Health, Taken Seriously

When I first started this blog, a friend of mine asked if I could write about why allergies are becoming so common.  Why do so many young kids these days seem to be allergic to peanuts?  Why is asthma on the rise?  At the time, I told her I suspected an environmental trigger that was somehow messing with our immune system.  But I really didn’t know (and I must add, neither do most doctors).  I recently read a book though that offers an interesting theory to this puzzling question.

I picked up Inflammation Nation by Floyd Chilton from the library this week.  The author is a researcher and a professor at Wake Forest University Medical School.  He has a sister who suffered from debilitating arthritis starting in her teens.  After struggling with conventional medication and its side effects, she asked her brother if he knew anything about more natural cures for her.  It started him on the search for foods in the typical American diet that may be causing our immune systems to overreact, and for ways to modify that immune response through diet.

It turns out that an omega-6 fatty acid called Arachadonic Acid (AA), which has become more abundant in Western diets with the industrialization of our modern food supply, is the building block for some of out body’s inflammatory messengers, prostaglandins and leukotrines.  Today our eggs, fish (farmed), and meat (grain fed) contain much more AA than it ever has in the past.  And while we’re consuming more of these foods, we’re also consuming much less anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids.  In fact, while our ancestors probably ate a diet with a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3′s in the ballpark of 2:1 or 1:1, the typical American diet is closer to 20:1, according to Chilton (for more on this, see my post on good fats).

Chilton’s research has found that by decreasing the amount of AA one consumes, you can actually have a smaller arsenal of inflammatory messengers in your body, and therefore will not be able to mount an overblown response to things that your immune system shouldn’t be overreacting to anyways.  For example, he performed a clinical study that found his dietary recommendations were able to suppress leukotriene production in 78% of asthma sufferers (pg. 72).  He says his diet will help those who suffer from a multitude of inflammatory diseases including asthma, allergies (from hay fever to food), rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, atherosclerosis, diabetes, etc.  It’s probable that inflammation plays a role with other common diseases as well, such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Chilton recommends that if you suffer from an inflammatory disease, or would like to prevent getting one, that you can try his 3 pronged approach to modifying your diet.  The first step is to limit the AA in your diet.  The highest sources of AA include egg yolks, farmed salmon, dark turkey meat, and pork (for a more complete list, see chapter 13).  The second step is to block the enzymes that convert AA into inflammatory messengers by consuming the “good” omega-6 fatty acid gammalinolenic acid (GLA).  The body converts GLA into dihomogammlinolenic acid (DGLA), which is a powerful inhibitor of the enzymes that convert AA.  GLA is found in nuts and seeds, but in fairly small quantities.  The best source is borage seed oil, which ancient Romans used to use to flavor their wines and beers.  Today you can find it in a supplement.  Chilton notes that it is incredibly important to consume enough of the omega-3 fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) along with the GLA.  EPA is found in wild fish, or most easily for you, in a fish oil supplement.  EPA helps prevent the additional GLA from being converted into AA in your body (pretty complicated, I know!)  The third step is to eat carbohydrates with a low glycemic index.  The is just a fancy way of saying not to eat refined carbohydrates (sugar, white flour) that will be absorbed too quickly into your blood stream, producing a blood glucose spike and therefore a sharp rise in insulin.  Instead, eat carbohydrates like fruits, veggies, legumes, and whole grains, which tend to be lower on the glycemic index.  The fiber in these carbohydrates slows their absorption into the blood stream, preventing quick changes in blood sugar.  High blood sugar and insulin levels apparently cause the body to activate enzymes that convert AA into inflammatory messengers.

If you are willing to take these 3 steps, Chilton believes you can see improvement in your inflammatory disease symptoms in as little as a week.  I find his book compelling enough that I’m rethinking my regular egg “habit.” I don’t personally suffer from any inflammatory diseases other than hay fever, but it bothers me.  I also really enjoy preventative medicine, and have heard/read enough about the dangers of inflammation (we’ve all heard about the benefits of regular baby aspirin for heart health–well aspirin blocks some of the enzymes that make inflammatory messengers) to think that making a few dietary modifications to prevent future disease may be worth it.  If there’s even the slightest chance it’s involved in cancer, I’m very interested in controlling it better (my mother had breast cancer at a young age, which puts me at greater risk).  Chilton also says that AA in our bloodstream increases with age, which makes sense, as many inflammatory diseases are often considered diseases of the elderly.  As my 30th birthday nears, I find myself thinking more and more about preventing diseases I’ve seen my loved ones battle (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and cancer).

I must note that I am also reading other books on inflammation, such as The Inflammation Syndrome.  The dietary recommendations in that book, while also very sound, are different than those in Chilton’s Inflammation Nation.  Jack Challem, the author of The Inflammation Syndrome, suggests eating a diet more like that of a hunter-gatherer (veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, and meat, while avoiding more “modern” foods like grains, legumes, dairy, sugar, and processed foods).  His advice, while very good, is quite different that Chilton’s.  So who is right?  I don’t really know.  And if you avoided all the things both authors says to avoid, you’d be hard pressed to find anything to eat.  Trust me, I tried it yesterday.  And I was hungry!!

I’m picking up several more books from the library on how diet can prevent disease, specifically cancer.  So stay tuned for more book reviews to come.