#79 Episode: Understanding Inflammation and Its Impact on Your Health

Is your body constantly inflamed and you don’t even know it? Let’s uncover how this hidden troublemaker affects everything from your energy to your mental clarity.

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Show Notes:

• Introduction: Cari, Amanda (Functional Medicine Practitioner), and Shannon (Registered Dietitian) discuss the crucial role inflammation plays in our health. The episode explores how chronic inflammation, food choices, environmental toxins, and lifestyle factors all contribute to metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, and more.

• Chronic vs. Acute Inflammation: Clarifying the difference between acute and chronic inflammation, focusing on how long-term inflammation harms the body, often without visible symptoms.

• Key Causes of Chronic Inflammation:

• Food sensitivities (gluten, sugar, processed foods).

• Excessive intake of seed oils and vegetable oils.

• Visceral fat and how it contributes to insulin resistance.

• The Insulin Resistance-Inflammation Connection: Chronic inflammation impairs insulin signaling, leading to insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction, creating a vicious cycle.

• Environmental Toxins: Microplastics, pollutants, fragrances, and personal care products like lotions and perfumes are discussed as inflammatory factors.

• The Role of Gut Health: Gut dysbiosis (imbalance in gut bacteria) is linked to inflammation, with solutions to heal the gut and reduce inflammation.

• Practical Steps for Reducing Inflammation:

• Removing gluten and inflammatory foods from the diet.

• Focusing on a whole-food diet rich in fiber, healthy fats, and proteins.

• Incorporating intermittent fasting, real food, and hydration.

• Success Stories:

• Real-life examples of people healing from chronic conditions like neuropathy, Hashimoto’s disease, and IBS after adopting the protocol.

• The Feel Great System: A product designed to help with gut health, reduce inflammation, and support metabolic function. It includes teas, fiber drinks, and supplements to reduce inflammation naturally.

• Conclusion: The team encourages listeners to take proactive steps in addressing chronic inflammation through lifestyle choices, diet, and holistic solutions. No one has to accept chronic inflammation as a permanent condition.
  

Key Takeaways:

1. Chronic Inflammation vs. Acute Inflammation: The podcast focuses on chronic inflammation, which is caused by factors such as food sensitivities, high sugar intake, and excessive seed oils, and not the typical acute inflammation you experience from injuries.
   

2. The Link Between Insulin Resistance and Inflammation: Chronic inflammation disrupts insulin signaling, leading to insulin resistance. This causes a vicious cycle, making it harder for the body to manage glucose and contributing to metabolic dysfunction.
   

3. Visceral Fat and Inflammation: Visceral fat, which accumulates around organs, is a major contributor to chronic inflammation. This fat spills fatty acids into the bloodstream, impairing glucose uptake and worsening insulin resistance.
   

4. The Impact of Environmental Toxins: Environmental factors such as microplastics, pollution, and even lotions or fragrances can contribute to inflammation. Managing exposure to these can play a role in reducing the compounding effects of chronic inflammation.
   

5. The Role of Food and Lifestyle: Reducing inflammatory foods (gluten, processed foods, seed oils) and incorporating anti-inflammatory foods and lifestyle practices like movement, meditation, and gratitude are key to managing inflammation.
   

6. Gut Health and Inflammation: There’s a direct connection between gut health and inflammation. Issues like IBS and leaky gut can exacerbate inflammation, while prebiotics and fiber (like those in the Feel Great System) support gut healing and lower inflammation.
   

7. The Power of the Feel Great System: The podcast highlights the importance of cumulative health benefits through supplements and simple lifestyle changes, like intermittent fasting and real, whole foods, to reduce inflammation and support metabolic health.
   

Positive Stories and Results: Real-life stories showcase how individuals suffering from conditions like neuropathy, Hashimoto's disease, and IBS have experienced dramatic improvements by adopting this holistic approach to inflammation and health.

Transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome back to Better Than A Pill. Today, I'm here with Amanda, our functional medicine practitioner and Shannon, our registered dietitian. And you guys know this, they both specialize in metabolic health, insulin resistance and chronic disease. And actually, before we get started today, I just want to take a moment and thank God for this podcast for his guidance, for allowing this platform to be a source of light and empowerment.

And for those of you that are new, the better than a pill podcast was born from the belief that we can take proactive steps in caring for our health by exploring holistic solutions alongside with what mainstream medicine has to offer. So today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is inflammation, which I know.

I've struggled with a lot of the people I'm working with. It's affecting movement, joints, muscles, tears. The list goes on, so we're just going to get the ball rolling. I know there's a lot of things that we can do to help information in terms of pain free movement.

I love that stuff. And also, what we're putting in our bodies. And I just want to turn it over to you guys. What else? How else would you guys define inflammation? That's  my definition, but what would you guys say about it?  I guess I'll go. What we're addressing here is chronic inflammation.

We're not talking about inflammations like, you get a cut, you get injured you fall down, not that type of inflammation. We're talking about chronic inflammations that it's causing insult to your body over time. And usually These chronic inflammations are due to either food sensitivities or we're eating high carbs and sugars and seed oils and vegetable oils, those type of food that can lead to inflammations and chronic inflammations and insulin resistance are deeply connected,  creating these vicious cycle that drives metabolic dysfunction, right?

So inflammation interferes with insulin signaling, which leads to the cells being less responsive to insulin. Of course, insulin resistance. That's what insulin resistance is. Insulin resistance is when we have too much insulin in the bloodstream over time, causing the cells to become less responsive to insulin.

Okay. So another factor that can lead to chronic inflammation is like when we have the visceral fat of many people,  one in three adult Americans are considered  to be insulin resistant or considered pre diabetic. And one of the Symptoms is like visceral fat, right?

Visceral fat these fatty acids spill over. So inflammation from visceral fats can lead into the bloodstream impairing glucose uptake, of course, causing more insulin resistance. And then what else do you have? Anything else to add to that, Shannon? Oxidative stress, Yeah. And if you look at what happens inside of our body the things that Amanda mentioned, ultra processed foods, seed oils, sugar are food ways that cause inflammation, these microplastics, these But what happens is we're ingesting inflammatory substances, which are causing inflammation.

And then we have the inflammation that's happening inside of the body. So that causes insulin resistance, which makes us have high glucose. Then the glucose itself is causing it. It's a cycle like Amanda mentioned, right? But neuropathy, anybody that has neuropathy, that is the nerve endings. Being inflamed, right?

The vessel's inflammation can cause erectile dysfunction, right? It is called retinopathy in the eye, when the vessels in the eyes are inflamed and inflammation is coming from a high glucose environment, but it's not just. It's not just our food, it's the air we breathe. It's The, sha the plastic.  Yeah. Yeah, the lotion, everything. And then when we compound it, it's the compounding effect of one of, one of these things in itself. Occasionally isn't a problem, but it's the compounding effect. It's the dose that's the poison. Yes. Yeah.

And it's chronic. It's like we're talking about chronic inflammation, right? It's not acute. And we're not talking about an acute situation. We're talking about chronic, right? Even like these medications that we're taking to  have properties that are inflammatory. Yes, there are several like anti hypertensive meds.

They cause insulin resistance. They're creating insulin resistance in itself as an inflammatory restate. So you can see it forms this vicious cycle. So we have to figure out what we can target, and it's targeting one thing at a time to reduce the compounding effect.

We're never going to get rid of all the inflammatory things in our body, but what can we do? What can we control? We can control what we put in our mouths. Yeah. We can control.  If we use perfume, we can control if we use lotions that cause it or plugins, these fragrances that people put in their home.

And you breathe them in constantly. We can control these things. And by controlling these things, then we can start to sorely, slowly lower our stress and meditation with that prayer with that movement. Amanda. Is the movie painful? And so are you carrying? So for somebody like me, it has this mentality that more is better.

Harder is better. Beat yourself, lift, lift, lift heavy. That's causing inflammation and hormetic  stresses, which are good and can become bad when we compound them, right? So we're looking absolutely like looking at our health from the standpoint, we've got our emotional, our mental. Our physical, we're touching a lot of physical, our spiritual relational, we're having all these stressors.

I know. That can, like you're saying, we want to do, we're here for a reason. I'm better than a pill podcast. We want to do things that we can that are better than a pill, which these pills are not only. They're causing information. They're killing us. They're adding more stress to our bodies unnecessarily.

There are other solutions. I do want to say that for me personally, I had a lot of inflammation from a musculoskeletal standpoint a couple of years ago, specifically in the wrist and was doing everything I could, movement wise, but it was when I stopped. Taking gluten. A lot of, about this, that the inflammation just left.

So there's so much power in what we're putting in our mouths. And then I'm thinking to myself, as we're talking together right now, gluten would also somehow, and you probably can help me with these ladies related to insulin resistance because it absolutely is. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking, Oh my goodness.

There's a correlation right there.  Absolutely. And you mentioned spiritual and emotional. And I think one thing that I need to be better at, and I think makes a profound effect is a gratitude dog. There's a guy I follow, his name's Ben Azadi and he's a keto guy and he came from a very unhealthy, Life to a very healthy life.

And so he called to teach us something called keto flex. And he says, vitamin G that's one of the most important vitamins that you can take and it's gratitude. And there are studies that show Carrie. Yeah. You can wake up in the morning and state three things that you're grateful for. It will profoundly change your life  because I need to be better at that.

I'm a hundred percent on board with that. We've had an episode on the podcast before and that there are studies shown on that. And for me, I can tell you, we can have both. We can have gratitude and joy in the midst of our trials. Yeah. Of our struggles. We can have both. Yes.  And I know personally what helps me is a couple of things, but one is the verse Philippians four, six through nine, which, we're, it's calling us to be thankful in everything we do big and small so like I have lately been thanking God for everything.

Thank you, Lord. Even the things that I'm not, I'm not sure why this is happening, but thank you, Lord. Thank you. And that really, because it's bigger than we are. And, 100%.  So much power there. Thank you so much for bringing that up. I read the other day, I do write down gratitudes.

I do keep a gratitude journal and like a lot of times encourage other people to do that, but  about an abundance journal, a gratitude and abundance journal. And I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, there's just so much to be grateful for when we are doing this. And it just shifts our focus. So there's So much that we can be doing and that helps with inflammation and then we have, the things that we're doing we're putting in our mouth and then the tool that we're using here that we advocate for everybody myself include the feel great system, which is It's helping me in many levels, just, I don't want to talk all about myself.

I know you guys as well, and a lot of people got inflammatory, your IBS is an inflammatory process. Using a tool to lower your inflammation, not only just removing the gluten, but adding something like this. We'd love to hear your story, Carrie. Oh, yeah. For me, what I was telling a man named Shannon yesterday is that what I've realized is that the products, the teas and the fibers, the drinks, first of all, they're easy and that's what I need.

And most people need, I don't have to overthink it, but. One thing that's really helpful is that it's helpful. It's helping my body continually like it's not like I'm, it's cumulative is what I'm trying to say from when I started doing this and taking these supplements. It's a cumulative process so that I feel that My gut, which is one of the reasons I started taking it, is healing consistently.

And I noticed that I had a couple too much information, but normal BMs.  Oh, you're not the only one that does not team up because I guarantee you, if you're in a room of a hundred people, I bet you 80 of them do not have normal bowel movements. And I just spent a lot of medication for that at the pharmacy and some of the medications  Thousands of dollars and some people are taking medication for these symptoms.

On a regular basis, they're just treating the symptom and just keep taking more and more medication and not addressing the root cause, which is quite simple, actually, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's simple. It's a simple protocol. It's just drinking the tea, drinking the fiber before you eat. And when you do some intermittent fasting, and when you break the fast, make sure you're eating real food, eating real healthy, soluble and insoluble fiber, healthy fat and protein.

And that is it. And drink your water and don't eat every two to three hours. Yes. And I think the thing that helps me too, in knowing that we are all human here and we are not like going to be. We're not ever,  never, and so let's just throw that out there. So I love being able to take the fiber drink, because I know that's going to help lower my glucose.

And if I take that after I have something that I enjoyed having, I feel that I'm doing something good for my body. Enjoying something I like to eat and not having to beat myself up, which I don't do anyway, but it's just helpful to know that it's almost like a reinsurance. You know what?

We're not going to be able to strictly adhere to this, like a protocol where I'm not going to ever have this or that, because then we're going to want those things so that this protocol helps me because when I do have those things, like whatever it might be, that's not textbook healthy. It's okay.

And I'm still doing good for my body and I'm pushing the blow, right? That's right. And the inflammation, cause this is all what we're talking about. It's helping the level of inflammation, whether that's muscles or joints or gut. Because everything is. Would you guys agree?

Oh, most everything is linked to him. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. No gut, gut dysbiosis leads to leaky gut and causes more inflammation. Endotoxin  autoimmune. Yeah, I have an autoimmune. So and right. Yeah, exactly. And gluten is the number one trigger actually for inflammation for flare to trigger autoimmune response.

So yes, for us. Yeah. Gluten is definitely something that we have to remove if we want to reduce that inflammation and not trigger that flare. Just having one more tool for everybody listening that we can put in our bodies that can help us with inflammation. With help us which we now know the root causes insulin resistance which can help us with this things It's just reassurance and it's also like you guys it's not going to have the negative effects on our body which cause more inflammation When we're trying to do something good  there's nothing worse than seeing somebody take medication and then having  we've all seen.

I know I've seen. That's why we're here. And we're, we want to be an advocate for everybody listening today that there are other solutions out there. So absolutely. And then I also just want to mention that this fiber too, helps to support gut health because This acts as a prebiotic and helps to support the gut microbiota and helps to heal the gut and reduce inflammation.

And the protocol that we're talking about, I don't know if you can see this, it's very simple. And some people mentioned that it could be cost neutral if anybody wants to implement this, as you can see here. Some people eat breakfast. If some people are just listening.

Some people remember just listening. Oh, sorry.  Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. So like this protocol can be neutral. If you're skipping breakfast, if you practice intermittent fasting But you don't have to, if you're not trying to lose weight. This is not a weight loss protocol, so this is to, this protocol supports your metabolic health, and reduces inflammation, and we're seeing, you guys are seeing a lot of people lower their inflammation, any stories that you want to share? I know lots of Shannon. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you a few right now. I had a gentleman that had a neuropathy so bad that he contemplated suicide. Neuropathy for those of you who don't know is an implant inflammation of the nerves.

And it, a lot of times feels like your hands and feet are on fire and there's not really a great way to treat it. It's one of these things that will make you a crazy person. Cause you can't get away from it. And he got on the protocol and he said, it dropped it down to a level four where he doesn't even think about it anymore.

And so there's Hashimoto.  Thyroiditis is an autoimmune condition where the thyroid attacks itself and creates antibodies. We have a nurse that started this protocol with her antibodies close to 4, 000, which your antibodies should be zero. And after being on the protocol for two years, her antibodies show up as less than nine.

So that shows that her inflammatory process in her body has calmed down that much that it's not attacking itself. That's good to hear, especially Hashimoto's. I'll be, yeah, that's wonderful. That's excellent. And then we have people with rosacea that's gone. IBS, reverse. Yeah. Okay.

Migraine, migraines is another one. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune and it's inflammation. Arthritis is. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people listening have arthritis and it's profound when you have insulin levels down. And, we talked about the balance of the fiber, but the unimate, which is a chlorogenic acid yerba mate concentrate, is a potent anti-inflammatory in itself.

So not only is it an insulin sensitizer and a GLP one booster say  powerful anti inflammatory.  So that is everybody listening to a chlorogenic acid in the tea that  drinking is a very powerful anti inflammatory in and of itself. Great. And so we have that in addition to the whole system working to lower resistance, which is driving everything.

Yeah, it helps, it helps people get rid of the food in their diet that's causing the inflammation sugars, highly inflammatory seed oils, ultra processed foods, things that people know they shouldn't eat, but we're addicted. And so not only does this protocol help with the inflammation process.

Directly, but it helps you break up or get rid of these foods in your diet that are also contributing to inflammation. I am just really excited about it because I started the podcast almost two years ago, tried many different things, interviewed a lot of different practitioners and hadn't really found anything at all to help me have normal BMS.

So this was a breakthrough for me. Thank you  for listening to you guys,  even though I'm distant because I didn't, you just don't know until you try something. And so I have to try it on my own body. So that is pretty powerful. Just my own.  experiencing that. I have to say,  I also want to touch upon that too.

You like constipation and bowel movement when you don't defecate, when you don't get rid of the stools. get recycled, right? When it gets recycled, it becomes toxins. It becomes toxic and that can lead to more inflammations. So it's that recycling of stools that's not getting excreted out from your body.

It'll get recycled  as toxins and that contributes to more inflammation. So  Yeah, we need, yeah, so there, so this, this protocol is a life changer for my family, for myself and for many people that I know, yay. Thank you guys. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, Shannon, for coming on. 

Thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Yay. And if you guys want to learn more about the feel great system, you can check out the episode description and there is a link for the product we recommend. The company does offer a 90 day money back guarantee for products  and listen to these guys.

They are now covered by HSA and FSA.  So for those of you listening, it's covered by HSA and FSA. That's pretty huge. Also, some of you listening may be struggling with inflammation involving pain, muscle, joint, back pain, stiffness. And if you are ready to live pain free and enjoy your favorite activities with confidence, I'm ready to help you.

I am. A Christian health mentor with 26 years of experience helping people improve their health. You can reach out here, schedule a well body consultation, and reach out to support a movement craft. com. And because you're a listener of the better than a pill podcast, you'll get a 50 percent savings. So we release new episodes every other week on Wednesday, and I look forward to having you join me then.