How to boost your IMMUNE SYSTEM and stay healthy (this COVID season)
HIT PLAY OR READ THE POST BELOW:
Today we’re going to talk about inflammation. Inflammation has been important in the fight against chronic disease over the long term. But even more so in the fight against COVID recently. There are lots of things that determine inflammation and lots of things that inflammation causes.
INFLAMMATION
What is inflammation? Why is it important?
We know that people that have higher levels of inflammation, in general, have much higher rates of developing heart disease, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune disease, joint pains, cancer, and now most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
People with higher inflammatory levels have a higher chance of developing COVID-19 both acute and long-term complications.
So, if we want to improve our health and prolong our life, we want to get rid of all the inflammation inside of us.
So, the question is, what causes inflammation? And that’s actually a very complicated question. It starts out with genetics. There are some people that are genetically more inclined to have inflammation. And you might have autoimmune disease in your family and therefore be pretty disposed to having rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, that’s the type of inflammation. You might have a cancer gene in your family that’s going to turn on cancer later on in life, that’s another type of inflammation.
But very simple things that we can control are also causative to inflammation. Fat is the biggest one. Fat cells are not this dead, inactive, yellow, fluffy base in our bodies. Fat cells are actually incredibly active endocrine organs. Fat cells produce inflammation. They actually increase the marker called CRP. The more fat you have, the higher the BMI you have, the higher your CRP levels in your body. And that’s inflammatory. We also know that fat cells produce estrogen. They actually make hormones. And that can throw off both men and women’s metabolic rates, and once again fat production. So, fat cells are bad.
What else causes inflammation?
You are what you eat. If you’re going to be drinking soda and eating popcorn, chips and fried foods, all very inflammatory things. We have to be really careful with what genetics gives us, but also what we’re doing on a daily basis that has something to do with inflammation.
The biggest question is, how do we ultimately decrease that inflammation and decrease our risks?
None of us wants to have dementia. None of us wants to have heart disease. And none of us wants to die of COVID.
There are lots and lots of things we can do, especially for the chronic disease point.
EXERCISE
Active exercise every single day.
All my patients always tell me, “why walk for a mile every day, I’m good”. You’re 40 years old, how high is your heart rate going when you’re walking. And tell everybody that a walk in the park is just a walk in the park. It’s time to consider exercise until your heart rate is being elevated. I really recommend that everybody to get some heart rate monitor, so that you’re not cheating yourself, and know how high your heart rate is.
If you do a very simple calculation and take 220 minus your age, that will give you your optimal maximal heart rate. If you go to about 60-80% of that, that will kind of put you in your fat-burning zone.
But most people, in order to achieve a high heart rate, will actually be doing real exercise. You should be huffing and puffing and sweating, and it shouldn’t be comfortable. If it’s an easy comfortable stroll, it’s not really exercise. So exercise, that’s probably the most important thing.
DIET
Then on top of that, we’ve got diet. There’s been lots of diets that have been studied over the years to figure out what’s the most anti-inflammatory diet? What’s the best diet for you? Which diet can prevent chronic disease the best?
There are some little tiny details that go into play with that depending on your individual goals, and your individual genetics. But overall, out of all the studies that we’ve done, it shows that the Mediterranean diet will keep you healthier than anything else out there.
People ask, what is the Mediterranean diet? Mediterranean diet is really high in fruits, vegetables, whole healthy grains, seafood, healthy oils and it does have a little bit of alcohol in there as well.
The Mediterranean diet has shown that a little bit of red wine is good for your heart. All those things really help decrease inflammation.
We actually do have studies that’s showing that having maybe a glass or two of wine a day can actually help decrease the inflammation. But only, if it’s done in a social setting. There’s something that goes into play when you’re happy and having fun with friends, and laughing and talking and enjoying yourself that really changes the hormones in your body and really brings down the inflammation.
If you were to drink just a glass of wine, at home by yourself, you know sadly crying on the sofa. It doesn’t have the same effect. So that social environment is really important. And especially now with COVID, we have to get more creative in finding that social environment.
Use all the tools you have. You live in Florida. Use the outdoors with social distancing. Sit by the fire pit. Get on zoom calls with your family further away. There are still ways we can get that social environment and help lower the inflammation.
We’ve got diet, exercise, social activity that help bring the inflammation down. Sometimes, even that’s not enough. And part of that, depends on blood work.
SUPPLEMENTS
I tend to do lots of very specific blood work, especially when it comes to inflammation. Just because if you have very elevated CRP versus you have an autoimmune disease, versus whatever else you might have going on. We might attack that inflammation differently.
Sometimes, we need the help of medications, and sometimes we need the help of more natural things or supplements to bring everything down.
There are a lot of general very healthy supplements that are safe for the majority of people out there that I would recommend, that have a strong anti-inflammatory effect.
Curcumin which is an extract added to turmeric, is a great at decreasing inflammation. A lot of people do juice turmeric. Put it in their shakes. Put it in their soups. That is all well and good.
But the amount of actually anti-inflammatory curcumin, you would get out of the dietary products is actually really minimal. You have to have a very high-quality supplement with turmeric and preferably black pepper in it to help with the absorption and get those levels to where they need to be.
I would say that for something like curcumin, it tends to be very difficult to find a good quality product over the counter. Do your research or ask a professional what brands are the best. But that’s a great one. I usually recommend 400mg twice a day for curcumin.
There’s lots of data that shows that curcumin will actually help the inflammatory markers on blood work. Especially for things like autoimmune disease and especially rheumatoid arthritis, there’s also evidence for it. For osteoarthritis, which is another chronic inflammatory hereditary condition.
The next supplement I highly recommend for inflammation, I give you Omega 3’s. Omega 3’s are mostly found in fish oil. I usually recommend high quality fish oil, organic and well purified without lots of heavy metals like mercury in it.
For the anti-inflammatory effect, I usually recommend about 2000 mg a day. We also have great studies out there that show that about 4000mg a day can really help those with cholesterol profiles and decrease your cardiovascular risks. It’s also been shown that high-dose omega-3 is great at bringing down your triglycerides and blood sugars which are also inflammatory. So, there’s two things, curcumin and omega-3 that you can do.
There’s been lots of studies in vitamin D. Vitamin D has been shown to help with pretty much everything out there. We know that a lot of people are using vitamin D in their COVID-19 protocols. It’s been shown to prevent a lot of chronic diseases.
Well, you can also get out in the sun in Florida. You should be able to get some vitamin D that way. We got to remember that vitamin D is made by the surface area cells of your skin. And studies actually show that unless you go out in the sun at noon, butt-naked, for 20 minutes a day, you’re probably not going to get enough vitamin D.
I know there are some nudists out there. And I have some patients that have phenomenal vitamin D levels. But unless you are one of those people, you probably need to be taking a supplement every day for that.
There’s also been a lot of talks recently on an herbal called Quercetin. Quercetin is partially antihistamine, anti-inflammatory supplement that does have some data against COVID-19. It is also a great anti-inflammatory. The reason I love it for my Florida patients specifically because allergies are crazy down here, all year round. Not only you get your anti-inflammatory effect, but also it will help you with some of those allergies.
Some of the other stuff that has been in the news lately, especially because of COVID, a lot of people think about as anti-inflammatory is Melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that helps us sleep. But also, we found out that it has a great anti-inflammatory effect, which we don’t fully understand yet. We have studies showing that high-dose Melatonin can actually help with COVID. We have studies showing it does have some effect in general inflammation and things like cancer. We have studies showing that it decreases sundowning in your dementia patients. So really, a super cool pretty benign hormone that can have a lot of different effects.
There’s lots of anti-inflammatory medications. Ibuprofen, in your NSAIDS are probably the most common one of those. They really help with acute inflammation to bring it down. Long term they don’t really have much of an effect. There’s been lots of data back and forth whether it’s good or bad for COVID.
We do recommend things like a baby aspirin for a lot of our COVID patients, just because COVID can also increase the inflammation so much that it causes clotting and bleeding risks.
So, lots of things that we can do for generalized inflammation and also for preventing COVID inflammation, which I know everybody has been concerned about these days. But really for your takeaway points, the most important thing that you can do on a day-to-day basis — feel better, to have better productive lives, and to live longer long term, diet, real exercise, bring down your inflammation, know what you’re risk factors are and what your blood work looks like, and then if you’re interested to take some medications or supplements for that.
So, that concludes our lecture on dealing with inflammation.
If you guys have any further questions feel free to reach out to me at Whole Health in Lakewood Ranch or you can always post on the webpage.
For more information, please send us a message or book an appointment with us today!
