What Are Anti-Inflammatory Foods & Why Are They Crucial for Health? | Dr. Rob Lustig Ultimate Guide

inflammation is essential inflammation Keeps Us healthy because it clears out foreign Invaders and it allows for us to clear damage and heal that's all part of the process of inflammation you can't do without it but mostly inflammation tends to be local so you sprain your ankle you get inflammation because you have to clear damaged tissue and you have to heal you cut yourself shaving you're going to get inflammation because you have to clear damage tissue and you have to heal wound healing is the end product of inflammation it's essential all of those are acute inflammatory

responses and all of those are localized and that's good but there's other inflammation there's inflammation that's whole body inflammation like for instance when you get a virus the goal is raise the body temperature to kill the bacteria or kill the virus try to activate those white blood cells to clear whatever the infection is you're doing damage but ultimately you are healing but there is something called chronic inflammation where you don't solve the problem you don't clear the damage you don't get the healing because the inflammation is unrelenting it continues because the offending agent hasn't been

dealt with because you are in constant unending exposure the only way to stop it is to stop the exposure so what is the exposure that causes chronic inflammation well many things they're all in the environment air pollution causes chronic inflammation we know that people who live closer to freeways have more risk for diabetes and more risk for cancer than people who don't because they are breathing an inflammatory particle what about the rest of us our gut our gut is the source of the chronic inflammation and the reason is because of our diet because that intestinal

barrier has been perturbed because it's not blocking the junk from getting into the bloodstream in the same way our lungs are not stopping the junk from getting into our bloodstream ultimately if you have chronic inflammation you're going to generate cyto kindes you're going to generate uh heat you're going to generate the Aging reaction you're going to generate cortisol and you're going to generate early death that's what inflammation does and the only way we know how to stop inflammation is get rid of the exposure so you can't do very much about your air except move but

you can do a whole lot about your diet so we have things in our diet that are pro-inflammatory and we have things in our diet that are anti-inflammatory pro-inflammatory foods are things that generate an immune response what like what well things that have omega-6 fatty acids okay seed oils and the reason is because Omega 6es are the precursor of a fatty acid called arachadonic acid and arachadonic acid is the precursor to all of the inflammatory molecules thromboxanes lucrin yosid basically causing inflammation where do you get seed oils from Ultra processed food food CU we're talking

soybean oil we're talking corn oil we're talking even canola oil we're talking about the oils that the food industry specifically uses because they increase shelf life and because they're cheap now are there other pro-inflammatory Foods absolutely sugar is a proinflammatory item and the reason is because of that fructose molecule glucose is not pro-inflammatory but fructose is why because fructose causes changes in the microbiome that cause the bacteria in your microbiome to chew up that mucin layer thus exposing your intestine to all of the junk that can get into your bloodstream fructose nitrates those tight junctions

rendering them permeable so that stuff can get through and finally fructose knocks off those immunologic cells allowing for bacteria whole bacteria to be able to pass through into the bloodstream because we can measure them so sugar is a pro-inflammatory substrate so seed oils sugar sounds like ultra-processed food to me all right what are anti-inflammatory foods anti-inflammatory foods are foods that suppress that immune response and I can sum that up with three items the first fiber now how can fiber be an anti-inflammatory food when we don't even digest it or absorb it because fiber is the

food for your bacteria it is the food for your microbiome it's what your microbiome chews up and if you don't feed your microbiome your microbiome will feed on you that's how you lose your mucin layer so when you consume fiber that is whole food that hasn't had the fiber stripped from it you will be actually supporting your microbiome and we know that because your microbiome will turn that fiber into a compound called short chain fatty acids acetate propionate butyrate butyrate has very specifically been shown to reduce intestinal inflammation reduce the transit of bad stuff into

the bloodstream reduce systemic inflammation reduce Alzheimer's disease bottom line fiber is the nutrient for your bacteria and you have to feed your gut and we're not second omega-3 fatty acids omega-3 fatty acids do the opposite of omega-6 fatty acids they are the precursor too DHA dooh hexenoic acid which is necessary for neurotransmission and for immune health and also EPA iosa pentenoic acid which is also necessary for good brain function and finally ala alpha linolenic acid which has cardiovascular protective effects so where do you get Omega-3s from well you can get ala from fruits and vegetables

but EPA and DHA need marine life we need fish okay and it's not because the fish make the Omega-3s the fish eat the Omega-3s what makes the omega-3 is the algae the fish eat the algae we eat the fish we get our Omega-3s third hand problem is there isn't enough good wild fish to go around and so Omega-3s are a prime directive to metabolic health and then lastly the third anti-inflammatory food is vitamin D vitamin D suppresses something called the toll like receptors that keep inflammation in check and so by maintaining a check check on

inflammation we can keep the inflammatory Cascade from burgeoning out of control and causing all this excess damage so Omega-3s vitamin D fiber sounds like real food to me