Guidelines for Lowering Inflammation in breast cancer survivors

Guidelines for Lowering Inflammation in breast cancer survivors

Exactly how does diet influence inflammation? Let us count the ways.

Change Your Oil

The type of fat that you eat is, quite possibly, the most important dietary factor
affecting the level of inflammation in your body. That’s because fats are precursors
to both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory chemicals. Note that we are not
saying that all fat is bad for you. Fat is as necessary to good health as protein,
carbohydrates, and nutrients. But there is a world of difference between healthy fats
and unhealthy fats.

Unhealthy Fats Are Objectionable

• Fats stimulate a variety of chain reactions in your body. Picture a line of

dominoes. When you push on the first one, the rest topple. Inserting unstable
or unhealthy fats into the system will eventually cause the system to collapse
in the same way, as they initiate a domino effect that ends with a host of proinflammatory
eicosinoids (molecules composed of fatty acids) running
rampant.

• When you consider that every cell in your body is surrounded by a lipid (fat)

layer that is just the right consistency to let all necessary nutrients in while
allowing all the critical waste material to pass out, you can see that altering
the composition of that cell membrane is risky business. Yet, that’s exactly
what unhealthy fats do. You can think of it like this: they actually gum up
your cell membranes, preventing nutrients and wastes from passing in and
out as they should.

• Trans fats are among the worst offenders (Mozaffarian et al. 2004).

Although they exist nowhere in nature, they line supermarket shelves in
large quantities in the form of snack foods, fried foods, baked goods, and
vegetable shortening. Trans fats also create a wealth of free radicals that
damage healthy cells and trigger inflammation. Hundreds of studies have
now confirmed the unhealthy link between trans fats and inflammation (see
for example, ibid.).