Circumin, extract of tumeric is a very strong anti-inflammatory, but has to be mixed with a pepper extract ( piperine ) for maximum bio availability.
It is over the counter and seems to have no known risks, but works better than any other anti-inflammatory I have tried, including prescription ones, and I know many people who agree from experience.
I raised this on HN once before and had know it alls quoting assorted studies as it being marginally effective and placebo effect etc etc (despite them never having tried it), but is very effective and relatively fast acting.
The impact is so noticeable no tests were required. Who cares about the numbers when it is the effect that is desired? How do we know those tests are conclusive on their own? I am big on science, but bigger on results.
If you need an anti-immflammatory then try it, if it doesn't work then don't use it. There seems to be almost zero possible downside, so why not.
It seems really only effective for soft tissue swelling and inflammation.
I had an American guy in Bali who owned the chalets in Ulawatu where we stayed who had an ongoing back injury and was needing sometimes to be on some strong medication that put him out of it. I gave him our stash of circumin to try and it was so effective that when we left his Balinese wife was in tears thanking us for introducing him to it because it was more effective and no cognitive impacts.
Guy at work was on twice daily voltaren for his shoulder and hadn't played golf for three years. Started the circumin and three days later played a round.
Not conclusive, but just two of about twenty stories I could tell you after I found out about it from my sister in law and told others.
Or maybe just people that can't even run a basic personal risk analysis and simple experiment.
To trial it personally has potentially many orders of magnitude greater upside than downside, so endless pondering and postulating is totally pointless vs just trying it out and see if it works for you.
Tests and studies are not the most reliable way of indicating personal benefits or side effects, in numerous cases have been contrary, incomplete, poorly applied or calculated and represent a population (which may or may not be representative of your individual case).
Regardless, NIH seems to be on board, but feel free not to take it, or take it with a negative opinion and stimulate the nocebo effect - to a certain extent you get what you wish for and that works both ways.
You might find this video interesting, highlights studies showing the difference in effectiveness for turmeric vs curcumin in combatting inflammation, turns out turmeric does a better job:
It's definitely helping my arthritic knee. When I forget to take it, I notice. Costco's house brand is a good deal, and it does go on sale from time to time.
>know it alls quoting assorted studies as it being marginally effective and placebo effect etc etc (despite them never having tried it)
This is a terrible attitude
Personal experience is no substitute for controlled studies. It's irresponsible to say that something is medically effective just because you tried it and it "works for you." You don't know that. You can't know that.
Homeopathy- selling biochemically inert placebos as medicine- is an $18 billion dollar industry. This is completely driven by word-of-mouth anecdotal experiences and personal claims. You can sell people tap water and sugar pills to cure depression and insomnia, and they will swear it's a miracle cure and tell everyone they know. Don't be that guy.
I was tempted for a second to buy the pamphlet, but then I remembered that they don't say anything new; they just dispense generic diet advice as a GP doctor would.
Does anybody know of a science-based anti-inflammatory diet? A diet that has been tested to decrease hsCRP levels?
I'm tempted to go to a dietician, but I can't shake the feeling that it's all voodoo.
"Many major diseases that plague us—including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, depression, and Alzheimer's—have been linked to chronic inflammation."
...and chronic inflammation has been linked to lack of physical exercise and poor diet.
Inflammation is helpful when rebuilding muscles and recovering from work. Inflammation is harmful when there's nothing to work on. The body goes haywire and you get all manner of problems.
The kinds of food you eat can contribute, but it is largely that we have an engine designed to work that we're perhaps letting idle in the garage, that seems to be the main problem.
Crohn's, for example, is a disease that manifests with severe inflammatory problems. One of the chief ways to keep it in check (not a cure, just one of the things that help) is significant exercise (fitness) and controlling food intake and quality.
You walk your dog... you need to "walk" your own self too.
Sort of, but whether it’s beneficial or pathologic is more complicated than whether it’s short or long duration.
Chronic or sustained inflammation is a sign of dysregulation, but acute inflammation can also be pathologic.
Moreover, the inflammation in physical exercise, in physiologic conditions, is actually beneficial (it’s physiologically angiogenic and anabolic). In other words, the benefits of exercise don’t just outweigh the harms of inflammation: rather, exercise can create well-regulated, physiological and beneficial inflammation.
Inflammation is as complex a topic as cancer (in fact the two are pretty much inseparable): it’s a fascinating beast!
This is completely true (even if it’s more complicated than it sounds), maybe you are getting downvoted because it’s obvious? I’m not sure. (biochemist)
Except for the red meat this sounds a lot like my low-carb keto-like diet.
Curious about the red meat though. Seems like a hot topic since I read a lot of conflicting 'evidence based' information on it.
Unfortunately my trust in the possibility to determine what's true or not is decreasing. This is mostly lack of time but also because interest groups spend a lot of money trying to establish their narrative through information manipulation.
Most studies lump red meat together with processed meat products, but when treated as separate food categories, the negative associations with red meat tend to disappear. That said, red meat clearly promotes inflammation, which is necessary for things like building muscle. Optimal health results from the right balance of inflammation, not its minimization. The authors focus no anti-inflammatory foods because most Americans are imbalanced toward inflammatory processed foods. It's very individual though - allergies, autoimmune responses and other inflammatory cascades are complex; I get debilitating inflammation from tomatoes.
To quote the article "red meat (burgers, steaks)" - one of these is not like the other. Even so, there is a word of difference between the meat of an unhealthy animal (especially the fat) and a healthy one.
It does seem that anecdotally a meat-only diet resolves chronic inflammation: reddit.com/r/zerocarb
Unless you think her story is entirely fabricated, it's a strong anecdote to support a meat-only diet can alleviate inflammation. I mean, she claims to have had hip and ankle replacement at age 17 because of arthritis. All of these conditions subsided on a meat-only diet and promptly returned when she attempted "cheats" (one she mentions is soy sauce).
What an exciting topic. In case it is helpful, I wanted to mention the company my co-founder and I are building to help measure and manage inflammation levels using at home blood based hsCRP testing and a digital platform: https://www.begolden.online/.
It gives you the flexibility to run your own "N of 1" experiments to see what works for you. I've been measuring my levels for over a year (after I found out I was at high risk of breast cancer and had a bilateral lumpectomy) - you can see the results here: https://www.begolden.online/post/our-ceo-s-hscrp-scores-over...
We would love any feedback on if you would find Be Golden helpful and if there are certain topics you would like to see on our blog
If you want to know foods that fight inflammation just look at traditional Indian diet it’s full of such foods because this optimisation is at the centre of traditional Indian diet
> MDs don't offer clinical tests for "inflammation"
Yes they do, there are a bunch of routine tests. They are typically only ordered when they are clinically relevant, but if you went to a clinic and asked for a CRP and sedimentation rate (or whatever) I doubt it would be that hard to get one.
Other good tests are IL-1 and TNFa, but I don’t think those are routine or cheap.
> allopathy / [evidence-based medicine] doesn’t recognize “inflammation” as a symptom caused by our diets, or something they can prevent, beyond prescribing ibuprofen to allegedly reduce it.
Yes it does, but it’s not so simple. The causes of inflammation are multifactorial and there usually is not a quick or easy fix.
Ibuprofen clearly does reduce inflammation, but it obviously is different than attacking the problem at the source. Most doctors unfortunately don’t have time to sit you down and make a detailed plan for improving your diet, to stop smoking and drinking, and to exercise more. Most if not all medical schools teach this in Canada/US afaik (I speak from experience), and the medical literature is certainly packed with papers on the subject… but the resource constraints (not enough time, too many patients with urgent needs) on the job mean that theory and practice are not exactly the same.
That’s not a failing of medical science, it’s a failing of our administrative and political systems.
> But MDs don't offer clinical tests for "inflammation"
They do, in fact.
> because allopathy doesn't recognize "inflammation" as a symptom caused by our diets, or something they can prevent, beyond prescribing ibuprofen to allegedly reduce it.
Yes, it does. In fact, it's almost the opposite: medicine recognizes inflammation as a common symptom (and intermediary contributor to lots of other conditions) with many causes and contributions, and the tests for inflammation don’t distinguish between causes, or even between the broad categories of chronic and acute inflammation, and therefore are only viewed as having particular marginal benefit in certain circumstances. OTOH, they are indicated when certain symptom clusters appear, or as part of a regime of monitoring inflammatory conditions.
Rheumatologists in particular care deeply about inflammation markers in both blood and imaging. Unfortunately the presence of inflammation doesn’t always pinpoint which rheumatic condition (if any) you have. But gastroenterologists and even ophthalmologists use these markers in making diagnoses.
My sister worked this year with a doctor (not the PHD kind) on an athlete diet, inflammation is absolutely recognized by evidence-based medicine, it was the main reason why she was hired. Inflamation test absolutely exist, (its a blood test), and professional nutritionists actually seems to prepare athletes diet following those blood tests. Here is a ressource i just found:
Ahh, I appreciate being set straight regarding the tests!
Let me put it this way: as a Medicaid patient, my PCP never offered to test inflammation and it has never been suggested as either a symptom or cause of anything, especially not my diet.
My last PCP was desparate to start me on statins, my current PCP tried to sneak in a diabetes lab after I lost 70lbs, and the clinicians don't really waste time encouraging Medicaid patients to exercise or eat organic diets (she said I can do what I want, but she considers organic to be a "gimmick"). When a PCP asks you what you've been eating, you may have up to 30 seconds to reply verbally - that's not going to be productive!
Centering treatment and diets around reducing and avoiding inflammation always struck me as the realm of alternative medicine. And indeed, the initial resources I've evaluated have lots of information on candida yeast and anti-inflammatory diets. So I'm enthusiastically chasing down those leads.
> and it has never been suggested as either a symptom or cause of anything
This is not very surprising: you should know that inflammation is a very non-specific and general phenomenon. It's difficult to think of *any* disease where inflammation doesn't play an important role in the pathophysiology.
If you have any medical condition whatsoever, you can pretty much assume that inflammation is in play. That applies to obese and sedentary people too, as well as people with bad diets.
Therefore if a doctor were to tell you that you have inflammation, it would arguably not be adding much useful information, other than serving as basic patient education.
PS.: organic food is indeed a marketing gimmick. Though it appears you didn't trust her advice for some reason, your PCP was doing you a favour by telling you this. I'm a biochemist and have zero conflict of interest (I work in a regular tech company as a programmer).
I accept that "organic" labels are gimmicky, but the alternative is to eat food that is not certified organic, and that hasn't been enjoyable for me. Organic natural food may or may not look better, taste better, and have better nutrition, but in hockey terms, "You miss 100% of the shots you never take."
(An organic certification is not my sole criterion for food selection, either; I factor in plenty of others.)
I mean, organic food is probably not causing you any harm other than potentially financial, so that's fine.
The best food advice IMO is to ignore 99% of what's in the supermarket, and buy mainly fresh meat, fresh fish, and mostly lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. It's not even a particularly accurate heuristic, but if people ignored anything that came in a box or can, people would probably be 10x healthier.
When I chose to shop at a farmer's market-style grocery store, it came as no surprise that 99% of it is processed, loaded with sugar, preservatives, and all the same tricks you'd find in stock at a 7-Eleven. A "health food store" is still a supermarket with different brands.
I'm beginning to get a feel for which brands can be trusted, vs. which ones are purveyors of junk food.
Your rule of thumb is 100% correct, but I needed to pace myself. As a sedentary, novice cook, I couldn't handle hours in the kitchen prepping everything from scratch, 3 times a day. I was so exhausted, I had to use an electric scooter inside the grocery store! Healthy food is labor-intensive, and it seems like there is an intrinsic direct correlation to that. Healthy food even takes more work to digest!
But if food is frozen or canned or shelf-stable, caveat emptor indeed.
I'm not really knowledgable about food and health, but my familly in general is great at cooking (it was my sister's job for six years, and tbh, she learned more from our father than her first starred chef).
Here are my tips for fast food:
First, stewed dishes are the best. it "takes time" to prepare, but actually it doesn't: just cook it while doing something where you can be interupted - like two hour meetings, video games (set a 20 minute clock in this case) or during a weekly house cleaning- and it actually takes no time. Great stew i like to do are ratatouille and Bortsh, Ratatouille in summer, Bortsh in autumn-winter. I also taught myself other dishes i can do in a steawpot for multiple day, like the indian Dahl, but it is a bit more hard if you don't know your spices yet.
Second: always have carrots, radish and cauliflower in your fridge, and do not hesitate to take them out every meal (you don't have to, but still). You can dip them in soy sauce or make your own yoghourt-base sauce, which is quite easy to prepare. Plus, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli have another secret preparation tip if you'r lazy and just want to cook pasta or rice: add those vegetables to the cooking water and boil them. Once the pasta are done (since it takes less time than rice usually) and if those arent cooked enough, just stir them with curcuma, pepper and a bit of salt for ~2 to 5 minutes on a frying pan. This is a great way to learn your way around spices, without taking too much time (its like 4 more minutes than regular pasta).
Only tips i have at the top of my head right now. I have other tips for cleaning/cutting/peeling that i was taught, but those are hard to explain through the internet.
> Centering treatment and diets around reducing and avoiding inflammation always struck me as the realm of alternative medicine
Have you spoken to an allergist? They might as well be called inflammationologists, given their gist is identifying and managing instigators of inflammation.
It is over the counter and seems to have no known risks, but works better than any other anti-inflammatory I have tried, including prescription ones, and I know many people who agree from experience.
I raised this on HN once before and had know it alls quoting assorted studies as it being marginally effective and placebo effect etc etc (despite them never having tried it), but is very effective and relatively fast acting.