The Anti-inflammatory Diet
What is the number one reason people seek the help of any health practitioner? Pain. And the biggest causes of pain in the human body are its own inflammatory processes. Injury creates instantaneous pain that tells us about the injury, but that pain quickly is ignored by the body. It is the cascade of inflammatory chemicals designed to stop bleeding, cause swelling, limit motion, and stimulate the early repair process that cause most of the pain we feel. But what happens if our healthy inflammatory response has gone haywire and overreacts or even worse reacts without cause? Answer; lots of unnecessary pain. This is exactly what is happening today. Our lifestyle has screwed up our immune system’s normal inflammatory responses. This diet addresses this problem.
First:
1. Remove obvious poisons and food contaminates like mercury, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and plastic hormone-like substances (comes from plastic packaging).
2. Remove processing techniques and food combinations designed to induce addictive responses (e.g. browning foods and milk, wheat, and soy proteins added to foods).
3. Remove biologically alien manufactured food substances like trans-fats (margarine), hydrogenated oils (shortening), artificial flavors, etc.
4. Remove toxic or burdensome food additives like preservatives, extenders, modifiers, conditioners, etc (packaged foods).
5. Remove foods that have been stripped of their natural food co-factors through processing (white sugar or flour based foods).
6. Remove rancid oils and oxidized fats (also called free radicals) that are created by heating oils (as in frying) and storage.
These first six steps are basic to any healthy eating plan. The idea here is to remove the toxic stresses on our bodies that come from simply making foods convenient. Processing, poisoning, and adulterating our food makes it have a longer shelf life, a bigger profit margin for the manufacturers, and supports many chemical and mega-agribusiness corporations. These things do not support life; they stress life. Biologic stress creates inflammation. Inflammation creates pain, dysfunction, and early degeneration.
What are the specific biologic stressors that will continue to cause inflammation in a diet that has already been cleaned of poisons?
1. Magnesium deficiency (plus other minerals/vitamins at times)
2. Omega 6 oil excess / omega 3 oil deficiency
3. Over eating
4. Excess acid forming foods / deficient alkaline forming foods
5. Insulin increases (from sugar/carbohydrate consumption)
6. Lectins (food allergy/sensitivities) and heat damaged proteins
7. Physical disease processes (infection, injury, autoimmune)
8. Psychological stress factors
Phase One Diet
Step one is cleaning the biologic stressors out of our diets. This basically means cutting packaged foods out and using only fresh foods. Most of the junk put into foods is to make stale foods seem fresh. Don’t go there, your body deserves better. Obviously you want to avoid even fresh foods that have outright poisons in them like fish with high mercury levels, any tainted or spoiled foods, and meats with antibiotic or hormone residues in them. Stay away from margarine and shortening and any foods cooked with or in them. The biggest and toughest shift for most people is getting away from devitalized foods made from white sugar and flour. These are a huge stress on your system and must be eliminated if you are to make any impact on your levels of inflammation. This means not only avoiding most cakes, cookies, candies, and other sweet treats, but also most breads, pastas, crackers, and many foods the you have been duped into believing are good for you because they are “low in cholesterol" (I have written an article on the truth about cholesterol).
The last step in the phase one diet is eliminating rancid oils. Every time you heat a polyunsaturated oil (like soy, corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, etc.) it turns rancid. Therefore any foods that are fried in them (like chips, chicken, french fries, even tempura vegetables) are saturated with rancid oils. These are extremely toxic to your body and highly inflammatory. Cooking in or with partially hydrogenated oil (shortening), or with trans-fats (as in margarine) is just as bad for your body. Acceptable fats for you would be olive oil, grape seed oil, and butter to cook with.
I would also recommend you get yourself on a good food based vitamin and mineral supplement with extra magnesium, zinc, and trace minerals. There are many resources available to you for making these changes in your lifestyle. There are many alternatives to the devitalized foods made with whole grains and natural sweeteners. There are even condiments like mayonnaise and catsup made with honey. Baking and broiling are effective replacements for frying your foods. Even fast food restaurants are trying to provide healthy alternatives to the usual toxic foods they generally serve. Try these changes for one month and see how much it improves your levels of inflammation. If this does the job then great, you have found the diet your body wants. If not then move to phase two.
Phase Two Diet
Once you have cleaned your diet up by eliminating foods with poisons, additives, altered fats, fried foods, and foods stripped of nutrient cofactors, what is next? The next step is to reduce omega 6 oil (seed oils) to omega 3 oil (fish/green veggie oils) to a maximum ratio of 1 to 1(currently it is about 20 to 1 for most people) in your diet. This means eliminating all seed oils from your diet (corn, sunflower, safflower, soy, canola, and other polyunsaturated oils) as well as any foods containing them. In phase one we eliminated cooking with these oils but you could still eat them in their unheated forms like in salad dressings. These oils are directly converted into pro-inflammatory hormones. Eliminating foods with excess omega 6 oils will make a major impact on inflammation levels.
The omega 3 oils are converted into anti-inflammatory hormones. Your system needs more omega 3 oils from fruits, vegetables, and wild game, grass fed meats, and cold water oily fish. Increasing these foods in your diet is a big help. However, diet is not usually enough. So, supplementing with whole flax seed (freshly ground), fresh/refrigerated flax oil (if you have no prostate problems) mixed with sulfur containing amino acids (like in cottage cheese) or 1 – 3 grams of fish oil is a must. (This may interfere with some blood thinning medications so if you are using these drugs you will need to be checked by your doctor). Some people of Scandinavian, Scottish, or Danish ancestry do not have the enzyme necessary for converting flax seed oil into its active form so they have to use the fish oils.
Some support for this diet shift exists in the health markets. Look for range fed meats and poultry. There are high omega 3 eggs sold now. There is even a grape seed mayonnaise and potato chips cooked in olive oil. Flax seed is available and can be ground and used as a breakfast hot cereal (don’t cook it, just pour hot water over it) and fish oil capsules of many types abound. Try this phase of the diet for 3 weeks and see how much change in your inflammation levels you are able to make. If you still need more decrease in your pain levels advance to phase three.
Phase Three Diet
Phase three is simple to understand but very life altering as a lifestyle change. In its simplest form, understand that overeating causes inflammation. Our digestive system is only designed to process a maximum of 3 to 4 ounces of calorie rich food at a time. Ideally we would only eat 1 to 2 ounces of calorie rich food along with lots of fiber rich low calorie foodstuffs (basically above ground vegetables). We were designed to eat like this every couple hours. Our biological ancestors were hunter-gatherers (more gatherers and scavengers than hunters). Most of our daytime hours were spent gathering and eating whatever we could find as we found it. The occasional tribal success with hunting would create an opportunity for a feast where everyone would pig-out. But this was a rare occurrence. The body creates an inflammatory response called the acute phase response to handle the food overload. This produces sleepiness, achy sluggishness, joint pains, and an excess of insulin. This excess insulin opens the storage cells in the body to soak up all the excess food and store it as fat. Because of this response feasting was done when it was safe and no activity demands were present. Gathering and eating is not how we eat today, yet our bodies are still the same design they were 40,000 years ago.
Phase three is to eat smaller meals more frequently with lots of fiber rich above ground vegetables and low calorie fruits. Keep the calorie rich food down to a maximum of 3 to 4 ounces per meal. Calorie rich foods refer to meats and fats, nuts and seeds, whole grain products, dairy foods, root vegetables and starchy or high sugar fruits. Depending upon how many calories you burn daily you may need three to six such meals each day. Snacking (small meals) is eating for low inflammation. Feasting increases inflammation. In biologic terms, a burger, fries, and a coke is a feast. It will trigger both inflammation and fat storage (weight gain). Try reducing the size of your meals and increasing your fiber food intake for three weeks and see how much your pain levels decrease. If this is sufficient, then stop at this diet style and adopt it. If you still have significant pain then move on to phase four.
Phase Four Diet
This diet phase is to restore the healthy acid-alkaline balance in your body. The bodily fluid around sites of pain and inflammation is usually found to be too acidic. When the excess acidity is reduced, the pain goes away in most people. Some areas of the body are designed to be acidic like the stomach, the colon, and inside the cells. Other areas are designed to always be neutral like the blood stream. But the fluid surrounding the cells of the body is designed to be slightly alkaline. To be alkaline it must have the proper alkaline minerals to do its job. These alkaline minerals are supposed to come from our diet. They are mostly found in vegetables and fruits. Grains and legumes are acid forming as is excess protein. Fats are neutral. The goal is to eat 75% alkalinizing foods and 25% acidifying foods by volume because acid foods are more concentrated.
ALKALIZING FOODS
VEGETABLES
Garlic
Asparagus
Fermented Veggies
Watercress
Beets
Broccoli
Brussel sprouts
Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Celery
Chard
Chlorella
Collard Greens
Cucumber
Eggplant
Kale
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Mushrooms
Mustard Greens
Dulce
Dandelions
Edible Flowers
Onions
Parsnips (high glycemic)
Peas
Peppers
Pumpkin
Rutabaga
Sea Veggies
Spirulina
Sprouts
Squashes
Alfalfa
Barley Grass
Wheat Grass
Wild Greens
Nightshade Veggies
FRUITS
Apple
Apricot
Avocado
Banana (high glycemic)
Cantaloupe
Cherries
Currants
Dates/Figs
Grapes
Grapefruit
Lime
Honeydew Melon
Nectarine
Orange
Lemon
Peach
Pear
Pineapple
All Berries
Tangerine
Tomato
Tropical Fruits
Watermelon
PROTEIN
Eggs
Whey Protein Powder
Cottage Cheese
Chicken Breast
Yogurt
Almonds
Chestnuts
Tofu (fermented)
Flax Seeds
Pumpkin Seeds
Tempeh (fermented)
Squash Seeds
Sunflower Seeds
Millet
Sprouted Seeds
& Nuts
OTHER
Apple Cider Vinegar
Bee Pollen
Lecithin Granules
Probiotic Cultures
Green Juices
Veggies Juices
Fresh Fruit Juice
Organic Milk
(unpasteurized)
Mineral Water
Green Tea
Herbal Tea
Dandelion Tea
Ginseng Tea
Kombucha
SWEETENERS
Stevia
SPICES/SEASONING
Cinnamon
Curry
Ginger
Mustard
Chili Pepper
Sea Salt
Miso
Tamari
All Herbs
ORIENTAL VEGETABLES
Maitake
Daikon
Dandelion Root
Shitake
Kombu
Reishi
Nori
Umeboshi
Wakame
Sea Veggies
ACIDIFYING FOODS
FATS & OILS
Avocado Oil
Canola Oil
Corn Oil
Hemp Seed Oil
Flax Oil
Lard
Olive Oil
Safflower Oil
Sesame Oil
Sunflower Oil
FRUITS
Cranberries
GRAINS
Rice Cakes
Wheat Cakes
Amaranth
Barley
Buckwheat
Corn
Oats (rolled)
Quinoi
Rice (all)
Rye
Spelt
Kamut
Wheat
Hemp Seed Flour
DAIRY
Cheese, Cow
Cheese, Goat
Cheese, Processed
Cheese, Sheep
Milk
Butter
NUTS & BUTTERS
Cashews
Brazil Nuts
Peanuts
Peanut Butter
Pecans
Tahini
Walnuts
ANIMAL PROTEIN
Beef
Carp
Clams
Fish
Lamb
Lobster
Mussels
Oyster
Pork
Rabbit
Salmon
Shrimp
Scallops
Tuna
Turkey
Venison
PASTA (WHITE)
Noodles
Macaroni
Spaghetti
OTHER
Distilled Vinegar
Wheat Germ
Potatoes
DRUGS & CHEMICALS
Chemicals
Drugs, Medicinal
Drugs, Psychedelic
Pesticides
Herbicides
ALCOHOL
Beer
Spirits
Hard Liquor
Wine
BEANS & LEGUMES
Black Beans
Chick Peas
Green Peas
Kidney Beans
Lentils
Lima Beans
Pinto Beans
Red Beans
Soy Beans
Soy Milk
White Beans
Rice Milk
Almond Milk
What are excess proteins? As you may recall from somewhere certain of the amino acids that proteins are made from are called essential because our body can not manufacture them. For our body to use a protein as a protein inside us, it must have all the essential amino acids available. If a protein we eat has even one essential amino acid missing then the whole protein will be broken down and used for energy. This releases the acidic minerals in the protein into the blood stream. If all the essential amino acids are fully present in the needed amounts, this does not happen and the body uses the protein for tissue growth and repair. Any protein we eat that is deficient in one or more essential amino acids is an excess protein because it will be broken down. This is part of the reason grains and legumes are acidic, because they are deficient in one or more essential amino acids.
The other big place this becomes a problem is with the meats, fish, dairy, and poultry we eat. Why? Because we eat them cooked and four of the essential amino acids are easily destroyed by heat. Temperatures over 150 to 160 degrees destroy these amino acids. The rest of the protein becomes excess protein our body can not use for anything but energy (thus making our tissues more acid). What temperature do you cook at? A frying pan is 500 to 700 degrees. We usually use the oven at 325 degrees or more. Even boiling is 212 degrees. How do you know when a protein has become an excess protein? It changes color. Look at a piece of steak cooked medium rare. The outside is brown, grey, or black while the middle is still pink to red. The middle is still good quality protein, while the outside has become excess unusable protein. The big picture here is to cook your meats as little as possible. Some meats can even be eaten raw as with sushi. Those meats that have to be cooked for safety reasons, cook at as low a temperature as possible. Because of this process most dairy products should be eaten sparingly unless you have a good safe source of raw dairy products.
Try eating 75% alkaline foods and minimally cooking your meats for three weeks and see how you feel. Most people will have big changes in their pain and inflammation levels by the time they have removed the toxic burdens addressed in phases 1 through 4. If you still have significant inflammatory pain then dealing with carbohydrate intolerance (phase 5) or lectin/food sensitivities (phase 6) may be necessary.
Phase Five Diet
In the fifth phase we address the inflammatory effects of the hormone insulin as well as an even more complete removal of the omega 6 oils from our diet. For a good explanation of the biochemistry of how insulin triggers inflammation I would refer you to the book by Barry Sears, The Zone Diet. In fact his 40-30-30 eating plan is the first step of phase five. While still following the different aspects of phases 1-4, now make the calories in your meals 40% fat, 30% quality protein, and 30% quality carbohydrates. In Dr. Sears’ book he originally had the 40% as carbohydrates. However he later found that while this worked with the athletes he was studying, the carbohydrate level was too high for the average person.
Try this modification for a couple weeks to see if it is effective for you. If not, you may have a dysglycemia problem. This means your body has become overly reactive to sugars and carbohydrates. Your insulin levels swing greatly in reaction to carbohydrates causing both too much and too little blood sugar. This is a common cause behind many mental disorders. Anyone carrying more than 25 extra pounds is probably dysglycemic, although you do not have to be overweight to have this condition. Dysglycemia is a pre-diabetic condition that produces lots of inflammation. We have three levels of diet change to deal with this. The first level comes from research by Dr.s Heller presented in the book The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet. They found that each time you eat carbohydrates it sets you up for an over reaction for the next 23 hours. The diet modification therefore is to eat all your carbohydrates for the day at one meal, and then eat no more carbs for at least 23 hours. Try this for two weeks to see if this brings your pain under control. If not then move up to the Sugar Control Diet. I have been using this diet for 25 years to resolve patient’s sugar handling problems.
Blood sugar problems are responsible for many health problems besides just inflammation. The biggest scare is Diabetes. This was a relatively uncommon problem 35 years ago. Only 1-2% of the US population had diabetes. Back then we were a nation of meat and potato eaters. Over the last 35 years we have gotten on this “health” obsession and switched to a grain based diet. The latest statistics show our diabetes levels hitting 20-25%. A fear of cholesterol was created to promote the sale of grain and seed oil products to “save” us. This rise in diabetes is the result.
Blood Sugar Re-balancing Program
This diet is used to help re-establish your blood sugar balance mechanisms in combination with the chiropractic blood sugar adjustments. Please follow it very closely. The closer you follow this diet, the sooner your body will respond.
Proteins:
Red meat (beef, lamb) - at least 3 oz. 3 times a week
Other meats - unlimited
Fish - un-breaded - unlimited
Fowl (chicken, turkey) - un-breaded unlimited
Eggs (cage free) - unlimited
Cheese / cottage cheese / unsweetened yogurt - unlimited
Tofu - unlimited
Raw cashews, almonds, brazil nuts, raw seeds
Vegetables:
Green non-starchy vegetables - unlimited
Yellow vegetables, carrots, beets, onions, starchy veggies – small portions
Fresh tomatoes and tomato products without sugar, corn syrup or modified food starch - unlimited
Mushrooms, sprouts, radishes, olives, dill pickles, etc. - unlimited
Fruits:
Fresh fruits except bananas - unlimited
Unsweetened frozen or canned fruit - unlimited
Unsweetened fruit juices, watered down 50% - unlimited
Bananas - limit one per day
Oils:
Olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, almond oil, macadamia nut oil - unlimited
Butter - unlimited
Beverages:
Minimum 8-10 glasses of pure water each day
Herb teas
1-3 cups of decaffeinated coffee or tea
Instructions:
You must eat a little something every two hours of your waking day during the first 2-3 weeks of the program. Most people prefer the allowed nuts, fruit, or cheese as snacks. If sweet taste is desired, Stevia or or Splenda may be used - nothing else. Spices and condiments may be used as long as they do not contain sugar in any form (eg. Dextrose, maltodextrin, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup, modified food starches, etc…)
Foods to Avoid:
All sugars, syrups, jams, honey, or sugar containing foods…
All alcoholic beverages and mixed drinks…
All wheat and flour containing products (eg. bread, pasta, cereals, etc…)
Corn, corn starch, corn meal, and products that contain them…
Oats, rice, and all other grains in any form…
Beans, peas, lentils, and other legumes, including peanuts…
Potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, and other starchy tubers…
Roasted nuts and nut butters…
Margarine, carob…
If in Doubt - Don’t Eat It
Exceptions:
2 slices of flourless, sprouted, 7 grain bread may be used each day…
Any rice dry roasted (browned) in a skillet until golden brown may be then cooked like regular rice and eaten freely.
After one week we will recheck your sugar balance. If you are doing well then continue for a second week. The night before your second checkup, eat one meal with carbohydrates in it ( keep the meal to a maximum of 59 minutes in length). If you pass this challenge, the diet will move to phase two of the program.
This program clears up most dysglycemic sugar handling problems and the inflammation it causes. If you have a serious blood sugar problem that does not resolve with this program, then you may be carbohydrate intolerant. This means you have to get off most all carbohydrates for the rest of your life. Your biochemistry just can not handle them. For these people I recommend a very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet like the Atkins Diet. Fortunately there is currently a lot of support and specialty products available right now to help you. The Atkins Diet as presented does not address the concerns presented in phases 1to 4 of the anti-inflammatory diet. When engaging the Atkins Diet be sure to also follow the phase 1 to 4 restrictions.
One of the biggest benefits of the Atkins Diet is the complete removal of all grains from the diet. These are the biggest source of Omega 6 pro-inflammatory oils next to seed oils. Not only does the eating of grains fill us with inflammatory omega 6 oils, but it does the same thing to feedlot animals (like beef and pork), poultry (and eggs they produce) and even the grain fed farmed fish are high in omega 6 oils. It used to be that salmon was one of the best sources of the good omega 3 oils, but now that salmon is farmed and fed grain this is no longer true. Range fed and wild feeding produces healthy meat while feedlot grain based diets produce inflammatory meats. In one bright attempt to reverse this trend some chicken farmers are feeding the chickens flax seed meal (high in omega 3 oils) to produce eggs that are high in the good oils.
The full value of an Atkins Diet takes about 4 to 6 weeks to manifest. For people in a lot of inflammation based pain I often recommend they jump directly to this diet phase for maximum results in the minimum amount of time. Still be sure to observe the restrictions talked about in phases 1 through 4 even though Atkins does not address them. Give this program at least 6 weeks to knock down your inflammation. If this does not work then three other possibilities remain, food allergies, psychological stress, and physical illness/disease.
Phase Six Diet
Lectin reactions, food allergies, and food recognition defect reactions are all very individualized hypersensitive reactions that produce inflammation as a part of the many symptoms they can create. Some of these reactions are genetic and can only be handled by avoidance of the offending foods. The classic example of this even has its own disease name, celiac disease. Here the person is hypersensitive to the protein gluten found in most grains. As little as a few grams of gluten can cause such a violent gastrointestinal reaction that the celiac patient can be sick for months. Recent evidence demonstrates that milder forms of celiac disease may be quite common (up to 30 to 40% of the population). Other examples are the arthritic reactions people with O blood type have to nightshade family foods (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant).
Many of these reactions can be tested with modern blood tests. These are not the medically understood food allergies that can produce anaphylactic shock and possible death. These type allergies (called IGE mediated allergies) are tested with skin prick tests. These type allergies fall into the same type as dust and pollen allergies. Fortunately most food sensitivities or lectin reactions are not this type (and so do not show up on skin prick tests). Lectin reactions do however create serious inflammatory symptoms.
The third type of sensitivity is the food recognition defect type reactions. In these reactions the body has associated the food with some other noxious event or illness and goes into an over-reaction when just the food is encountered by itself. An example I have found in my practice is that most of the foods a person eats while they have hepatitis or mononucleosis they end up sensitized to. The body reacts to the food as though the hepatitis or mono was returning. This type of reaction is quite common and can be tested and corrected by many chiropractors using applied kinesiology and special neurologic adjustments.
While most food sensitivity work is done individually with your doctor, there are two classic tools you can use yourself. The first is the rotation diet. If you suspect a problem with a certain food, remove it from your diet for one week and see how you feel. Many sensitive foods are also addictive and you may experience mild withdrawal feelings for up to five days, so wait until the seventh day to evaluate how you feel. If you are not sure, go back on the food for 1 week and then off again for 1 week again and then evaluate. I have seen many dramatic changes in patients that have used this process.
The first foods I would test are the most commonly sensitive foods; milk and anything containing milk proteins ( casien or whey), gluten (grains and grain products like beer and white vinegar), soy (this one hides in all kinds of foods), eggs, nightshades, citrus, peanuts (derivatives found in many forms), and chocolate. Any food is a possible offender but these are the most common.
The other tool I use is the Coco Pulse Test. Dr. Coco found that in an otherwise healthy person at rest the pulse will be below 78 beats per minute. Food reactions tend to raise the pulse rate. Take your pulse before you eat. Eat then wait 20 minutes and take your pulse again. If it goes above 78 or raises more than 12 beats per minute then you are likely having a reaction to something you ate. By trial and error you can find what you are reacting to.
Phase 7
A rigorous program of avoiding foods you are sensitive to or desensitizing those that are inappropriate reactions can produce amazing changes in your symptoms. If you have faithfully adhered to the steps in phase 1 through 6, you have reduced your inflammation as much as you can through dietary intervention. If you still have pain and inflammation then all that is left is psychological stress and physical illness or injury. Generally when you have pain and inflammation you check out the physical illness/injury angle first. This is what your medical doctor excels at. Most people who ask me how to reduce their pain have already been the medical route and were not able to find an answer and ended up on pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs. While this may work for the short run, it is not a long term answer. Tens of thousands of people die every year from GI bleeding and liver damage caused by normal doses of these medications. Over time they tear you apart.
This does not diminish the value of a good medical checkup. Many pain conditions are the result of disease processes involving medically diagnosable problems. Examples might be long term bacterial or viral illnesses like hepatitis, mononucleosis, candida, H. pylori, and many others. Many metabolic disorders like gout can cause a lot of grief. Hormonal problems due to glandular diseases often produce muscle pain. Neurologic disorders must be considered as do immune system dysfunctions.
Lastly simple physical damage to the muscle and joint systems need to be evaluated. A Chiropractor is best trained to evaluate these systems and either address them directly or refer to a specialist if needed. Many times I have found a simple sacroiliac sprain that has caused chronically unstable low back problems for years. Loss of balance and muscle coordination as well as muscle tone loss is a very common cause for chronic pain. Specific balance exercises exist to correct these problems.
Phase 8
The last avenue of investigation is stress. It is very well established that negative stress causes inflammation. Chronic feelings of anger, fear, hopelessness, suppression, and loneliness are prime causes of pain and inflammation. This pain can be systemic like in chronic fatigue syndrome, or very localized like in low back problems. The neurochemistry behind this is very intense and complicated. Fortunately understanding how it happens is not necessary for doing something about it. Amazing new developments in the healing fields like those we have created in the Heartflow program allow us to make dramatic changes in people’s lives.
The positive stress of being challenged but having the hope and expectation that we will succeed and overcome the challenge does not produce inflammation, only negative stress does this. Negative stress may involve the exact same challenge but there is no feeling of hope or expectation that you will succeed at overcoming the challenge. Successful people know that most any challenge can be overcome if they are willing to let go of what they have and where they are comfortable and strike out into the unknown to learn the new life skills necessary to meet the challenge. Negatively stressed people are generally either unwilling or don’t know how to let go of their comfort/survival zones and engage the chaos of life as it is to learn new skills. Successful people also know that success is usually built from lots of failures. You learn from your failures what the boundaries of successful actions are. Success requires persistence and boldness. Giving up and not trying again produces hopelessness. Hopelessness creates pain and suffering. In a sense, suffering is your system’s way of telling you how much you have let go of hope in your life.
There is help and support available in the world for you when you are ready to take up the challenges that defeated you in the past. You can learn to successfully overcome their limitations, even when they have been shoved back into the subconscious and now are expressed as physical symptoms. It helps when you know that you are here to express and connect the truth of your being with the world. There are a multitude of ways and opportunities for you to express the truth of your beingness creating a multitude of ways to succeed. If we get confused and pursue our ego goals, we usually reduce to only one “right” way thereby making success very difficult to achieve. As you learn to express and connect your beingness truth, your suffering decreases and your joy unfolds. Your body no longer needs to use pain to tell you that you are not fulfilling your purpose for being. Health becomes yours once again. So take heart, take hope, and let’s get going.
copyright 2008 David DeLapp DC 916-966-4714
