Hello, health enthusiasts, and welcome to Rev Up Health, your go-to podcast for all things wellness. I'm Dr. Mark Hechler, and I'm Tandi Hechler. Together we're here to fuel your health journey with the best of functional medicine and holistic well-being. Each episode, we'll dive deep into topics that matter to your health, bringing you the latest insights, research, and inspiring stories. Whether you're on a quest for vibrant health or just looking for daily health tips, we've got you covered. So let's embark on this journey together and transform the way you live. So, Tandi, what's on our wellness radar for today?
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Rev Up Health. Today we're going to have a topic of discussion that should be on everybody's mind, and that all of us are exposed to no matter what level you think you are healthwise. We are all exposed to it, and one giant word for today's podcast is inflammation. Today, inflammation is going to be a goal that we'll try to get you all educated on and make you more aware — the fact that there are a lot of things that maybe are causing inflammation in my system, or maybe I'm having these symptoms as a result of inflammation. I certainly think it's something everybody has, and hopefully today will get you a little more aware, and maybe you can make some changes in your own life.
What Is Inflammation?
Let's first define what inflammation really is. The Institute for Functional Medicine basically says inflammation in the body is a complex biological response to what they'd call harmful stimuli. These things can be pathogens, which cause damaged cells, and you can also have toxic compounds that cause the inflammation to occur. But essentially, it's a protective mechanism.
So inflammation is not all bad. We really do need an acute inflammatory response to help us fight disease and heal when we have an injury. Acute inflammation is necessary and needed. Some things that characterize acute inflammation would be heat, redness, swelling, pain, and potentially loss of function. It's a protective mechanism that involves our immune cells, blood vessels, and little mediators that all have to work together. They try to eliminate the initial cause of this harmful cellular stimuli, clear out the necrotic cells and damaged tissues from the original insult, and then promote repair. So acute inflammation is absolutely that — we definitely want to repair.
Chronic Inflammation: The Silent Fire
Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, is the opposite of acute — it's inflammation that hangs around, prolonged. It's basically prolonged stimuli that leads to a prolonged inflammatory response. The symptoms can be something like fatigue, pain, digestive problems, mental health issues, or weight changes. Typically, metabolic changes are drastically affected, which happens throughout all our systems throughout the day. This is kind of a less intense — not like an acute, sudden injury — but a more persistent type of inflammation, and it can last for years. It's subtle, just a lowly inflammatory process, but it causes the presence of these immune cells like macrophages and lymphocytes to influx, and that creates this chronic, scarred-up inflammatory process over months, years, decades.
This is the type that's associated with chronic diseases, specifically autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative problems, diabetes, cancer, and COPD — those are a chronic inflammatory response.
"Inflammaging"
When we're talking about inflammation, I really like how Dr. Mark Hyman talks about it — he calls it "inflammaging," because inflammation is such a big cause of aging in our body. Dementia and Alzheimer's — obviously Alzheimer's is becoming quite a common household term these days, so it affects a lot of folks and is a result of a chronic inflammatory response. We have a lot more research to do to understand that, but you've probably heard Alzheimer's called type 3 diabetes.
50% — literally 50% — of all deaths worldwide are related to these chronic inflammatory diseases, and 90% of all chronic illnesses are related to inflammation. So you can see it's very widespread, and it's very important to know what's causing it and what you can do to prevent it.
The Causes of Chronic Inflammation
Let's start with the causes. You've got infection — bacterial infections, viruses, parasites — and mold toxicity; all of these would cause inflammation. And our diet and lifestyle — those are very, very important. Our nutrition and lifestyle are the two main drivers of all chronic inflammation. Included in lifestyle is stress too, because stress is a big cause of chronic inflammation. Very much so.
The standard American diet is just awful. Here we are, 60 to 70% of our diet is made up of the standard American diet, which is high in overprocessed foods, sugars, and starches. This stuff is devoid of nutrition, and yet it stimulates more of an addiction to want more of it. Our own system knows what kind of macros we need, and what we don't realize is that we're trying to obtain these nutrients but continue to eat — so you don't get the nutrients, but you keep eating, and that's where the problems start to happen.
Lack of exercise is another huge one. I'm such a fan of any type of movement or exercise — those things are very significant. Any type of movement makes a difference daily. We've talked about this before — it's not just going to the gym and working out and then going to your job and sitting all day long. It's important to incorporate small bouts of movement throughout the day.
Environmental Exposures
Next on the list is environmental exposure — these toxic exposures to BPA, phthalates, and pesticides, the types of things you see with the production of plastics. That's something we all have an exposure to. When you take home food in plastic, don't heat it up in the microwave; try not to drink out of plastic, try not to eat out of plastic. It's certainly something that will add up. It's so good for me to hear this, because it's so hard to avoid — I used to have pretty bad habits around that. But now we know, and now we're educating.
I do want to take a minute to say that this can get overwhelming when you're hearing and taking in this information. You can be like, "Oh my gosh, I can't do anything." Small bites — you just have to take small bites, because you can't do everything, you can't remember everything, and even if you know it, you're going to forget it. You have to revisit and think about things. It's a continual process, and once it becomes more of a habit, then it's a lifestyle — and that's what we're talking about, a lifestyle change.
Even the things we get at the grocery store — let's say we go to the store and get this nice whole food, nice vegetables and apples, and meat at the deli or the meat market — but how are they raising them? Where does it come from? Is it sustainable grass-fed beef, or free-range chicken? These herbicides and pesticides are pretty significantly overwhelming, and those things are significant endocrine disruptors and gut disruptors too. Even living in the cities, now you're talking about air pollution, not to mention your water sources. If you're getting city water, filter your water as good as you can. They may do all they can to filter, but there are limits, with lead and arsenic and things like that that they have to allow to be drunk. Let's just not have any of that — it's not normal to have that in your system, and we can test you to identify those types of things.
Autoimmune Conditions and Oxidative Stress
Autoimmune conditions — the immune system just mistakenly attacks its own body, for instance in rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, celiac disease, MS (multiple sclerosis), polymyalgia, vasculitis, and even POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). There's still a lot of information and studies that need to be done with that, but those types of things can be caused by your diet, lifestyle, and exposures.
Oxidative stress is part of this chronic inflammation. It's something we see with atherosclerosis, heart disease, and diabetes. Basically, you have an imbalance of free radicals versus your antioxidants. Your antioxidants are trying to get rid of the free radicals so they're not floating around and creating tissue damage, because that's the physiologic cause for atherosclerotic heart disease — that tissue damage. It's all aggravated in the phospholipids at the cellular level of your arteries, and that causes an influx of macrophages, which leads to foam cells, and that can lead to destruction and scarring — that's how we get the narrowing of the arteries, and that's how we get the hypertension problems too. All this free radical stuff happens. Oxidative stress — you can think of it as like rusty LDL cholesterol particles; that's essentially how you can think of it.
Testing for Inflammation
There are several ways we can identify chronic inflammation in the body. Some of the ones we frequently test for in our functional panel would be C-reactive protein, the ANA, and rheumatoid factor. We can also look at IL-6. The other options are stool cultures, food sensitivity testing, and heavy metal testing, if you're not finding answers.
Food sensitivity testing is a really big one, because I've noticed just in speaking with patients recently how much valuable information they're getting from these food sensitivity tests — removing some things they didn't know were affecting them, and then once they remove them, finding out how much better they can feel. Sensitivity testing is not an allergy — it's not just an allergy. You can be sensitive to something and not be truly allergic.
Managing Inflammation: Start With Diet
How do we manage this stuff? That's the important thing. We can identify the issues causing the inflammation, but how do we manage it? First on the list is diet. We have to adopt a good anti-inflammatory diet, which is rich in fruits and multicolored vegetables, even the cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Those things are great for anti-inflammation — they help maintain glutathione, which we produce, and glutathione is very important for the anti-inflammatory process in our system.
Healthy fats are really important there too — olive oil, avocado oil, avocados themselves, coconut and coconut oil, and good old omega-3s, that's a big thing. And then lean protein from a reasonable source. When we talk about avoiding chemical exposures, we want to have a good protein source. The Mediterranean diet gets talked about a lot; it includes all those things we just spoke about, including some fish, like sardines. Studies have shown that you can reduce your C-reactive protein — an inflammatory marker we can test — by 20% just by having a good diet, so it makes a big difference.
Fiber
We really want to increase fiber. Fiber is a huge player in our diet. I think 35 grams of fiber in a diet is probably not enough, because our bacteria really like that fiber. It gets processed in our gut, and that helps to control our inflammatory markers and produce things that help fight inflammation — antioxidants. It'll help optimize our gut microbiome.
The GADS Elimination Diet
I always like to talk about the GADS elimination diet. You've got to get the gluten out of your system, get the alcohol away — stay away from the alcohol as much as you can, which is really hard to do sometimes, especially when you get to events — dairy products, and then sugars and starches. If you remember that mnemonic, GADS elimination, and try to go to the store and shop with that line of thought, I think you're going to help reduce the inflammatory process.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen children, babies in the clinic, who have come in — the kiddos have a runny, congested nose, and okay, here's another antihistamine or nasal spray, they've had all these things. But take the dairy and gluten out of their diet, and it clears — and it doesn't take long to clear. We see these things improve almost instantly, and when I recheck the kids, they're literally doing much better.
This GADS diet is very similar to Whole30, so if you're familiar with the Whole30 diet, it's essentially the same — an elimination diet. We probably need to do a separate podcast on what that looks like, to help people understand the steps to really implement an elimination diet and then work through adding things back in.
Avoiding Toxins
Obviously, avoiding a lot of things that are endocrine disruptors — these BPAs, the phthalates, all that stuff in the plastics, and the herbicides and pesticides. They're just laden with chemicals that are forever chemicals — for instance, PFAS are chemicals that, once they get in your system, don't go away, and that creates a chronic toxic exposure. Your liver can only do so much to detoxify. It can regenerate itself nicely, but it needs some help, and the more we can avoid, the better we can help things out from that detox standpoint.
Just remember, don't get overwhelmed — small bites. Even if it's not half the things we talk about, anything you can do is helping to move you in the right direction. A lot of times people can get so overwhelmed and just be like, "Forget it, I'm not even going to go there, it's too much." It's also nice to have — we talked about this in other podcasts, about community — someone to help you through this and navigate what you need to do to modify your eating and lifestyle, an accountability partner.
Lifestyle Modifications
Lifestyle modifications are another big thing. With regular physical exercise, studies show you can reduce that CRP again by 35% with just a regular 12-week exercise program — that's pretty significant. The key is consistent, regular exercise. You don't have to go out and run a 5K or a 10K all the time — just getting out and moving 20 or 30 minutes of physical activity, or vigorous walking, will very easily suffice.
Stress management is another piece. Meditation, practicing mindfulness, will really help to reduce that stress. And adequate sleep will also help — we know we need 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night. There's a lot happening when we sleep; the body is repairing, remodeling, and getting rid of all the bad stuff we've done all day long. It's very helpful to get that good sleep.
Supplements and Hormone Optimization
So, supplements — what supplements can we do to help remove inflammation? This is just a piece of the puzzle, and there's a lot of stuff out there, but there are supplements known to have anti-inflammatory properties, like curcumin and omega-3. That's a pretty significant reduction just by picking up a few supplements you could do on a regular basis. There's resveratrol, and of course the antioxidants vitamin C and E, and glutathione.
Another thing that can help with inflammation is hormone optimization — and that's not just talking about your sex hormones. We're talking about thyroid, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, and vitamin D — optimizing those. And it doesn't necessarily mean, "I've had these tested, they're all in normal range." Normal is not optimal. Anything you can do to help optimize your hormonal levels will help improve and reduce your inflammatory response.
The Role of Medications
And then, obviously, medications. A lot of times people think, "Oh, holistic medicine doesn't believe in medications." It's very important to know that sometimes your body needs medications to help you get to a place where you can make the modifications in your nutrition and lifestyle, and then you may not need that medication. You may be on the pharmaceuticals now because you didn't know anything else — you weren't told, you were just given a prescription. That's great, that will work — but let's try to do some other things to either reduce the medication or eliminate it, because there are side effects that come with medications. At Revelation Health and Wellbeing, our big emphasis is on allowing your own system to right the ship, stay afloat, and chug straight ahead. That's something I think we do quite strongly, to help people navigate their health.
So reach out to us if you have any other topics. We hope you got a little information here and didn't get too overwhelmed. Like Tandi says, take small bites, and try to do a few things — just start implementing a few things. Come back and visit the podcast, follow us along at Rev Up Health. We'll have other podcasts with very similar things and ideas that you can do. Until then, have a healthy day.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Rev Up Health. We hope you're leaving with some valuable insights to supercharge your health journey. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to Rev Up Health wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. Have a topic you want us to explore? Reach out to us on our social media channels — we love hearing from our wellness community. Until next time, keep thriving, and remember: your journey to health is a journey to a better you. Stay well, and we'll connect with you again soon. This is Tandi, and this is Dr. Mark, signing off from Rev Up Health. Take care.
The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The content is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient and their healthcare provider. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your healthcare regimen, including diet, exercise, or treatment plans. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Revelation Health and Wellbeing.