How To Reduce "Inflammaging" and Feel Better Today

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

The main thing that you eat in your diet that's anti-inflammatory are the rich array of colorful phytochemicals in plant foods. These are powerful medicines in food that reduce inflammation. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I always say I want to be 120, but I really only want to do that as long as I'm feeling great and still able to do all the things I love. Aging well requires some mindfulness and intention, but that doesn't mean it has to be hard. As I've dug into the research on aging and health, one thing becomes super clear: we have to take care of our mitochondria. These are our cellular energy factories, and as we age and eat too much or sit at our desks too much or expose to toxins, our mitochondria deteriorate and our bodies suffer. I discovered this product called Mitopure from Timeline Nutrition that specifically regenerates mitochondria and supports cellular energy production. 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If you're curious about trying Ag1 from Athletic Greens for yourself right now, They're offering my community 10 free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/hymen to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's Pharmacy Within a Place for Conversations that Matter. And today I'm bringing you a little new feature of the doctor's pharmacy called health bites to improve your health because taking small steps daily can lead to significant changes in your health over time. So today we're going to talk about one of the most important topics in medicine called inflammaging. Inflammation is the hot topic of the day, pun intended. So let's talk about it. What is inflammation? What is inflammaging? How does our immune system work? What the heck's going on here? And why are you hearing all this about This in the news. First of all, our immune system is important. It should fight against infections and invaders. It should protect us from foreign antigens. It should survey our body for cancers and harmful things and go attack them. All that's good stuff. So we don't wanna shut off our immune system, but we don't wanna overactive. When we live our current modern lifestyle, it's highly overactive and starts to create allergies, autoimmune diseases, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, dementia, obviously these are all inflammatory diseases. So the kind of unifying theme in medicine today is this concept of inflammation. And the rate of inflammation is driving this incredible burden of chronic disease and poor metabolic health. And we're having to deal with stresses we never had to deal with before from toxins, from poor diet, from inflammatory foods, from processed foods that are increasingly causing our bodies to rebel and to become inflamed. And why do we call it inflammaging? Because we see that as we get into the state of sterile chronic inflammation. It's not like an acute infection where you get a red, sore, hot, swollen, pussy thing or like a sore throat. It's this low grade, kind of persistent indolent chronic inflammation that's sterile. It's not from an infection. And it can be triggered by toxins, environmental toxins which we're exposed to. There's 84,000 now on the market since the 1900s. Allergens, which are increasingly common, are food supply from adulteration of our foods, and also our microbiome is hugely disrupted, which causes massive amounts of inflammation because of lack of fiber, gut-busting drugs such as acid blockers and antibiotics and steroids because of glyphosate that's sprayed on all our food, the herbicide roundup that leads to gut microbiome destroying phenomena in the gut. So all these things and more, stress, lack of exercise, all these things drive inflammation in the body. So How do we begin to think about the process of this chronic low-grade sterile inflammation in our bodies? How do we start to deal with those factors? What are the steps you can do to address this? Because the central thing you have to do if you want to stay healthy, if you want to live a long time, if you want to feel good, if you want to avoid the chronic diseases of aging, is to address this phenomena of inflammation. I just finished my book, I finished writing it and rereading it called Young Forever, where I talked about one of the central hallmarks of aging, which is inflammaging. And it relates to all the other hallmarks of aging and it's central to regulate as we get older because we get more and more of this chronic inflammation. In fact, we create zombie cells in our body and these zombie cells don't completely die, but they roam around our bodies secreting all this inflammatory gunk and it kind of infects other cells in a sense and causes those to become zombie cells and it creates this cascade of inflammaging, which we need to stop. so what are the things that we can do to actually reduce inflammation and cut inflammation feel better? Most important thing is change our diet. Eating the diet we're eating, our sad diet, our inflammatory diet, our Ultra processed diet, our diet's high in starch and sugar, refined oils. It's full of additives, pesticides, herbicides, emulsifiers, thickeners, additives, sweeteners. I mean, it's a disaster, and it's an inflammation causing mess. So we want to get rid of those inflammatory foods in our diet. And we'll talk about some specific ones in addition to the junk food. For example, gluten is a huge inflammatory food in our diet because of the way we've changed our wheat production. People go to Europe and they don't react, but in America, the dwarf wheat has way more gluten proteins, way more starch and sugar, so it's way more inflammatory. So we really want to avoid as much as possible if we have any kinds of inflammation gluten foods. And ideally, you know, if you can get ahold of heirloom gluten foods like Pharaoh and Triticale and KAMET and Emmer wheat and Einkorn wheat and Zea wheat, I mean, these may be better for you if you don't have celiac disease and they may not cause the same level of inflammation. But we're mostly not eating those foods. Dairy is the other big one. And in my practice, I see it all the time. It creates congestion and digestive issues and allergies and acne and generalized inflammation. I really encourage people to kind of get rid of most conventional dairy and obviously gluten. And then of course sugar. Sugar is a huge factor in inflammation in the body by its effect on laying down belly fat. Belly fat is not just holding up your pants, but it's producing things called adipocytokines. These adipocytes, which are your fat cells, produce cytokines, these inflammatory molecules that rove around your body creating basically a wildfire of inflammation. So, the more belly fat you have, the more inflammation you have, the more sugar you eat, the more belly fat you have, it's a vicious cycle. So, getting off of all these refined processed foods, sugars, dairy, that's conventional dairy, goat and sheep might be okay, some heirloom forms of wheat may be okay or gluten, but basically keep those things really down. Then the question is what do you instead? Well, you eat an anti-inflammatory diet. And the main thing that you eat in your diet that's anti-inflammatory are the rich array of colorful phytochemicals in plant foods, the deep reds, blues, purples, oranges, yellows, greens. These are powerful medicines in food that reduce inflammation significantly in the body through multiple mechanisms. So, and the more close to the wild you can get, the better. The more organic and regeneratively can get, the better. The farmers markets are great for that. I mean, your average tomato that's been shipped across the country and stored in a box and can last for months on a shelf is not be going to be full much. But if you go have that, you know, August tomato that's ripened on your vine and your little cherry tomato and you pop it in your mouth, it's like an explosion of flavor. So I encourage you to think about how you can up regulate your anti-inflammatory system by eating these phytochemicals. Next is omega-3 fats, hugely important in regulating inflammation. And I would stick with the small fish, sardines, herring, mackerel, anchovies, small wild salmon can be very good. Lots of low glycemic fruit. berries, kiwis, berries are great, nuts and seeds are very anti-inflammatory as well, walnuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts. Also, you can have pasture raised animals. We know that grass-fed animals, pasture raised animals, very different than conventional. We know from studies that if you have conventional meat, you'll raise inflammation. If you have, for example, wild or pasture raised grass, you'll lower inflammation. The metabolomic profiles are quite different of these foods, even gram for gram of protein. So all meat is not the same. Also, there's importance in keeping your gut healthy, so making sure you're having prebiotic foods, probiotic foods. Prebiotic foods are different fibers that you can get from artichokes, from Jerusalem artichokes, from asparagus, from plantains, very, very important. And then probiotics foods to keep your gut healthy, kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, miso, natto, tempeh, all these are traditional ancient foods that have been fermented to help your microbiome. And of course, herbs and spices are really, really helpful in reducing inflammation, particularly rosemary, ginger, garlic, Garlic, turmeric, oregano, parsley, very anti-inflammatory and you can include these as just part of your general cooking. Curcumin, super important, one of the most important anti-inflammatories which is found in turmeric, which you make curries with, but this yellow spice is a super anti-inflammatory compound. Guess what? Also exercise is hugely anti-inflammatory, not if you over exercise, but if you exercise enough. So having, you know, 30 minutes of vigorous exercise a day and strength training a few times a week can really help reduce inflammation, strengthen your immune system, help to improve your insulin sensitivity, reduce the inflammation that comes from that. So really important to move. Getting your mind straight, you know, our mind is a great source of inflammation. When we're stressed, we produce a lot of inflammation in our bodies and stress molecules increase. We know that gene expression for stress compounds for inflammation compounds increase when you're stressed. So we can't avoid stress, but we have to learn how to regulate our cortisol levels. We have to learn how to master our minds. We can master our diets, we can exercise, we can sleep and all those things. But unless you get your mindset straight, unless you get your thinking straight, you're gonna be generating a lot of stress in your body, which is gonna age you rapidly. And lastly, there's some supplements you can take that will really make a difference. Vitamin D, super important, regulates over I don't know, probably 2, 300 different genes, many of them regulated inflammation. It's involved in improving your immune system, reducing risk of infections and flu, COVID, and also helps to reduce your risk of cancer. Really important, probably about 2 to 4,000, 5,000 units a day of vitamin D3, really important. Also fish oil, you can take fish oil. I recommend highly that people use omega-3 fatty acid supplements because we just don't get enough in our diet. I love the Dutch Harbor Omega supplements from Big Bold Health. They contain resolvins, which are not processed out of them. These resolvins are things that resolve inflammation. They're like the break on your immune system. So they're processed out of most of the fish oils we see, but Big Bold Health's Dutch Harbor Omega is full of them. Curcumin, as I mentioned, can be taken as a supplement as well and has very powerful anti-inflammatory antioxidant properties. The B complex also really important in regulating metabolism, immune function, antioxidant levels, glutathione levels, all important in regulating inflammation. and another one that's really great I love is derived from something called Himalayan Tartere Buckwheat, which is an ancient grain, not even really a grain, it's a flower that was grown in the Himalayas and it's full of these powerful anti-inflammatory immune modulating phytochemicals, including to a hoba, which is found nowhere else in nature that we know of yet. And also high level of quercetin and luteolin and hesperidin and other bioflavonoids that are really important in regulating immunity and cancer and have been shown to help in longevity and extending life in animal studies. So, pretty impressive. I like to take this as a supplement and something called HTB Rejuvenate, which again you can get from Big Bold Health and it's full of these phytochemicals that modulate your immune system. So, the good news is that we can really do a lot about inflammation. The bad news is we're doing everything wrong in our society, but we can shift that. And, if you really focus on inflammaging as a phenomena that you have to deal with and learn the steps you need to take to resolve it, you can really have a long healthy life without worrying about many of the chronic diseases of aging. So really critical to get your immune system straight and get inflammation under control. All right, well that's it for today's health bite on the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you share this with your friends and family who I'm sure are all inflammaging and teach them how to not do that. Leave a comment how you help deal with your own inflammation and inflammaging. And we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning in to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff, from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays, nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you My favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi everyone.

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