Make Health Care More About Caring For Health

by Dr. Brett L. Lukert, DC

It seems there are many theories how to improve our health care system. Rather than worrying about how the care will affect each of us, maybe we should start with improving our health.

It’s no secret that the United States pays more than any country for health care, but it should be mentioned that we are also one of the unhealthiest.

Nutrition is a great place to begin. Sometimes, we make healthy nutrition much more complicated than it should be…more fruits and vegetables, less junk (fast food, processed food, candy) and regular exercise. How complex is that?

Convincing people about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and its correlation with disease prevention is not the hard part—we all know this. The biggest challenge is actually changing our lifestyle when we don’t have any current symptoms or face any imminent threat of disease.

This isn’t easy for any of us because we don’t like change, not to mention that we really like to eat! Nevertheless, it’s important that we stop being short-sighted and start looking at what our bodies will look and feel like if we don’t make some changes.

In order to make the necessary nutritional changes, we first need to understand what happens to our bodies when we continually feed it junk. Meal time is a perfect example.

The highly-processed, calorie-dense, nutrient-depleted diet favored in our current American culture causes extreme post-prandial (after a meal) elevations in blood glucose and lipid levels. This is called post-prandial dysmetabolism. Without getting too scientific, the most significant effect of post-prandial dysmetabolism is that it causes our bodies to “flame up,” meaning it induces inflammation.

It’s also an independent predictor of future cardiovascular problems, even in non-diabetic individuals. Improvements in diet exert profound and immediate positive changes in post-prandial dysmetabolism.

Fortunately, there are plenty of foods that will help us “de-flame.” Specifically, a diet high in minimally-processed, high-fiber, plant-based foods, such as vegetables and fruit, whole grains, legumes, and nuts, has shown to markedly blunt the post-meal increase in glucose, triglycerides and inflammation.

Additionally, lean protein (lean meat), vinegar, fish oil, tea, cinnamon, calorie restriction, weight loss, and exercise have each been shown to positively impact post-prandial dysmetabolism.

Along with making these necessary nutritional changes, some additional supplementation suggestions that have been shown to help reduce inflammation include the following:

• a quality daily multi-vitamin
• increased intake of magnesium (400-1000 mg/day)
• increased intake of fish oil (EPA/DHA) (1-3 g/day)
• increased intake of Vitamin D (1,000-10,000 IU/day)
• increased intake of ginger and turmeric (1-2 g/day)
• adequate intake of antioxidants and phytonutrients

Eating healthier with proper supplementation will help decrease inflammation and give our bodies the nutrients they need. It is important to always consult your medical doctor to make sure there are no contraindications for you.

Next time we will focus on exercise, but for now, try to make the nutritional changes necessary to be healthy, live healthy and stay healthy!