To discover how to regain control of your diet, it is important to understand the common thread amongst nearly all chronic disease processes known as silent inflammation. This phenomenon made big news several years ago when it was featured on the cover of the February 2004 issue of Time Magazine. It has been the subject, directly or indirectly, of thousands of scientific articles in some of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world. The vast majority of the research is pointing towards silent inflammation as the cause of diseases ranging from heart disease to Alzheimer’s to many types of cancer.

We will touch on the causes of silent inflammation, its impacts, and what you can do to reverse it before it’s too late. The best resource to understand silent inflammation and how to reverse it is The Anti-Inflammation Zone, by Dr. Barry Sears. This book was written for the public, not for doctors, and will give you knowledge of the topic that exceeds many physicians! Two of the major essential fatty acids in the body are omega-6 fats and omega-3 fats. Omega-3 fatty acids are found primarily in cold water fish and grass-fed meats, while grains and seed oils, such as corn oil, soybean oil, and safflower oil are rich sources of omega-6 fatty acids.

Research indicates that our bodies are designed to optimally function with a ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:1 to 1:4. This means for every milligram of omega-3 fat you eat, you should eat one to four milligrams of omega-6 fats. Unfortunately, the average American diet has an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of around 1:25!

How does this cause silent inflammation? Your immune system causes any inflammation, whether acute, in the case of a sprained ankle swelling, or silent. Molecules called eicosanoids are like the generals of the immune system. Pro-inflammatory eicosanoids coordinate the bodies’ response to injury, resulting in inflammation. They control molecules called macrophages, that gobble up invading tissue as well as molecules called cytokines that signal for more immune cells to move to a specific area. During the inflammatory phase of an injury, these molecules cause the tissue to become swollen and painful. This is the bodies’ way of guarding against further injury to the area, such as keeping you from placing pressure on a sprained ankle. In the case of acute inflammation, this is a wonderful, albeit sometimes painful process to speed the healing of an injury and repair the tissue.

Eventually, however, the repair and remodeling of the area is completed, and anti-inflammatory eicosanoids take over. These signal the body to halt the inflammatory response, and cause the body to proceed to the next phase of the healing process. To stay healthy, your body must maintain balance between pro and anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. If the balance is upset with too many pro-inflammatory molecules silent inflammation sets in, causing a host of health problems.

The traditional medical path for dealing with inflammation is one you are probably already familiar with. Anti-inflammatory drugs, such as aspirin, Advil, Alleve, or Tylenol cause the body to stop the production of the pain-causing eicosanoids. Unfortunately, these medications do not distinguish between the pro and anti-inflammatory eicosanoids, but decrease both. This leads to problems in the immune system ranging from stomach ulcers to even death. Over 20,0000 people a year in the United States die from the recommended use of anti-inflammatory drugs! Clearly, medications are not a good long-term solution for stopping silent inflammation. If you wrapped a rubber band tightly around your finger, you would experience immediate throbbing pain, swelling, and eventually might even lose circulation in the finger. Medications exist that are strong enough to block the pain, but wouldn’t removing the rubber band that is causing the problem in the first place be a wiser solution?

By eliminating or at least drastically reducing the causes of chronic inflammation in your diet you are able to live longer, feel better, and look younger without drugs or surgery! Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not! As mentioned before, omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids both are building blocks of eicosanoid production. However, it is crucial to remember that omega-6 fats lead to pro-inflammatory eicosanoids while omega-3 fats are the precursors to powerful anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. The imbalance of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the typical American diet has led to flawed immune systems that are causing silent inflammation. We are literally eating ourselves to death!

Virtually all chronic disease processes are now thought to be in some way due to silent inflammation. For years doctors have thought heart disease was merely a problem of fat from the diet clogging the arteries, causing heart disease. The plague that builds up in the arteries is rich with cholesterol, so it was believed that high cholesterol lead to heart attacks by choking off blood to the heart. The trouble with this theory is that 50 percent of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol. Another problem with this model is that as Americans steadily reduced their cholesterol intake throughout the twentieth century, heart disease not only did not decrease, it became much more prevalent!

Type II diabetes is another disease epidemic that is rooted in silent inflammation. At its most basic level this disease, also known as non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), is caused when your cells become less responsive to the actions of the hormone insulin. Insulin is produced in the pancreas and helps glucose from the blood make its way into the cells. It is an anabolic hormone, meaning it promotes the buildup of tissue, most notably fat. So when the cells become insulin resistant and the body produces more insulin, more fat is stored. So what causes cells to become resistant to the effects of insulin? The best current research indicates that silent inflammation causes damage to the specific cells that insulin acts on to allow glucose into the cells.

A study done at Louisiana State University showed that giving anti-inflammatory eicosanoids to overweight patients decreased insulin resistance by 70 percent! After spending over $30 billion dollars on the war on cancer, our government still has not found any reliable way to prevent the disease from occurring in the first place. Any form of cancer occurs when cells in the body mutate, causing them to rapidly divide and spread. As you have learned, silent inflammation increases insulin levels in the body, which act as a fuel to spread cancer cells. This process is known as metastasis, and it is also aided by pro-inflammatory eicosanoids found in the typical American diet.