(RESEARCH SERIES)—In the coming weeks, I’d like to bring you some of my favorite research of the last decade. It’s upon this research that I base my Top Ten Tips for Success in Aging™. I hope my research—and the good information it produces for important Aging matters—will be helpful in your wise search for a better older age. And I hope that begins today!
Di Patterson, MSG, CPG
A popular saying in both American business and non-profit America is Follow the money. In scientific research when we find a hot topic, a lot of money has been poured into the compilation of good information surrounding it. In the last five years, the most noteworthy medical funding has certainly been spent for questions and answers about internal inflammation.
As a Gerontologist, I also agree that the most important health concern in aging surrounds internal inflammation; the evidence is overwhelming in our daily lives. There is now solid and multiple research to show that internal inflammation “drives” the diseases of heart, lungs, stroke, cancers, diabetes, and obesity. Just as insidious are arthritis, asthma, allergies, chronic pain, fibromialgia, and eczema.
As a social scientist whose specialty in Aging also crosses into the medical field of Geriatrics, I can assure you that a concept as large as healing such a huge medical problem carries with it major social implications as well. The proof of the high degree of internal inflammation in our present society’s health outcomes are everywhere; even escalating rates of childhood diabetes, obesity and allergies abound. The irradiation, or even just a sharp reduction, in the diseases that present themselves in the presence of internal inflammation would rid our families and our country of the severe financial, emotional and physical price we pay for empowering our healthy bodies’ enemy.
In my studies, I have found some wonderful truths that I want every aging person to know about internal inflammation. When I read for new research developments, I come across some really good information I want you to be aware of. The first important find: for most of us, internal inflammation begins with what we eat.
A must-read to understanding more about internal inflammation is Inflammation Nation by Floyd Chilton, PhD and Laura Tucker. In it, they explain how some foods cause more internal inflammation than others…like farmed salmon, turkey and egg yolks.
Whoa, really? These are some of the very foods we Americans talked ourselves into believing were the best for us in the last fifteen years! They are low in fat and zero in sugars. Turkey is high in potassium. Eggs yolks are in almost every baked good we consume. Isn’t salmon one of the richest sources in omegas, and aren’t omegas good for us?
These are the right questions. The answers are simple. In brief, according to Dr. Chilton, it’s the way that the foods react inside us that create internal inflammation. Farmed salmon is fed corn and soy; two grains that for humans are nutritious and beneficial. In salmon, however, corn and soy create a chain of 9-6-3-omegas that mutate into dangerous levels of internal inflammation in humans bodies. More than about four ounces of farmed salmon every four weeks (you read right!), his research shows, is poisonous to our good health.
Another dietary suggestion coming from the study of triglycerides: de-sugar and de-starch yourself as much as possible. Sugars play havoc with humans’ health, so read up on the pro’s and con’s of all sugars, including cane sugar, honey, fructose, and other sweeteners, and how our bodies process them. Combat a silent source of inflammation: yeast. Starches become sugar, and sugars produce yeast. Fiber binds yeast to it, so eat plenty of fiber and drink enough water daily to move it through your system.
If “we are what we eat”, let’s get informed, judicious and picky!
It comes down to the research. Next week, I will write about food intolerances and some nifty ways to outsmart chronic internal inflammation!
©2010 Di Patterson, MSG, CPG “If good real estate is about location, location, location, then success in aging is about attitude, attitude, attitude!”
{ View Comments }
