Cooling Inflammation: Relief from Chronic Inflammation

In this episode, we explore the causes of inflammation and its impact on health, including pain and poor sleep. I share effective strategies for combating inflammation through an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle, such as drinking plenty of water and tea, incorporating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and enjoying a large daily salad for essential nutrients. We discuss the importance of staying hydrated, using bone broth and collagen supplements, and avoiding inflammatory foods like sugar and gluten. Additionally, I recommend adding anti-inflammatory herbs and spices, as well as following a Mediterranean-style diet, like the Jolie Life diet, for long-term benefits. 

Transcript

(00:09):
How to reduce inflammation, how to cool inflammation is one of the top questions I get. This is Julia, founder of the Jolie Life. We create nutrition programs for people, for general wellness, for disease reversal, for weight loss, for gut help. Oftentimes clients will join our programs. They will enjoy a week, two weeks of Jolie life food and they will feel absolutely wonderful and fabulous. And sometimes they're doing a reset. Sometimes it's a program that we're doing and they go off of the Jolie Life program because their program has ended or they go on vacation or whatever. And the number one comment that I get when they get back is, oh my gosh, I didn't realize the impact that Jolie had on my inflammation levels. In some cases we have a client who is a physical therapist who has pain in her hands. She did a five day Jolie life program and didn't notice it at the time, but two weeks later, suddenly her hands hurt again.
(01:29)
And that trigger, she realized that, oh my gosh, my hands, they had stopped hurting. And then she did another program and was mindful of it. And again, notice the pain stopped. What is it? What it is is the absence of inflammation or the dramatic reduction of inflammation. So in this podcast we are going to talk about how you can reduce inflammation and my top ways of monitoring and reducing inflammation in my own body. We'll start with my top inflammation is evidence of an immune response that's happening in your body. That immune response can be provoked by toxins. It can be provoked by foreign matter in your body. That foreign matter might be a protein that gets through your gut lining into your bloodstream that your body doesn't like. It can be other pathogens or antigens that get into your bloodstream that your body doesn't like.
(02:46)
So inflammation is characteristic of our body saying, Ooh, there's something here that shouldn't be here, or there's some damage here. Let me go fix it. And in that fixing process, kind of like when you get a mosquito bite, there is swelling, there's some cell destruction that happens and there's increased blood flow and that's what we call inflammation. Inflammation is this chronic, very frequent immune response that is happening all over our body. And the consequence of that is that we don't feel great. Sometimes we have pain or achiness. Sometimes we don't move well, we don't sleep well. Our brain is a bit foggy and we just don't feel great. I'm always a proponent that we, humans are created to feel good most of the time and that most people walking around don't know how good they can feel. They don't know that they can get out of bed and they can feel great that they can have energy that goes and goes and goes.
(04:03)
That your knees don't have to hurt. Your hands don't have to hurt your shoulders don't have to hurt. You should not be in pain. Bloating is not normal. You should not be in pain. A huge amount of this is related to inflammation. Inflammation that goes unchecked turns into other things. So not only does it depress your immune system, but it is also one of the triggers for developing autoimmunity, which is definitely not something you want. And if you have an autoimmune condition, then this podcast is super important for you because reducing your overall inflammation will improve your autoimmune condition. We all want to reduce inflammation, but once it gets to the point where it's becoming problematic, it's turning into rheumatoid arthritis, it's turning into Graves' disease, it's turning into the other autoimmune diseases. We really want to pull back the other aspect of inflammation because of the cell damage that ensues, it causes accelerated aging in our body.
(05:17)
It causes our skin to age, it causes our cells to age, it causes our organs to age. It accelerates the aging of our body on a cellular level and beyond. And so that was honestly what in my we years of probably like 22, that is what got me into, okay, I need an anti-inflammatory diet because I want to be, feel, move as young as I can for as long as I can. And so that's got me into my anti-inflammatory diet. Key aspect of anti-inflammatory diet are anti-inflammatory liquids, water being number one, tea is number two. I literally drink tea multiple times a day. It is the oldest elixir, the oldest medicine that we have had. And it is super high in antioxidants. All tea, whether it's black tea, whether it's green tea, super high, whether it's matcha super high, we want antioxidants because they help our cells repair.
(06:28)
And the quicker our cells repair, the less inflammation there is. My other top habit for fighting inflammation is letting fruit be my sweet. So as I lessened my sweet tooth fruit became my sweet berries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, sometimes red currants, white currants, all the berries, they became my sweet thing. Berries are super high in antioxidants. They fight inflammation like nothing else. They can be your fruit. They can be not your fruit, but they can be your sweet. And the cool thing about fruit being your sweet is that it prevents you from having too much regular old candy like sugar, chocolatey sweet, which feeds inflammation as opposed to cooling it. The same with all your very colorful fruits, be they mangoes, be they watermelon, be they cantaloupe, be they peaches, all of those things are part of the anti-inflammatory diet. So for dessert, I will frequently have fruit.
(07:49)
If I'm really craving something sweet, I'll have fruit. Fruit is always a better choice than ice cream or cookies or anything else. Always, always, always, always a better choice. The other aspect, so we did tea, we did fruit of my anti-inflammatory diet is the big salad. Almost every day I have a giant salad filled with as many things I can put into it. Part of the joy of Jo life is and does it for me, gives me a giant salad with a lot of different ingredients. But that is key and that is the first thing that I miss when I go on vacation, when I go back home to St. Louis. When I go anywhere is the big salad. It makes a huge difference in your gut health, which therefore influences your inflammation levels and it also gives body all of the micronutrients that it needs to cool inflammation.
(09:01)
So your micronutrients are the non caloric molecules in your food that your body uses for various processes. So that's your vitamin Aids, your polyphenols, your vitamin Cs, your vitamin Ds, all of that, your minerals. Those are your micronutrients, your micronutrients, your body uses to cool inflammation. So I have my big salad once a day. That is my Eine salad as I call it. We have lots of salads that you called like glow, our youth in beauty. There's a reason for that. And the reason is is that these things help your body. Cool, inflammation. So if you institute having a big giant salad with as much as you can in it, that is going to help you to cool your inflammation by A, giving you the micronutrients for it. And B, feeding your gut a healthy gut equals lower inflammation. My other hack, so we talked about tea, we talked about fruit as your sweet, we talked about the big ass salad.
(10:17)
And fourth, we're going to talk about hydration. Hydration is important for reduction of inflammation because it powers your superhighway of detoxification. We want our detoxification pathways to not be trying to get into New York City at rush hour through the Holland Tunnel because then we increase our body's exposure to these toxins and hence provoke more long lasting immune responses. Instead, we want our detoxification pathways to be like super highways, the Mississippi River after a very snowy winter and a rainy spring that is just rushing through. We want to usher these toxins out of our body as quickly as we possibly can because that is healthier for us. And the way that we help that to happen is by keeping ourselves really hydrated with water, with tea, with fresh pressed juices made out of vegetables. That is how we keep those pathways as super highways instead of rush hour at the Holland Tunnel.
(11:43)
So hydration, hydration, hydration hydrate often and hydrate moderately. So it's so much better to have half a cup of water every hour than to really down the water and then not have water for three hours. If you have to down it, down it, something is better than nothing. But to optimize your hydration, think hydrate throughout the day, often small quantities and think hydrate with your food. What are water filled foods that I can be eating? That's my slow drip irrigation. So those are my top tips and my anti-inflammatory diet, oh, I forgot one thing. Broth. Bone broth. Bone broth as well as collagen protein additives. Those things are like magic bone broth and extra collagen magical. It makes such a big difference in my skin and made such a big difference in my level of inflammation and such a big difference in my ability to build muscle.
(12:59)
So those amino acids help support the repair side of this. So the better we repair, the faster we repair, guess what? Less inflammation. So bone broth, something to have daily. And if you don't want chicken bone broth, there is mineral broth, there is seaweed broth and we make a medicinal broth that's good for your gut as well as anti-inflammatory, but there's lots of broth and it's super easy to make if it's a vegetable broth and you want to make it at home, otherwise get it from us, get it from someone else. Learn how to make broth. It makes a huge difference as well as collagen supplements. So those are my top anti-inflammatory hacks that I implement in my life. Secondly, I want to talk to you about what to tick out because there are things that inflame us. And so if we're trying to cool inflammation, one of the easy ways to do that is to take out the things that are known to inflame us.
(14:08)
So first, highly inflammatory food sugar. Sugar causes inflammation. Why? Because it disrupts your gut microbiome here. Again, remember we talked about how a healthy gut is so necessary for low inflammation. Why is that in a nutshell? Your gut is your gatekeeper. So the healthier, happier, more active your gatekeeper is, the less crap gets inside your body. When I say inside, I mean in your bloodstream, in your lymphatic fluids to your cells. So that's why we want our gut healthy. Our number one inflammatory agents are those that are going to disrupt our gut microbiome, disrupt the equilibrium in our gut. When the equilibrium in our gut is disrupted, it begins to disintegrate the gut. So to create small holes in it and through those small holes, the crop gets into our body that causes chronic inflammation. So we want to feed our gut top way. Take out the sugar.
(15:22)
Sugar is highly disruptive to the gut. Second top way, take out more gluten even if you're not gluten sensitive. American wheat is inflammatory. Take it out, don't have as much of it. Not to mention it just breaks down into glucose, which is another name for sugar. So to reduce the amount of white foods that we eat, white foods being white bread, white pasta, white rice, things that basically have no nutrition in 'em, they're, they're basically sugar bombs. So reducing that and they are inflammatory. The other thing that we can do to help ourselves is to reduce the amounts of foods that we eat that have emulsifiers.
(16:20)
Look at your labels emulsifiers. Think of emulsifiers as things that de emulsify your gut. So our gut has this beautiful mucosal lining that our gut microbiome lives in, thrives in emulsifiers, disrupt the home of our microbiome, of our microbes, I should say that's more correct of our microbes. So to look at your labels and if you see Gower gum or this emulsifier or carrigan or what are other names for it? Goer gum, kerrigan, polysorbate, monolaurin monoglycerides, CIA gum, Gillian gum. All of those are emulsifiers that the FDA approves but actually are not good for our bodies. And you're going to find them in lots of foods that will surprise you. Of course you'll find them in your salad dressings and your mayonnaises and your peanut butters and things like that, your creamy sauces. But you're also going to find them in baked goods. You're also going to find them in cookies.
(17:44)
You're going to find them in nut butters, you're going to find them in ice cream. You're going to find emulsifiers in lots of different places. So begin reading labels and if you see an emulsifier up, not for that food because it will disrupt your microbiome, which will push your inflammation levels up. So those are the big things to take out. Sugar, white food, emulsifiers. Now let's get to the addition diet. The addition diet is like the Jo Life diet, the things that we add in to help our body. Cool. Inflammation or inflame, the most overlooked, easiest to add. Anti-inflammatories are herbs and spices, herbs in particular. Your parsley, your chives, your basil, your cilantro. Those are easy herbs to use. Chop 'em up every single meal, put them on top of whatever you're making. Simple as that. The other herbs like oregano, margarine, thyme, rosemary, sage, those are a bit harder to use.
(18:59)
You kind of need to know how to cook, but if you do know how to cook, make sure you're using them. We've been growing those for centuries because they are so good for us. Use them. They are very potent in anti-inflammatory factors. They're very potent in antimicrobial factors and they are filled with cell protective molecules. So you want to eat them. That's part of your addition Diet spice is another part of your addition diet. Spices were so sought after because they preserved meat, they made things taste better before we had refrigeration. But that ability to preserve, think of it also as that translates to your internal body itself. The spices are there to preserve you. So turmeric has been used for long, long time before we even knew that, oh, turmeric helps reduce inflammation. The same thing with ginger been used for eons before we knew, oh, like new from a scientific point of view that reduces inflammation.
(20:12)
That's antiviral, that's antimicrobial, that helps me fight off disease ginger. So think about these spices that are embedded in cuisine, whether it's Italian, whether it's French, whether it's Indian, whether it's Japanese, whether it's Korean, Chinese, German. It's embedded for a reason. And I wish to God that I knew, how did we humans originally know all these things are going to be good for us, but somehow we did. And we've been using them for centuries. Only recently have they dropped out of our usage. We need to bring them back because part of the addition diet brings the things back that helps you to dis inflame or to cool inflammation. So we're bringing back our herbs and our spices. And the other thing we want to bring back is variety. We have massive grocery stores that have so many things in them, and yet we eat the same foods all the time.
(21:19)
The deep nourishment, the deep nutrition, the anti-inflammatory agents for every cell in your body are found by eating a wide variety of foods. So eat as wide variety of food as you can, particularly in the category of fruit and vegetable. And if you were like me when I started this journey, I was more a broccoli, cucumber, tomato girl, maybe a pepper here or there, maybe lettuce, romaine lettuce. How did I expand my palate into what it is now one by one. So every time I went to the farmer's market, I lived in New York, I would get a vegetable I hadn't had and I would cook it in different ways and I would try it raw if that was appropriate. And I would just get myself used to it. And then the next week maybe I'd get a different vegetable or that same vegetable but in different colors.
(22:33)
See how that made a difference? And that is how I slowly extended my palette. I didn't like it. I didn't like it, but I kept trying new things. And now that I have kids, I think about when you're introducing foods to kids, they're saying that your kid, you need to introduce it 20 times before they actually start liking it. It's the same with us. So if you're a picky eater, if you only like a few vegetables, allow yourself to eat plenty of those few vegetables that you like. But then every week start adding in something new and start expanding your palette. And you'll be surprised that you will learn to things that you never thought you would. You will actually like things initially that you never thought you would. So it's very worth it just for variety and fun and all of that, but especially if you are looking to cool inflammation.
(23:33)
So the addition diet, we have our spices and our herbs and we have expanding our repertoire, giving ourselves a variety of foods because each food adds something different to our bodies. The third thing that we're going to talk about in terms of the addition diet is to add in broths or soups because, or even juices like cold pressed juices, no pineapple, no pear, no apple, none of that stuff in there. And I say add those things then because in the liquid form it is so much easier for our body to assimilate those nutrients. Our body does not have to work very hard. They're basically pre broken down for us. And in terms of cooling inflammation quickly, those items can be like they can superpower your cool because they really flood your system with lots of vitamins and nutrients.
(24:43)
When you're experiencing a lot of inflammation, you are doing my top, you are taking out things that we talked about and you're doing the addition diet. Adding in that liquid medicine is going to help move your needle. Oh so much faster. So that is the anti-inflammation diet in a nutshell. For more permanent anti-inflammation, look at the Mediterranean diet, which is basically what Jolie is. It is a type of Mediterranean diet. The key with the Mediterranean diet is you can implement it and it can be healthy and you can implement it and it cannot be healthy. It all has to do with proportions. So in the Mediterranean diet there are things like bread and potatoes and grains. You can take those completely out of proportion and your Mediterranean diet is no longer healthy. So I give that Mediterranean diet as an example of what is healthy.
(25:48)
But remember the implementation is what distinguishes wellness versus unwellness versus it just holds you where you are. If you need an example, look at the Jolie life, look at experience our food, but also look at all the things that are on the blog or on Instagram or in this feed that will help guide you in terms of what it means to eat the Jolie life when you're eating Jolie, but also when you're not eating Jolie. So that's it for today. Go forth and dis inflame. You will feel better, you will look better, you will be so thankful. And if this podcast helped you, please let us know. You can email me at julia@thejolielife.com. You can check out our www the jolie life.com and look out for our fall course called Restore, which will be all about restoring wellness. And I say it's restoring your factory settings.
(27:01)
So it is about getting your metabolism on track, balancing your hormones, getting your lipid profiles right where they should be. So look for restore and it'll give you all the tools that you need to live well. That's it. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jo Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast, I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jo Life. Our website is the jo life.com and it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the joly life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving by beauty. Lots of love.