Anti Inflammatory Lifestyle Part 2: My Foundations

As the series suggests, I aim to mitigate the amount of inflammation within my body. Believe it or not, everything from your food and drink intake to your household cleaning supplies can create inflammation. This is not a post on what you should and shouldn't do, but rather what I’ve found works and doesn’t work for me. Let’s start with the food, what have I found to work for me?

Starting with raw, whole, organic foods I prefer to do my meal prep on Sundays for the week. This consists of baked sweet potatoes, cauliflower, beets (seen in the photo), carrots, and other root vegetables. I will cook them in virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, or a mix of avocado/macadamia oil. These oils are high in healthy fats. I’ve realized that starting from this foundation has helped me maintain higher energy and lower the feeling of lethargy. 

One item I’ve found fascinating is that many times even if you’re eating at a ‘healthy restaurant’ or from the hot food bar, these foods are made in canola, grape seed, sunflower or other processed and refined oils. Which answered my question, ‘why do I feel like sh*t even when I eat at healthy restaurants?’

(Pro tip: Keep in mind each cooking oil has a different smoking point where they are destabilized. For this reason, I won’t re-use the oil I just cooked with. These have been shown to create significant inflammation within humans and cross the BBB or blood-brain barrier.)  

I usually include mushrooms in most of my meals and will saute them in one of the above oils in addition to fresh ginger or turmeric. It’s easy to get lost in the calorie counting phase so I’ve developed a method that works for me. Generally, I eat twice a day in addition to a bone-broth, collagen protein shake (I do this to help with my hypothyroid). Noticing whether I’m hungry or rather just stressed from a crazy day at work helps. Once you have the basics of ensuring you’re the one creating your meals, not buying pre-made foods with dozens of additives, the second phase is ensuring healthy fats.

I used to live in the gym going daily from 2-a-days to some 3-a-days–I was obsessed. At the time, it was 2013 and I was going through my second round of radiation therapy at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Something people may not have realized is that I was living off of pre-workout, and taking way too much caffeine and stimulants. How I justified this at the time was by seeing it as a lesser evil, compared to sitting in my room feeling bad for myself. Almost a decade later and I’ve realized how to balance exercise (stressing your body) and recovery. Emphasizing what my body is saying and how it’s feeling. Put simply, I moved from a militaristic mindset of pushing through everything to a more holistic approach to noting how I feel.

This could be considered ‘recovery’ and technically would be exercise. Anywhere from 4-6 times a week I use the sauna, cold tub (seen in this picture), and hot tub. Why? For starters, living with chronic pain, I’ve found these as a better alternative to taking pain killers. The research behind using the sauna reveals that the heat essentially simulates cardiovascular exercise for your body. Dozens of people ask me about the one habit or item I would do continue to do if I could do nothing else and the above items are my answer. Even when I was in a back brace, I could still sit in the sauna and hot tub (although the cold tub might have been tricky).  

Sleep is one of the only mechanisms for your body to clean damaged cells, also known as autophagy. Eleven years ago I could sleep through anything. My family tells a story from when I was young when I had fallen asleep in a relative’s living room before a family event. They yelled, pushed, and shook me to wake but I still slept. Easy sleep is no longer the case after five severe concussions, spinal injuries, and heavy opiate use. I sleep very lightly and wake up very easily. Four years ago I started testing my hypothesis of being a light sleeper with a whoop. You can track your HRV, and get detailed data on your sleep cycles. After using it for a year, I verified my hypothesis: I rarely got more than 70 minutes of ‘deep sleep’. Which is one of five levels of sleep: 1, 2, 3, & 4 are considered ‘non-REM sleep’. The fifth level is REM.

Building the foundations of a new habit all start with the environment or habitat you’re in. For example, if I don’t want to eat a specific food, I won’t have it in my apartment. Instead, I’ll stock my fridge and cabinets with food that I want to eat and that I’ve found to work well for me. Even the location where I live in the city is specific to my habits. Since I don’t own a car, I walk or bike every day. I also have most of the tools I need within my apartment, whether that’s a theragun, slant board, or yoga equipment. Creating the path of least resistance to ensure I’m doing what I need to do has helped. 

This is an overview framework to give you a peek into the habits I have broken and the new ones I have formed. It’s my belief that the first step to making a change is noticing what you are doing today. From there, we can then identify the desired goal ie. higher energy levels, better sleep, weight loss, muscle building, etc.