How Inflammation Affects Your Metabolism, Sleep, and Aging

In this episode, we explore how inflammation impacts metabolic hormones, influencing weight loss, sleep quality, and aging. We discuss its role in thyroid dysfunction, overeating, and sleep disruption, along with strategies to reduce inflammation through diet and gut health. 

Transcript

(00:10):

Welcome back to the Jolie Life Podcast. This is our second podcast on inflammation. So if you haven't listened to the first one, go back and listen to it so you have the background. I broke it up in sections because I thought it would be easier to digest for you. We are talking about the impact of inflammation on our hormones, and particularly now we're going to talk about how it influences our metabolic hormones because that is how inflammation ends up creating weight gain and making it really, really, really hard for us to lose weight. So we'll start with the thyroid because the thyroid is important in terms of it really highly, highly, highly influences our metabolic rate. And when we have low thyroid levels or when the thyroid becomes damaged, we end up with dysfunction. And often diseases of like Hashimoto's for instance, which is a dysfunction of the thyroid.
(01:15)
And the way that inflammation affects thyroid function is by promoting the production of autoantibodies that lead to conditions like Hashimoto's. Autoantibodies are antibodies against the body itself. So when the body begins to attack itself, and that's what ends up happening in autoimmune disease, is the body is attacking itself. Not purposefully. The body thinks that it's doing the right thing, but that's what ends up happening. Therefore, our thyroid becomes inflamed and it cannot produce enough thyroid hormone or convert thyroid hormone to a usable form at the rate that our body needs. The other inflammation also affects our human growth hormone, which we have throughout our life, by the way, not just when we're teenagers, but growth hormone is important because it is responsible for growth. We grow when say we cut our finger and we grow new skin, we grow and we break a bone and we need to knit that bone back together.
(02:23)
We need growth hormone for that. We grow for tissue repair, our metabolism, and if you are very young listening to this podcast, you are growing with your human growth hormone. The other metabolic hormone that inflammation influences is leptin. Leptin is our satiety hormone. It is the hormone that tells our body we've had enough. And when we are inflamed the signaling of leptin, the brain becomes less responsive to it. And so we can overeat because our appetite feels like, oh, we're still hungry. That leads to weight gain and we're actually not hungry. But because our brain is not able to sense that we're full, then we never get that signal. When this happens, our body never feels satisfied and part of our body not feeling satisfied, like not feeling like we're being nourished adequately, can also contribute to imbalances in our reproductive hormones are estrogen, are progesterone, and this is another way in which inflammation makes becoming pregnant difficult.
(03:44)
So for all you who are looking to have a baby or trying to have a baby know that inflammation, you really need to focus and bring that down and that will definitely help your process unfortunately. Okay, so we don't feel like we're satisfied, we don't feel full, and it affects our ghrelin levels. And ghrelin is like growl. Get that stomach growling that keys you in to what it is. It is the hunger hormone. And when ghrelin levels go off, guess what? We get hungry more. We have more cravings. So inflammation makes it hard out of the gate for us to lose weight because we don't feel satiated and we feel constantly hungry. This is one reason why in the Jolly Life diet nutrition programs in the optimized program in particular in hormone balance, it is so important that inflammation is addressed from the start, from the get go.
(04:46)
And so your food is designed to address inflammation right out of the gate. It is a mistake to try to lose weight through shakes or through starvation or some of the more gimmicky things that we do because it doesn't impact inflammation. We want inflammation to be impacted because that will help put you metabolically, hormonally in a space where it's easier to lose weight and your body is working for you instead of working against you. And we always want to support ourselves so our body is working for us. Another way to do that that greatly impacts our ability to lose weight and to feel good is our sleep and inflammation makes it difficult for us to sleep because of the increased cortisol, our cortisol levels up in the morning to wake us up and then they go down throughout the day unless there's an emergency. If we have constantly elevated levels, it is very difficult for us to unwind and injure that rest and repair that is necessary for a good sleep.
(06:00)
The other thing that happens is we talked about in progesterone and cortisol how there are precursors that are needed for both that are shared, and when our body needs more cortisol, we get less progesterone because we don't have the precursors for that. The same thing happens in terms of the conversion of melatonin when we are in an inflammatory state. So when we are inflame tryptophan, which is needed for serotonin production is shunted off to help with our cortisol levels, and that in turn makes it very difficult for us to go to sleep. And the other part of the sleep disruption is elevated. Cortisol levels make it difficult for us to cycle through our sleep cycles, so it changes our sleep architecture. So that's how you go from REM to non-REM to REM to non-REM. And when that gets disrupted, guess what? We end up with poor quality sleep.
(07:13)
We end up waking up at night and our sleep becomes less restorative. And so this is another reason why we want to keep cortisol levels down and we want to keep it down so that our melatonin can actually be produced at the rate that we need it produced. That's one way that inflammation influences your sleep. And when we do not get enough sleep, our cravings, our hunger are so much worse in the morning because our body is energy deprived. And since we didn't get to restore ourself through our sleep, our body looks for extra food, particularly glucose and sugar to give it that boost of energy to get through the day. Another reason why, if you need to lose weight, we definitely need to lower inflammation and you want to sleep well. You want more serotonin, lower inflammation too. Now let's dive into aging, which is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite areas of health, aging, metabolism, my favorite areas of health.
(08:24)
So inflammation. I want to be forever young. You want to be forever young. The beauty industry and all the anti-aging stuff is huge. Why? Because we want to live as long as possible, but we also want to live as well as possible for as long as possible. We want to look good, we want to feel good, we want to move good. This is all related to aging. Slowly as I call it. We want to age slowly. So in order to do that, we need to reduce our inflammation because we need to reduce our cell damage. Young cells equal a younger, better functioning body, so inflammation gets reduced. We have better cells, younger cells, when we reduce inflammation, we get less oxidative stress because more antioxidants are available to address detoxification of our cells, to address rebuild of our cells, to address the suppression of disease pathways.
(09:24)
So we want that. And thirdly, we want lower inflammation because it helps our cells to reproduce our DNA without errors, there will always be some errors, but with inflammation, you end up with misfolded protein, so they can't be used correctly. You end up with DNA damage. We don't want that. That is going to make us age longer and it's also going to make it harder for our body to suppress disease programming. So if you say, oh, x, Y and Z runs in my family, okay, great, but we don't want X, Y, and Z to actually activate in your body by keeping inflammation down. We keep the chance of that activating much, much lower. So that is another reason why we want to keep inflammation down. Let us dive into the nutrition that creates inflammation and first and foremost, our processed foods because they are high in sugars, trans fats and additives that disrupt your gut health, that spike your blood sugar levels and stimulate inflammation.
(10:40)
So processed foods are not good for us and I don't care if it's healthy processed food or non-healthy processed food. You're finding inflammation, get rid of the processed food. Second is omega sixes. So we do need some omega sixes. There's a balance between omega threes, those are the anti-inflammatory. Omega six are the pro-inflammatory. There's a balance. But what ends up happening is we get more inflammatory omega sixes because they are in our vegetable oils, they're in our corn oil, our soybean oil, they're in our seed oils. We want to lower those. So we wanted to have olive oil, avocado oil, things of that sort. Even honestly, butter is better in terms of butter from a grass fed cow is better than corn oil in terms of your omega six profile. The other aspect of food that feeds fuels pours gasoline on the fire of inflammation is high glycemic index foods.
(11:48)
And these are foods that are generally snack foods or foods that have been processed. The fiber is taken out of them. So we think about a lot of times people are gluten-free. And so you choose gluten-free alternatives that are made with rice flowers or corn flowers or other non-gluten grain flowers. These are your high glycemic index foods because to make rice flour, you're taking all the fiber out of the rice. Fiber is what helps rice not to spike your insulin. So when we're frequently consuming foods that are devoid of fiber, we get insulin spikes which promote systemic inflammation. Here I just want you to be really, really, really vigilant in terms of choosing, say, gluten-free or dairy-free foods because we don't want to choose a substitute that makes things worse or that just is a different evil. We want to choose substitutes that A, address our gluten sensitivity, but B, are actually giving us something.
(13:00)
I always think of food as an investment. It has to do something for me, it has to work for me, and for that reason, you want to be careful when choosing gluten substitutes. At Jolie, we do make gluten substitutes and we are very, very conscious of making them very nutrient rich either in their fiber content, in their nutritional profile, their proteins, their fats, their micronutrients. Why? Because if we're substituting something, we want to give you something even better. And so when you think of substituting, think of I'm giving myself something even better. And the fourth aspect of food that is pro-inflammatory or foods that are pro-inflammatory are artificial additives and preservatives. And this is because of how they provoke the immune system. And this is also because of how they affect the gut. And I just want to touch on a few additives that you may not think of or you may not be aware of in terms of what they do to your body, but I want you to know them so you can look out for them.
(14:15)
The first that I want to highlight are the gums. So these are emulsifiers that are put in food to give it a really good mouthfeel. Emulsifiers are very, very disruptive to your gut lining, so you want to keep those out of your diet. The other things that you want to keep out of your diet are your food dies. Those two are very, very disruptive to your gut microbiome as well as sugar substitutes. Sugar substitutes tend to disrupt the microbiota, and that's where you get lots of gassiness and things of that sort that is keying you into this is not good for your gut and therefore not good for inflammation. So just wanted to highlight some of those things. So now, okay, what can you do? What can you do to cool inflammation in your body? You can eat whole foods, whole unprocessed foods, vegetables, fruits, whole grains.
(15:22)
Like I love oat grs. That's like a whole oat, not processed. You can all the fiber. Those foods help you to fight inflammation. They do so by feeding your gut and they do so by giving you all the antioxidants your body needs to repair and to do all of its processes. I cannot stress enough how food is your medicine when it comes to cooling, inflammation and related diseases. Prioritize your omega threes. Omega threes are sometimes hard to come by in our modern world. You can get them in fatty fish, you can get them in flax seeds, something that Jolie puts in almost every single dressing we make. Why? Because it is so darn good for you from a hormonal perspective, a metabolic perspective and a beauty perspective. Get your omega threes through flaxseed, walnuts, and another source. There is a company called Body Bio that makes balance oil.
(16:24)
It has the perfect balance of omega threes, omega sixes, and some other very necessary lipids for your body. Have a supplement if you're not a fish person or if you have a nuts seed allergy, low glycemic foods. So we want foods that are rich, rich in fiber because we want to feed our gut. Our gut is the root of inflammation. Our healthy gut will protect us. So here we are going for our leafy greens. And I want to say to all food police all yes, there is a hierarchy in terms of fiber like kale versus iceberg lettuce. But honestly, I'd rather you just eat whatever you like and eat a lot of it as it relates to vegetables than saying, oh, iceberg lettuce isn't valid. If you point of entry is iceberg lettuce, eat iceberg lettuce. When I began my health journey, there weren't as many vegetables that I eat as I eat now.
(17:27)
And so I didn't worry about it if I just ate broccoli every single day. Then I ate broccoli every single day and I got used to like, Ooh, I really like broccoli. Let's try some cauliflower. Okay, I hated zucchini when I was a kid. At some point I'm like, let's try some zucchini. Oh, this is good. So start where you are. Start where you are. I guarantee you, starting where you are and building on that will give you a better result. So eat your leafy greens and your sweet potatoes. Eat your legumes, but whole. So think lentils because they have a lot of fiber. Low glycemic index, incorporate anti-inflammatory herbs and spices. And this is where Jolie really shines because I call this nature's medicine cabinet. The spices and herbs, they are your elixirs. They are your tonics. They are your very targeted medicines. So your turmeric, your ginger, your garlic, have them have them, have them have them.
(18:27)
They're very, very reparative. And the fun thing is that foods like garlic for instance or turmeric, are antiviral and antibacterial. So not only do they fight inflammation, they also help your immune system by doing that fight for your immune system. So your immune system even more than having less inflammation. And so it gets to deregulate downregulate because of the antiviral antibacterial impact of herbs and spices, the immune system gets to settle down even more. So you are helping your body on two fronts when you incorporate lots of herbs. This is something that makes joli food very different from most other food in that we really prioritize using those things. It takes more effort. I will not lie to you cooking this way. You are in the kitchen more. This is why we have Julie. It takes longer because you're doing the turmeric and you're chopping the garlic and you're grating the ginger and you're chopping the herbs and you're getting the parsley and the cilantro and the basil, and you're doing all the things.
(19:45)
So it's going to take longer, but your body will love you for it. And fifth is focused on foods that feed your gut, which literally many of these foods do feed your gut. But I'm talking about giving you a bit more diversity in your microbiome. And I'm not talking about probiotics, which has a place, but in terms of this, I want you to really get your microbial diversity from the ground up. And that's how fermented foods really help us because fermented foods give us a microbiome boost by giving us more microbes. But at the same time, fermented foods come packaged with the food for the bacteria. So sometimes with probiotics in an unhealthy gut, you introduce all of these bacteria, but there's no food for them. And so they die off and there's further disruption in your gut. There's a lot of discomfort and you've done nothing with fermented foods.
(20:49)
You are providing the microbes and the food together so they can grow and flourish. And if you follow the other four points, not whole foods, omega threes, low glycemic foods, herbs and spices, you're providing even more food after you do these five things for let's say six to eight weeks. Then if you want to take a probiotic, go for it. You have already prepared your gut to be a beautiful cultivated garden for these microbes. So that is it on inflammation. You know what it does. If you've listened to both parts, you know how impactful it is on your mood, your weight, your aging and your hormones, and you know what you have to avoid in terms of foods and you know what to eat in terms of foods. And I'm going to leave you with the other key to this is stress, and I'm going to do a third podcast on stress as it relates to inflammation.
(21:58)
I hope you have enjoyed this podcast on information. I would love it if you would leave feedback, if you would leave questions, if you would share this, if you would subscribe, if you would like, you can reach us@thejolielife.com. You can come to the at 12 Village Road and just meet your Health Dream team, our chefs, our program designers, everything. And we would love for you to share this. And we would love to know what your health concerns are, what your wellness concerns are, and how we can help you. At Jolie, we try to blend beauty and science and doability to help you optimize your health and to support you in the best way possible. That's holistic and really propels all of you to help. That's it. Love you.