Home Remedy for Auto-Immune and Chronic Inflammatory Diseases
Please note, this advice is not intended to replace the care provided by licensed medical professionals. Diet can certainly affect Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), Ulcerative colitis (UC) and a host of other auto-immune and chronic inflammatory diseases but if it were the only thing required to treat these conditions, that would be a cure. Cures to these diseases do not currently exist. Always consult your doctor(s) before making any major dietary changes. Also, avoid fad diets and consider requesting a referral to a licensed medical dietician.
Research Backs Plant-Based Diets
Volumes of research exist supporting the superiority of diets that are largely plant-based with a variety vegetables and healthy proteins. What can truly impact symptoms varies from person to person, but a few foods are almost universally recognized for increasing inflammation. Highest on this list is sugar. This doesn’t mean the natural sugar of an apple or a banana but essentially any sugar or sweetener which goes through a process to refine, meaning enhance or concentrate, naturally occurring plant sugars (sugar cane, corn, etc). White sugar and corn syrup are two of the worst sweeteners for causing inflammation but nearly every sugar or sweetener is refined. The rare exception to this is raw honey, which has anti-inflammatory properties. However, it should be used sparingly.
Essentially anything with added sugar is inflammatory. To clarify, applesauce that is made just with apples and spices is not necessarily inflammatory. Applesauce which is sweetened (meaning any sugar has been added) is inflammatory. Unfortunately, in this sense, white sugar, brown sugar and raw cane sugar are not much better as they are always added sugar. The only way for can sugar not to be “added sugar” is if it is being eaten in the form of raw sugar cane (which is not as easy as it might sound as sugar cane is incredibly fibrous). The only way for corn fructose (used to make corn syrup) to not be “added sugar” is to be consumed in actual corn.
Best Way to Reduce Inflammation in Your Body
For this reason, one very beneficial way to begin reducing inflammation in your body is by limiting or completely giving up processed sugars. This may seem daunting considering that sugar is in so many foods and beverages, but it is also phenomenal opportunity to reduce the inflammation in your body naturally. Though some people go “cold turkey” with sugar, it is often easier to start with a series of steps or phases to reduce the sugar in one’s diet. Coffee and soda are a great place to begin. This means giving up sodas. Switching to diet might seem like a good idea but the artificial sweeteners and dyes in diet sodas are also inflammatory inducing.
Use Sugar Alternatives in Your Food
Another great way to cut out sugar and benefit your health is to stop putting sugar in your coffee. If you are into flavored syrups, you can try plain vanilla extract and a small amount of raw honey. When baking, no-sugar added applesauce can be substituted for sugar in some recipes. So can many kinds of fruit, including baking persimmons and dates. This may take some trial and error and research. The follow site has an excellent recipe for date paste, which can be substituted for sugar in many deserts and is nutrient rich.
How to Make Date Paste (A healthy sugar substitute!) – Detoxinista
Read Nutritional Labels
Another excellent way to reduce your sugar intake is to start reading food labels, nutritional information, and ingredients (ideally prior to purchasing or consuming it). Anything that contains corn syrup, especially high fructose corn syrup, should go back on the store shelf. Pasta sauce and soup often contains corn syrup but there are often sugar free or no-sugar added varieties. Sometimes switching grocery stores can help. Trader Joe’s for example has more sauces and soups that don’t contain sugar. Bread is another item that often contains much more sugar than one would expect, and it may take time to locate but most bread sections are diverse enough now that there will be something without added sugar. You may have to acquaint yourself to new flavors or trade in things like Prego pasta sauce for Ragu Simply pasta sauce.
Change Your Sugar Consumption
Any time you catch yourself adding sugar to something, stop. Eliminate sugar bowls from your table and stop buying sugar. This is difficult. We live in a culture that often associates sweets with happiness and advertising that programs us to crave candy from young ages. Sadly, this is attributing to illness and even deaths. Heart disease and strokes are linked to inflammation and the average person eats 77 to 126 grams of sugar a day (many, many times the recommended amount). Cutting sugar from your diet (except for a cheat day here and there) may seem extreme but a radical change is what is required to bring most people’s sugar consumption levels down to a remotely reasonable amount. It is difficult but you will feel better. Many people who reduce and eliminate sugar in their diets and then have a cheat day immediately notice that they feel worse the day after. For those with AS and rheumatoid arthritis, there will be increased stiffness and even swelling.
Watch the YouTube video below to learn the ten tips that can help you cut sugar from your diet effectively.
Personal Injury Attorneys in Sacramento
I’m Ed Smith, a Personal Injury Attorney in Sacramento. If you have been involved in an auto accident and have experienced a worsening of your auto-immune or chronic inflammatory disease condition, contact our legal team at (916) 921-6400 or (800) 404-5400 for free, friendly advice.
See our case history of Verdicts and Settlements.
Image by Dagny Walter from Pixabay
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