.

Certain foods beat up, fool, or sneak past the “bouncers,” finding a way out of your digestive tract and into your body. They create immune chaos, forcing your system to protect you from the downstream effects of what
should
be a normal bodily function—digesting food. They confuse your immune cells, causing them to create antibodies to fight what would normally be perfectly healthy and good. As a result of the immune system dysfunction that ensues, you can develop food sensitivities or allergies, systemic inflammation, and possibly an autoimmune condition.

And to drive the point home, we’ll show you exactly what that looks like.

Your immune system defends you against external invaders, but it also plays a critical role in recovery from injury and the repair and maintenance of various body structures. Your immune system has its priorities and tends to rank fighting off invaders above general repair and maintenance. (Getting the guy out of your kitchen is more important than doing the dishes.) But all of these jobs are important in the body—and if something doesn’t get done, there will eventually be consequences.

Let’s use another analogy.

Think of your immune system as a team of firefighters. Their top priority is to defend against potentially damaging threats—fires. But they also have to do routine maintenance and repair jobs, like fixing damaged tools, washing fire trucks, sleeping, and eating. Your firefighters work very hard when they’re fighting a fire, but they also have periods of time when they are relatively relaxed. There is a distinct difference between infrequent responses to fires (acute conditions, like a traumatic injury or short-term infection) and having to battle them 24-7 (chronic activation of your immune system, or systemic inflammation).

In the “healthy immune balance” example, your firefighters respond to a four-alarm fire. They fight the blaze, head back to the station, and have time to clean up and do some low-level repair and maintenance before they’re expected to go all out again. In this situation, your firefighters (immune system) ramp
way
up for the fire (acute inflammation from traumatic injury, infection, etc.), but once the fire is out, immune activity decreases, allowing for repair, recovery and maintenance tasks to be performed.

This is normal, and represents a healthy, balanced response. Your immune system needs an “on” switch to be able to ramp up to a threat, but it also needs an “off” switch in order to allow for recovery and have the time and resources to complete important repair and maintenance chores.

In the “chronic systemic inflammation” example, however, as the firefighters are winding down from the acutely stressful and demanding fire, they’re told that while they’re still expected to fulfill their normal firehouse repair and maintenance obligations, their job parameters have expanded to include sweeping the city streets, collecting the garbage, teaching the school kids, and filling in potholes.

Whew.

As if their original job description didn’t entail enough responsibility, now they’ve got a lot more work to do. If this were a one-time event, they could manage—they’d do the extra work and eventually catch up on their repair and maintenance functions. But if this situation continues for any length of time, it causes serious trouble long-term.

If certain factors (like your food choices) are overloading your immune system with too many tasks, it’s going to be less effective at doing its
main
jobs, and something is going to be left undone, or done ineffectively.

Like fighting off that bug that’s going around.

Or healing that stubborn tendonitis.

Or keeping your arteries clear of plaque.

All very important jobs, we think you’d agree.

The reason we are so adamant about reducing chronic systemic inflammation is that it has been clearly implicated as a causative factor for most lifestyle-related diseases.

Medical researchers have long known that a cluster of symptoms (labeled “metabolic syndrome”) were highly statistically correlated, often occurring together and increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. What they didn’t know for a long time, however, was exactly how they were related. They used to think that obesity caused diabetes, that high cholesterol caused heart attack, that high blood pressure caused stroke, and that maybe diabetes caused obesity too, but there was no unified theory to put all of these pieces together.

Today, while there are still multiple theories about how to explain these associations, some significant relationships have been established. More specifically, we’ve learned that systemic inflammation contributes directly to insulin resistance and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, chronic inflammatory diseases (like IBS and asthma), bone and joint disease (like osteoporosis and arthritis), neurological conditions (like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s), and most certainly weight gain.

This makes chronic systemic inflammation a
very
big deal.

Having any one of these symptoms or conditions—or more than one, which is all too common when it comes to metabolic syndrome—will seriously affect your quality of life today, tomorrow, and for years to come … even if you exercise regularly, eat “pretty healthy” and aren’t overweight. Remember, it’s called
silent
inflammation. And it’s why 40-year-old men drop dead of a heart attack while running marathons.

But what if you’re young, healthy, active, and lean? Surely this stuff doesn’t apply to you!

Of course it does, but you’re probably too young to realize it. It’s OK—when you’re 20, conditions like heart disease and stroke don’t even
register
—they’re diseases “old people” get.

We were 20 once. We understand.

So let’s bring this one home for you younger folks.

Chronic systemic inflammation plays a key role in more than just age-related diseases. Inflammation contributes to a long list of conditions that you may be dealing with right now. Like asthma, allergies, acne, eczema and other skin conditions, depression, ADHD, and mood swings.

Do we have your attention now?