Food substitutions
Almost any recipe can be made more healthy by food substitutions. The recipes I will include here are ones that I have made successfully. (This year I made 5 batches of Christmas cookies, and 2 batches I had to discard as soon as they came out of the oven) I will only include the good ones!
sugar – erythritol (sample brand swerve)
dairy – almond milk or oat milk
butter – Ghee or grass fed butter
gluten – gluten free bread or gluten free pasta
Food Choices
An antiinflammatory diet can help prevent or improve diseases such as diabetes and diabetic retinopathy; autoimmune diseases such lupus and arthritis; heart disease, eye diseases such as macular degeneration, and Alzheimer’s disease.
A Good Start
An anti inflammatory diet is partly a diet of elimination. You can start by eliminating sugar (substitute with erythritol), dairy (substitute with any non dairy milk such as almond milk), gluten (there are many gluten free options my personal favorite are Canyon House products), and processed foods.
Increase nuts, berries and all vegetables
My Favorite Resources
Amazon Prime Documentary
“The Magic Pill” Thoroughly explains the anti inflammatory diet and why it is an excellent diet
Healing Arthritis, by Susan Blum MD, MPH, c.2017 This book contains the diet I personally followed, it also recommends appropriate supplements and has great recipes.
HASfit – this can be found as an app, on You Tube or at their website. It is the exercise program I follow as I prefer to exercise at home. They range from senior chair exercises to advanced strenth training.
About me
I am an ophthalmologist in Connecticut. About 4 years ago I came down with arthritis in my shoulders. It felt like a toothache in my shoulders and kept me awake all night. I started an anti inflammatory diet and now the pain is gone. I will share ideas, resources, and recipes on this blog that can help improve your health, and hopefully decrease some aches and pains you may have, increase your longevity and prevent further disease processes.
Stomach Microbiome
Your microbiome includes the bacteria that live in your stomach. These bacteria helps us to digest food, and helps to regulate our immune system. A healthy microbiome protects us from inflammatory diseases. You can keep it healthy by following an anti inflammatory diet. Too much sugar causes an unhealthy change in the bacterial balance. Things like probiotics, helps to keep the healthy bacteria growing. This is why your diet is related to inflammatory diseases. When the microbiome is out of balance or unhealthy, it allows inflammatory molecules to leak into your blood stream and make you unwell. It affects everyone in a different way. But a healthy microbiome can help keep you healthy.
Three other elements to healthy living incude exercise, meditation, and community
Walking is exercise. If you are unable to walk, go to Youtube on your phone or computer and look for “chair exercise” or “beginner yoga”, I started with beginner weight lifting. I like to use the Hasfit program which can be found on Youtube or as an app. They are free, and produce videos from chair exercises to advanced weight training. They pay attention to alignment which is super important so as not to get hurt.
Meditation is an important part of a healthy life style. A good way to start is to get into a comfortable position, sitting or lying down, and go to yourube and look up “yoga nidra” which means yoga sleep. There are guided meditations lasting 5 minutes to a few hours. Even 5 minutes a day counts.
Community just means a group of friends or people. Church, volunteering, or just getting together with friends, it all counts.