How the Anti-Inflammatory Diet Impacts Mood | Happiness Masterclass

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this presentation on the anti inflammatory diet. This is part two of the Science of Happiness Masterclass. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this video, we're going to discuss what the anti inflammatory diet is, explore the research behind it, identify how the anti inflammatory diet can improve your mood, your energy, your pain and a whole bunch of other things. Explore 10 ways or more to make your diet less inflammatory. So the anti inflammatory diet is just a general umbrella term for a balanced diet that includes whole grains that are high in soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber is fiber that absorbs water and insoluble fiber doesn't absorb anything, it just kind of scrubs things out as it goes through and it's a bulking agent. Fiber is important because it can help slow the release of blood sugar into your system. Greatly oversimplifying, but when you eat fiber with your meals, when you eat fiber or when you eat a whole piece of fruit as opposed to the juice, your blood sugar spike is going to be much lower with the whole piece of fruit, even though it's got fruit sugars in it, because you have the fiber in there that sort of buffers and delays the release of some of the sugar. Anti inflammatory diet also includes foods rich in polyphenols, such as olive oil, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, tea and coffee. Love that nuts, tea and coffee. Part. Polyphenols are the parts of the food that generally give it color and they tend to be very anti inflammatory in nature as well as have a lot of other positive properties associated with them. The anti inflammatory diet also is high in omega 3 fatty acid rich foods. The American diet is abysmal in the level of omega 3s that we get, which I believe contributes in part to a lot of our inflammation and a lot of our associated problems. Increase your omega 3 in your diet. Now some people will opt to do it through a supplement, others will do it through dietary sources, but omega 3s are really important when you're eating foods. There are omega 3s, omega 6s and omega 9s. The American diet tends to be very, very high in omega 6s and very, very low in omega 3s, like 24 to 1. And at worst you want it like in a 1 to 4 ratio, four sixes to every one omega 3. So we're way out of whack here. And reducing your omega 6s can be part of an anti inflammatory diet as well as increasing your omega 3s. Water. Yes, I know that's in all caps I don't usually do all caps, but it's that important. Water is responsible or is needed for a lot of the chemical reactions in your body. Your blood, you know, needs fluid. I mean, it's fluid, it needs water. You need to have water for your body to function well. Water also helps flush out the toxins so the toxins don't build up and contribute to inflammation. Water is really important. If you don't start doing anything differently today, making sure that you're getting sufficient water will be very, very helpful. Now, they say 64 ounces of water per day. That's if you're not drinking any caffeine and you're not exercising. If you're doing either one of those, you're going to need more water in your body. You're going to need more water consumption in order to maintain your fluid balance. The anti inflammatory diet is also low in saturated and trans fats, refined sugars and flours, red meat, nitrates and nitrites. We're going to talk more about those as we go through this. Benefits of an anti inflammatory diet. People who ate high inflammatory diets had a significantly increased risk of depressive symptoms, partly because high inflammatory diets tend to be low in antioxidants and high in glycemic index foods, high in simple sugars that cause a lot of blood sugar spikes and crashes. Inflammatory diets contribute to insulin resistance and the development of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and dementias, and autoimmune flares, among other things. So anti inflammatory diet is something that may address a lot of symptoms that people are having. Now, like anything else that we talk about here, it is not going to be the magic bullet. Addressing your symptoms often requires a multifaceted approach. Your body, a complex machine. Keeping it working doesn't mean just attending to one thing. Like with your car, if all you needed to do to keep it working was to change the oil every 3,000 miles, that would be something, but that's not the case. It also needs to have other fluids changed and tires rotated and all kinds of other stuff in order to keep it working. Well, same thing with your body. So we can't say it's just the diet. But like a car, if you put crappy gas in, you're going to get crappy performance out. Anti inflammatory diets so if you're eating an anti inflammatory diet, they are associated with reduced chronic pain, reduced depression and anxiety, reduced dementia, improved sleep, especially reduced insomnia, improved energy and improved immunity. Now which one of those things do you not want, I want all of them. I'm certainly motivated to try to eat a more anti inflammatory diet. So let's talk about some of the science. Highly processed high saturated fat foods are associated with whole, whole body oxidative stress. Oxidative stress. If you remember when your body processes things and through the actions that it goes through every day, your body produces byproducts, waste products. If you will think about in a factory, there's always waste products. Those waste products are called free radicals. Those free radicals, if they don't get cleared out or if they're produced too quickly, they produce something called oxidative stress. Highly processed high saturated fat foods are associated with oxidative stress. So when we eat these foods, our body can't clear out those free radicals fast enough. Additionally, highly processed high saturated fat foods are also associated with a decrease in antioxidant enzymes. So your body's natural antioxidants, your body's natural scavengers, or cleaners if you will, are reduced. You don't have as big of a cleaning crew going around getting rid of all the free radicals. Well, that's a bummer. Pro inflammatory status is associated with chronic disease related fatigue. So if you're eating a pro inflammatory diet, if you've contributing to systemic inflammation. Now there could be other things contributing to systemic inflammation, but the diet is one that's a biggie. So if you're eating foods that are contributing to inflammation, this inflammation is highly likely to contribute to chronic disease related fatigue. Now what disease are we talking about? A lot of them. Hypertension, diabetes, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome. There's a lot of stress related diseases. High dietary glycemic load causes sugar crashes that trigger the secretion of stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline. And chronic stress triggers inflammation. So let's go over that. You eat something that's really high in sugar, your blood sugar spikes. We've all done that. Especially around Halloween when the kids bring home their candy. Blood sugar spikes very shortly after. Because there's very little fiber in candy bars and processed foods, our blood sugar crashes. Well, when your blood sugar crashes, when your blood sugar goes too low, the body goes, warning, warning, warning. Not enough energy system imbalance. That warning triggers the HPA axis, your threat response system, it gets kicked off. And what do we know the HPA axis does? It releases stress hormones. Cortisol, adrenaline, glutamate get released into the body. They trigger your liver to release blood glucose to bring your blood sugar back up. But that triggers that stress response. Okay, well theoretically that's an adaptive response. But when it happens frequently throughout the day, every single day, then you start to experience a state of chronic stress. That HPA axis is chronically going off. That alarm is just, it'll never shut up. As a result, the chemicals like cortisol lose their ability to suppress inflammation. And so you start to see systemic inflammation in the body as a result of high glycemic load. Polyphenols in the anti inflammatory diet may improve low grade chronic inflammation, reduce oxidative stress, enhance immunity and reduce obesity. Polyphenols, we think of these as antioxidants a lot of times. So going back, there's a lot of terms we throw around, but let's really connect the dots. Remember free radicals, Those are the waste products from productivity. Okay. When free radicals build up, when the garbage builds up around the assembly line, the workers can't work as efficiently. That causes stress. This is oxidative stress. So the cleaning crew, the antioxidants come in and they clean out all of the free radicals. Then nobody's stressed and everything's good. Well, if the antioxidants aren't coming in because the diet is inhibiting the release of antioxidants and the diet doesn't contain antioxidants, then those free radicals are just going to build up and build up and build up. So by consuming polyphenols, which are antioxidant in nature, we are assisting the body in, we're adding to that cleaning crew that can help get rid of some of those free radicals. We can help the cleaning crew clean out the gunk that's left behind which is associated with an improvement in chronic inflammation. Additionally, polyphenols are shown to enhance immunity and reduce obesity. So those are just some extra little benefits that are associated interestingly with polyphenols. And there are a bunch of articles way past the scope of this presentation that talk about the connection between inflammation and the development of obesity. But that's a whole, whole different presentation. Remember, water helps flush out toxins and provides lubrication and cushioning of the joints. So drinking water, remember that's one aspect of the anti inflammatory diet. Drinking water in and of itself can help you have more energy, less pain because you're keeping your joints lubricated, you're not feeling stiff, it's providing cushioning, so you're not feeling, you know, bone on bone pain. Water is really helpful. Anti inflammatory diets, and this just is in general, a lot of times they use the Mediterranean diet as the test anti inflammatory diet. But Anti inflammatory diets in general reduce something called C reactive protein by 20% and overall heart disease risk by 30%. C reactive protein is a marker of systemic inflammation. So just using an anti inflammatory diet, switching from an inflammatory to an anti inflammatory diet, may reduce inflammation by up to 20%. Now, that's not everything. That's not 100% by any means, but it is a big help. Think about what inflammation in your body does to you, to your life, to your energy. When you've got swelling, when you've got inflammation, when you've got pain, how does it impact your mood, your energy, your relationships, your ability to sleep? So if we can even tamp down this inflammation some, there may be some significant ripple effects. So how can you make your diet less inflammatory? The first, get those polyphenols in there. Eat colorfully. Whites include things like onions, garlic, bananas, cauliflower, potatoes. Guess what? They look white. Browns include your wheat, your oats, your brown rice, your lentils, so your grains, your legumes and some of your beans. Reds are some of your berries, your red beans, tomatoes and cabbage. Yellow and orange are your cantaloupes, your butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apricots, peaches. Obviously orange flesh. The deeper and darker the color, the richer in polyphenols they tend to be. This also means that when you cook them, the deeper and darker the color, the more of the nutrients you maintain. If you cook them until they're a sloppy gray, then they're not going to have many of the polyphenols left in them. Your black and blue colors include beans like black beans, black rice and blueberries, blackberries, greens. You've got spinach, broccoli, grapes, kiwifruit. You can go online and look for lists of how to eat colorfully to get different ideas, but I'm just giving you some common foods that are out there that you might already eat or at least like. And Omega 3 can be found in olive oil, chia seeds, walnuts, fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines and fish oil. I had a dietitian friend of mine tell me once that people should set a goal for eating colorfully and having three colors on their plate at every meal. This does two things. Number one, it increases your level of polyphenol antioxidants. But it also tricks your brain. When you're looking at a plate that is all one color. You. Your brain thinks you're eating less than if you have multiple different colors and it can differentiate which is kind of cool. More polyphenols, green and black tea and coffee. Now, some people are going to be going, yes. Some people are going to be saying, well, I'm really sensitive to caffeine. All right? The way something is decaffeinated is really important. Some decaffeination processes strip most of the polyphenols out of the substance. So, you know, you're just kind of drinking colored water. But the supercritical CO2 process, the water ethylacetate and the water decaffeination processes have been shown to retain most of the polyphenols in the decaffeination process. You can go on to like the Nescafe website or whoever makes your coffee or your tea. And a lot of times you can find information about how their stuff is decaffeinated. But if you can't, you can contact the company directly and they can tell you. And spices. Now, you're not going to be eating huge amounts of spices. They're meant to flavor foods, not to be foods in and of themselves. But spices like cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, black pepper, and my favorite, caico are also very, very high in antioxidants. You can get dry caico powder. You don't have to get the caico nubs and things that have or nibs that have all the fat in them. You can get caico powder, which is fat free and it is just brimming with, with antioxidants. You also want to eat whole grains that are high in soluble and insoluble fiber. If you're going to eat cereal, breads and pastas, assuming that you are not gluten intolerant for some reason, and most people are not, there are some people that have celiac disease and some other conditions that make them very sensitive to gluten. But if you're not sensitive to gluten, whole grain cereal, bread or pasta, aim for 5 grams of fiber per serving. So that means for a little while, until you get used to which foods that are anti inflammatory, you're gonna have to look at nutrition labels. But 5 grams per serving is definitely doable. There are high fiber tortillas out there that have 5 grams of fiber per serving. You just need to look around. Oatmeal is another whole grain that is high in fiber and good for you. Wheat berries, this isn't something that a lot of people are familiar with, but wheat berries are what's ground down in order to make whole wheat flour and those sorts of things. But you can get them and you can cook them a lot like rice. And they taste somewhere between they're they're like kind of like a nutty oatmeal. And the texture is somewhere between. I don't know, it's not quite oatmeal because it's got a. They're little round spheres. They're really good. If you can eat wheat, I encourage you to try wheat berries. They're really high in fiber because they still have the, you know, the whole seed intact and everything. And. And they can be used just like oatmeal and brown rice. Now, brown rice, you gotta cook a little bit longer than white rice in order to get it softened and so it tastes good and it doesn't, like, get stuck in your teeth. But brown rice is much, much higher in nutrients. It also has more fiber, which prevents it from making your blood sugar spike. Omega 3 rich foods include Chia seeds. Some people will sprinkle chia seeds on anything, yogurt, cottage cheese, whatever. I don't like to do that. They're a little too crunchy for me. Some people will make pudding out of chia seeds. And again, that's just not my thing. Maybe I just haven't done it right. But I've never gotten it past the consistency of an egg yolk. I haven't ever gotten an actual pudding consistency. I prefer chia seeds in the form of sprouts. And chia seeds are really easy to sprout. You just let them, you know, obviously sprout until they're, you know, yay high. And you can throw them on sandwiches or salads. They still have the Omega 3s in them, but they're. They don't have all that crunch to them that I don't particularly like. Fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines. If you're not vegan or vegetarian, that's an option. Walnuts, super high in Omega 3s. They're really good for you. I use walnuts a whole lot now. Other nuts, like peanuts and almonds tend to be much, much, much higher in omega 6s, so you want to avoid those. But walnuts are really good. Avocados are really high in omega 3s and extra virgin olive oil. And it's important to look at extra virgin because that means that a heat process hasn't been used and it maintains the highest amount of omega 3s from the olives. Reduce trans fats. Trans fats are what they call partially hydrogenated oils. Partially hydrogenated oils are used to make things solidify. So a lot of our margarines, for example, for a long time were high in trans fats. Choose trans fat free margarines. You can look on the container and I just generally use the word butter. But you can look on the container and your butter, margarine spread, whatever you call it will, will say trans fat free. Use non hydrogenated oils. Look at the ingredients. If it says hydrogenated, see if there's something else you can choose. Definitely. If it says partially hydrogenated, you don't want that. And use milk instead of non dairy creamers. Non dairy creamers are high in trans fats. Milk or if you're willing, a little splash of regular cream is certainly better from an inflammatory perspective than non dairy creamers. Refined sugars and flours. Raw honey actually has been shown to be anti inflammatory in nature, which makes sense because when I was little my mother used to give it to me when I'd have a sore throat and things. And it's got some nan natural antibiotic properties. Raw honey can be used as a sweetener. Now, not everybody likes it. I can't really envision putting honey in my coffee, for example, but it is an option for a sweetener for some people. A lot of people like honey in their tea. Maple syrup. Organic stevia are also available as alternatives to brown or white sugar. Your refined sugars you really want to avoid as much as possible your refined sugars. Now there are going to be times when you can't completely avoid them and that's when you want to try to combine them with something that has fiber in it, protein, anything that can help slow the release of blood sugar into your system. And in terms of flowers, most people are not going to give up bread, pasta, things that are made with flour. You know, let's just be realistic if you're not willing to give up those things. Whole wheat and whole grain flours are a whole lot less inflammatory than your regular old, highly processed white flour. Use walnut, macadamia nut or pecan butter instead of peanut or almond butter. Walnut macadamia nut and pecan butter are much higher in omega 3s and much, much lower in omega 6s. Instead of drinking juices which strip all the fiber out, eat the whole fruit. Eat the whole orange. Imagine that. Or the whole apple. Add extra fiber to your smoothies. If you make smoothies and you use juice in them, ideally use the whole fruit when you make your smoothies. But you can also add a little bit of extra fiber. I use oat fiber just because I like that it is an insoluble fiber. Now this is not oat bran. This is actually oat fiber. I add that to my smoothies to increase my fiber intake. But you'll find what works for you. Wheat germ and things like oat bran and wheat bran will also increase your fiber. They tend to just bring a lot more calories with them. Eat fiber and protein with your carbs. For example, having a instead of a peanut butter and honey sandwich, or a peanut butter and brown sugar, which used to be my son's favorite favorite, having a walnut butter and honey sandwich on whole wheat bread with an apple, you know, that is a very low inflammatory meal compared to what we typically eat in the American diet. Eat pork, chicken, lentils or beans instead of red meat. With beans, you can do things like three bean salad, red refried beans, bean burritos, black bean burgers. You can go online and there's a lot of creative ways to use beans. In our house, I use lentils and I make a lentil loaf every couple of weeks and freeze some of it. But we use it as a meatloaf or a ground beef alternative in our foods. Avoid processed meats, hot dogs, bacon, sausage, sandwich meats, and opt for baked or sauteed meat. There are meats out there now that claim to be nitrate and nitrate free. You need to be careful. Most of them, if not all of them, but most of them are using a form of celery, celery juice, celery powder in order to preserve the meat. And celery has natural nitrates or nitrites. I can't remember. Celery has the the stuff in it naturally. The research has indicated that whether the nitrates and nitrites are from natural sources or from man made sources, they're both equally as unhealthy. So when possible, try to avoid processed meats. Now, the occasional hot dog, you know you're gonna make that choice. But having processed meat every single day may contribute to maintaining inflammation. Instead, when you're making your dinner, you know, saute up some slices of chicken tenderloin or pork tenderloin or something that you can use for your sandwiches later in the week. Happy chickens. This was one of my favorite findings. You all know that we live on a farm. We've got lots of chickens. Happy chickens produce healthier eggs compared to eggs of the commercial hens. Eggs from pastured hens had two times the vitamin E and omega 3s and less than half the ratio of omega 6s to omega 3 fatty acids. So it greatly reduced the omega 6s and increased the omega 3s and increased the vitamin E. So pastured hens, chickens that are able to forage to eat clover, grass, bugs. Those sorts of things produce much healthier foods. An anti inflammatory diet is associated with improvements in multiple health and mental health conditions. People presenting with mood, cognitive or insomnia symptoms may benefit from a dietary shift. From a behavioral perspective, small gradual changes are often more suitable than sweeping overhauls. So start with one thing today and in a week or two change one more thing. You don't have to change everything overnight. Or maybe you start you look at your shopping list and you start buying things that are a little bit healthier. You're not going to completely cut out everything, but you may switch from whole from white bread to whole grain bread and from regular pasta to whole grain pasta. Making some of those changes in your diet can be really helpful and notice how you feel. If you feel a lot better, great, keep doing it. It's also important if you're making changes to your diet to run it by your doctor, especially if you have any pre existing health conditions so they know what's going on, what you're attempting to do. Especially if you are planning on trying to supplement like your omegas that can interact with certain medications. So before taking any supplements or making sweeping dietary changes, remember it's important to consult your doctor. Remember that the anti inflammatory diet is not designed to treat any disease, but it is one tool in your toolbox that can help you live a happier, healthier, less pained life.