I strongly believe that there’s no specific diet only for chronic injuries. In other words, good diet always helps you in several ways. Yes your diet affects your pain, but it doesn’t affect only your pain but also your whole health, energy, concentration and the quality of your life.
How much does your diet affect the pain level?
It’s depending on which type of pain you have and how much pain you have now. But roughly speaking, it’s 30%-50%. That means, if you don’t have good diet, the pain can be double. The reason why your diet can affect your pain level is that your body is always exposed to oxidative stress and low level inflammation and typical diet in modern society causes low level inflammation and oxidative stress in your body. You need to avoid to take materials which can cause inflammation or oxidative stress in your body and at the same time you better take a lot of anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory foods.
So what should you do?
Like any other things, functional things are simple. I suggest you to follow only the following two constructions :
1. To eat unprocessed foods as often as possible.
2. To eat as many types as possible vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds
Most of us have been taught that we should not have snack and have only three main meals a day. While I suggest you to have something as often as possible during a day, ideally speaking every one hour. But don’t misunderstand. What I am saying is not ‘’Eat as much as possible’’ but ‘’Eat as often as possible with small portion’’. By doing this, your body can absorb all you take instead of storing fat and you can keep your blood sugar level stable.
If you eat much one time, there’s less chances to digest all and often your blood sugar level increases and the insulin spikes. It doesn’t only increase your pain level, but also very often causes laziness and obesity. Plus, foods which you cannot digest perfectly become CIC (circulated immune complex) and go into the blood. This is same with virus or bacteria for the immune system and white blood cells and macrophage go to there to clean up CIC. And then the body causes the inflammation reaction as one of immune reaction. As a result, you feel more pains.
Also the point is to take unprocessed foods like brown rice, whole grain breads, whole grain corn and something which has low glycemic index. Glycemic index means how much your insulin spikes after you eat it. The less insulin the pancreas make after you eat it, the lower the food’s glycemic index. One of the worst thing for the chronic pain is white sugar and any other kind of processed carbohydrates.
Second, you better have as many types as possible fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts. These days we are exposed to tons of advertisements like ‘’This is a super food’’, ‘’This is the secret of Japanese long life’’ or something like that. But remember no food can work well without other nutrients. All minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals and enzyme work together synergetically. That’s why there’s no one miracle food in this world. People often ask me ‘’Which nut is the best’’ or which berry is the best?‘’ and I always answer the question ‘’Mix nuts (berries) are the best’’.
And also it’s important to eat the whole food because usually natural foods have enzyme which is necessary to digest it. For example, carrots have specific enzyme which is necessary to digest carrots and apple has specific enzyme which is necessary to digest apple. All nutrients in one food works together synergetically in the body. Thus, ideally speaking, you better not to peel and eat the whole carrots and apple.
Also you better not to cook it. If you cook it, the enzyme dies because of the heat. In my case, I had had chronic plantar faschiitis for three years. After I dropped out at Düsseldorf Marathon in April 2018 (I was really disappointed because I made good training with fighting against much pains!), I hardly took cooked foods. For some reasons, sometimes I still eat cooked foods because some foods are hard to eat row nevertheless they are very good for the body (take broccoli for example) and having meal is not only for health but also for being socialized sometimes. Even so, I hardly eat cooked foods these days and I hardly have meal outside (also mostly I eat alone, I like it). After a few weeks I started with this habit, I started feeling that the pain got better and better. Not only pain, but also the whole body got better and better. I got less muscle pains or soreness after intense workouts.
Which kind of vegetables and fruits you should eat?
As I described before, you should many types of foods although it doesn’t mean you should eat much (eat two bites of many types of foods). When you choose foods, please pay attention to the color of foods because most of anti-oxidants decide the color of the foods. For example, the red color of red grape is resveratrol, the yellow of the paprika is beta carotenoid etc. The more colors you have in your meal, the more types anti-oxidants you have.
Don’t eat Eggplant and Okra
There is one exception about vegetables. Don’t eat eggplant or okra!! These foods are belong to night shade family of plants. They contain molecular compounds that promote inflammation soon after you eat them. The effects of night shade plants alone can cause someone extreme amounts of pain and promotes chronic/systematic inflammation process.
I believe the natural foods are the best and in any cases you should reconsider your diet to get a pain less. Even so, taking supplyment is not a bad idea. In fact, some supplyments work well to get a pain less. Next time I will write about which supplyments you better take.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me. I would be really happy if I can help you. Please contact me from the link below
www.ikegamihideyuki.com/contact
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