How to Reduce Inflammation

Inflammation is the root of many disease processes, but it is an important part of our healing mechanism. How we keep it within healthy limits is what we will examine here.

An antiinflammatory Lifestyle

 

Start With the Basics

• Moderate Exercise
• Clean water
• Clean air
• Organic, fresh food
• Sunshine
• Restful sleep
• Reflection/Prayer/Meditation

An Antiinflammatory Diet

Morning hydration is important to start the day off right since you become dehydrated at night. Consider a glass of water, waiting for you beside your bed. Most people start off with a cup of coffee which dehydrates them even more. A 16 oz glass of water first thing is a better choice for your first morning beverage.

A healthy diet has lots of dark green leafy vegetables as well as other colorful vegetables and fruits. Eating vibrantly colored food means you are eating a diet high in polyphenols. Polyphenols provide antioxidants to help decrease inflammation. Polyphenols have been shown to decrease a variety of inflammatory disease processes.  I would stress that fresh, raw food should also be eaten at every meal. So make sure you include salads and fresh uncooked fruit as often as possible. They provide nutrients you do not always get in a cooked meal.  Don't forget to include a healthy source of protein which means grass fed animals with room to roam, healthy seafood (getting harder to find) or a mix of complex carbohydrates and legumes.

The Gastrointestinal Chapter of my book "Herbal ABCs book" has a review of a general healthy diet that will help decrease inflammation. A low carbohydrate diet is often useful for "O" blood types and sometimes for other people who are having gastrointestinal inflammation. Carbohydrates in the diet should be complex carbohydrates. These can be healthy for many people, but simple sugars are generally inflammatory.

What we don't eat is as important as what we eat. Remove any food sensitivities, allergens and unhealthy foods from the diet. Elimination diets are a good method to find offending foods. Reducing your intake of fried fatty foods is also helpful.

Supplementing Key Nutrients

Additionally, supplementing basic nutrients may be necessary  to support the diet. Supplements to lower inflammation might include omega 3 fatty acids, B vitamins, vitamin D,  vitamin C, and magnesium. Additionally, supplements that support the bodies biotransformational (detox) system can be key in keeping inflammation under control. Glutathione is an important factor in making sure this detoxification system is well oiled. Supplements that either replace glutathione such as acetyl glutathione or those that help support healthy glutathione levels such as cysteine or alpha lipoic acid can also be beneficial. (More to come on glutathione.)

Healing the Gut

Heal the gut with gut healing herbs such as Calendula, Marshmallow, Turmeric and Chamomile. You can also see the digestive System chapter of "Herbal ABC's" for more ideas on herbs to heal the gut. 

Calendula officinalis

Matricaria chamomilla

Eradicate Infections

Bacteria can increase or decrease inflammation depending on who you feed in your large intestine. Think about increasing biodiversity of good gut bacteria. Support healthy gut bacteria with  water soluble fiber and use fermented foods or if you can't make or get fermented foods, add a variety of probiotics to the diet. The idea is to enhance biodiversity in the large intestine. (There are times when probiotics and prebiotics or certain types of probiotics can be contraindicated such as in d-lactic acidosis and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth - also called SIBO.)

Infections outside of the gastrointestinal tract also increase general body inflammation. This can be acute or chronic infections, and include examples such as herpes, cytomegalovirus, various parasites or smoldering dental bacterial disease. These have to be addressed to regain health.

Remove Environmental Toxins

Make sure your toxic load is low. Remove yourself from water-damaged environments that have toxins such as mycotoxins, bacterial inflammagens, volatile organic compounds or other hazards. These substances will use up all your antioxidants, stress out the biotransformational system and leave you inflamed. Examine your environment for possible sources of these and other toxins such as a water-damage in a building, off-gassing from flooring materials, off-gassing furniture , paints, propane or natural gas appliances, tainted water from natural or human additives, tainted food (from growing, processing, packaging or shipping), lead/mercury/aluminum (in paint, water pipes, mercury amalgams, cookware, jewelry, tableware, toys), food packaging/containers, dry cleaning, cleaning products, toxins brought into the home on your shoes (leave them at the door), flame-retardant products, etc. Please go to the Environmental Working Group for more ideas on where you will find toxins in your environment.

Enhance The Biotransformational (detox) System

Enhance biotransformational (detox) capacities to remove toxins from the body. This can be done by supporting the liver in general and by specifically supporting any biotransformational enzyme system that is not working up to par. Enhancing glutathione is one of the more important aspects of supporting the detoxification capacity of the body. Turmeric and Milk thistle both assist in healthy glutathione levels and removal of toxins.  Saunas are helpful for removing toxins if they are traditional saunas or infrared saunas with low electric and magnetic fields that do not use toxic glues and/or chemically treated wood to make the sauna.

Support the Parasympathetic System (The Rest and Digest part of the Nervous System)

Enhancing the parasympathetic nervous system helps decrease inflammation. It has been shown that stimulating the vagus nerve and enhancing acetylcholine cools down inflammatory cytokines and decreases inflammation in the body. One of the simplest ways to do this is to breathe deeply and slowly. Meditation, prayer, Qi gong, breathing exercises and anything that creates a joyful sense of peace and relaxation will enhance parasympathetic tone in the body.

Specific Antiinflammatory Herbs

I thought you might like to have some ideas of herbs to use as acute antiinflammatories for areas of the body where we most often have acute reactions. Most of the ideas I have given you are for long term use to lower over-all inflammation in the body.

Skin: For the skin, I think of oatmeal as a wonderful topical herb and almost everyone has it in their kitchen. Look for the directions on how to use it as an oatmeal bath in my book, Herbal ABC's.

Respiratory Tract: In the mouth, throat and nasal passages, I would have to say that warm salt water is my first go-to treatment to reduce inflammation and edema. This inexpensive and easy to use treatment is often neglected and I can't stress how useful it is. For acute inflammation from infection, irritation or allergies, I always use salt water first to decrease the inflammation, edema and pain. An herb that I like to use for acute respiratory situations is Yarrow. This astringing herb acts as a wonderful antiinflammatory, diaphoretic, and antimicrobial. It should not be used long term or I would use it for chronic cases also. Both the salt water and a tea of Yarrow can be either gargled, swished around the mouth or snorted up the nostrils. They will both decrease the redness swelling and pain associated with inflammation. Add some salt to the Yarrow tea and you can use both treatments at one time.

Digestive Tract: For acute inflammation I would suggest Peppermint, Chamomile, or Licorice. Peppermint and Chamomile also help remove gas and decrease the pain associated with gas. I will often use either Peppermint or Chamomile and add some licorice to the tea also. Make sure you read about the side effects associated with Licorice. Not everyone can use this wonderful herb.


Some general antiinflammatory herbs, supplements that I like to use in my own life as part of my food, as a tea or supplement is as follows: 

Green tea (great antioxidant and a nice change of pace rather than coffee), Licorice (especially helps people who have low blood pressure, thirsty, static shocks and pee a lot.) Turmeric (I add this to a lot of my food as it makes a great flavor in many foods, but not so great as a tea.), Milk thistle (An amazing herb that benefits almost everyone and supports mitochondria.) These are all some power-hitters when it comes to lowering inflammation. Licorice has side effects and should not be used by everyone. Read up on Licorice before using it.

These are just a few ideas. There are many antiinflammatory foods and herbs. I have 39 different herbs listed as antiinflammatories in "Herbal ABCs". Each has their own special properties and actions to give them their own unique abilities.    
 

A Word Of Wisdom

Living a non-inflammatory life can sometimes be difficult to maintain or even costly in our current world. However, the cost of not living this way also needs to be examined.  It is helpful to set up our schedules and prioritize our lives in a way that allows for us to rest, eat well, live well and support ourselves.  The other option is to find ourselves spiraling into one of the many inflammatory diseases.  Ultimately, health and a radiant mind can be had by keeping inflammation under control.    
 

Learn More About Herbs

I currently have a super-duper holiday sale on these wonderful books, as they make great gifts for friends and family with an interest in herbs and health. One book is 15% off and two or more are 25% off until December 15th, 2018 - Only at my website and only available in the U.S.A. 

For additional information on Biotransformation (detoxification) And Inflammation:

Broccoli and Biotransformational Detox

Inflammation as The Root of Much Evil

Causes of Inflammation

 

 

Milk Thistle : Herbal Protection from pollution, including radiation

I have told you for awhile that I would post a blog about milk thistle. Finally it is here. About 75% of the information below comes from the second edition of my book, Herbal Medicine From the Heart of the Earth. For those of you interested in radiation protection, there is indeed research showing milk thistle protects against radiation. I will post reviews of the radiation research at the end of this article. 

Students often ask me if there is one herb that I would recommend to everyone. In the past I would tell them, "No,  everyone is different and each person has different herbal needs." However I have changed my tune. We live in an ever increasing polluted world. Our bodies breathe in pollutants from the air, and ingest pollutants from the water and food we eat. Some people are around dangerous chemicals because of their job or they live in a considerably polluted environment. Our bodies are under increasing pressure to transform and remove these pollutants from our tissues. While we are all striving to change our planetary condition, we should additionally take precautions to assist our body in its attempt to detoxify hazardous chemicals.  

Milk thistle is an herb which supports the body’s ability to detoxify and remove pollutants. It does this by maintaining our natural protective processes via enzymatic activities going on in all the cells of the body, especially the liver. A group of active constituents in milk thistle, collectively called silymarin has been shown to assist the liver and other organs in detoxification by acting as an antioxidant. Milk thistle increases the synthesis of glutathione (an enzyme necessary for detoxification), protects the liver from damage and increases the rate of liver tissue regeneration when damage has already occurred. Silymarin is many times more potent in antioxidant activity than vitamin E and vitamin C.  Additionally it has also been shown to be beneficial at protecting the kidneys from damage. In diabetics the constituent group silymarin has been beneficial in lowering blood sugar as well as stabilizing blood sugar levels.

The cheapest form of milk thistle works great for me!
Although you can purchase expensive extracts of milk thistle, I have found that ingestion of powdered herb works great. However, do not buy milk thistle powder.  Once you powder the herb it becomes rancid quickly due to the high level of fatty acids in the seed. If you purchase the ground powder in a store, it is likely it was powdered long ago and sitting in the heat of the store for many months. Once ground it should go into the freezer to protect it from going rancid. You need to purchase whole seeds and grind them in a coffee grinder yourself to make sure it is fresh. Do not chew them as they are tough and may damage your teeth. Grind them up coarsely and keep only a few days supply on the kitchen counter at a time. Keep the rest of the ground milk thistle in the freezer in a container with a tight fitting lid. Take one teaspoon to one tablespoon each AM and PM as necessary. The smaller amount is taken  if using it preventatively and the larger amount if using it to treat a health condition or if  someone is working in a toxic environment. Take the spoonful and chase it down with a glass of water. Do not inhale while swallowing the powder.

Part used: Seed.

Common dosage: Decoction: 1-3 teaspoons of crushed seed per cup of water; or 1:2.5 dry strength tincture: 30-90 drops; or 1 teaspoon - 1 tablespoon dry powder chased with water 1-4 times per day. The standard dosage for silymarin is 70-210 mg three times/day.

Use: (a) Antioxidant, (b)Hepatoprotective, (c) Hepato-trophorestorative, (d) Gastroprotectant, (e) Hypoglycemic, (f) Kidney protective

It is used by holistic physicians and herbalists for most liver diseases, including hepatitis, fatty liver, cirrhosis, liver protection and/or regeneration immediately after exposure to liver toxins although it is best used as a protectant before exposure to liver toxins. If you have heard about using milk thistle for Amanita poisoning, please know that it has to be used as an injectable. If you have Amanita poisoning do not think that ingesting it will cure you. Amanita mushrooms destroy your liver in a matter of hours so you need the silymarin injected into your body to get it into you quickly to protect your liver. You don't have time to wait for digestion of the milk thistle seed. In the United States we do not  usually carry it in all the hospitals but some countries do and it is injected immediately. If you are taken to a hospital for Amanita poisoning and they do not have silymarin, you can ask them to contact a local naturopath to see if they carry the injectable silymarin. If so, it could be rushed to the hospital immediately.

Warning this part is for practitioners and will put others to sleep. The constituent silymarin shows antifibrotic effects in early and advanced biliary fibrosis secondary to complete bile duct obliteration in rats. In patients with diabetes and alcohol-induced cirrhosis, silymarin has been shown to lower lipoperoxidative damage, blood glucose levels, glycosylated hemoglobin values and exogenous insulin requirements. Silymarin is incorporated in cell membranes and increases the resistance of the membranes against injurious influences, probably by changing the physiochemical properties. It prevents the uptake of the mushroom toxins amanitin and phalloidin by competitive inhibition of receptors at the outer cell membrane and protects the liver against poisoning by organophosphate insecticides. It also stimulates RNA polymerase A, polymerase I, which enhances ribosome protein synthesis and activates the regenerative capacity of the liver cells. Silibinin has been used on lab rats to protect them from glomerular and tubular damage from cisplatin. Milk thistle prevents liver damage from butyrophenones, phenothiazines, acetaminophen, halothane, dilantin and ethanol due to membrane-stabilizing and free radical scavenging effects of silymarin.

Silymarin has been shown to prevent damage to the liver through several mechanisms: by acting as an antioxidant, by increasing the synthesis of glutathione and by increasing the rate of liver tissue regeneration. Silymarin is many times more potent in antioxidant activity than vitamin E and vitamin C. The protective effect of silymarin against liver damage has been demonstrated in numerous experimental studies. Silymarin has been shown to protect the liver from the damage produced by such liver-toxic chemicals as carbon tetrachloride, amanita toxin, galactosamine, and praseodymium nitrate.

One of the key mechanisms by which silymarin enhances detoxification is by preventing the depletion of glutathione. Silymarin not only prevents the depletion of glutathione induced by alcohol and other toxic chemicals, but has been shown to increase the level of glutathione of the liver by up to 35%, even in people with normal health. In human studies, silymarin has been shown to have positive effects in treating liver diseases of various kinds, including cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis, fatty infiltration of the liver, and inflammation of the bile duct.

Silybum also offers kidney protection. It has been shown to protects the kidney from both glomerular damage and tubular damage from cisplatin without compromising cisplatin.

In a group of  type II diabetes with alcohol-induced liver damage silymarin evidenced a significant reduction in fasting blood glucose levels (It took a month to start.) HbA1c also substantially decreased. Throughout the course of treatment, fasting insulin levels declined by almost one-half and daily insulin requirements decreased by about 24%. Liver enzymes (SGOT and SGPT) modulated, reflecting improved liver function. A lack of hypoglycemic episodes suggests silymarin not only lowers blood glucose levels, but also stabilizes them as well. 

Constituents: Milk thistle contains 1.5-3% silymarin, a complex of flavonolignans, that mostly consists of silybin (silibinin, silychristin and silydianin).

Contraindications: None that I know of at this time.

As always, see your health care practitioner if you have a serious condition that needs treatment.  This information is not meant to be used for diagnoses or treat serious health conditions. A health care practitioner should always be consulted if you are ill.

Research on Silymarin (the active constituent in milk thistle)

Radioprotective effect of silymarin against radiation induced hepatotoxicity 

Pharmacological Research
Volume 45, Issue 6, June 2002, Pages 447-454

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Laila A. Ramadan^{a, 1}, Hamed M. Roushdy^a, Gamal M. Abu Senna^b, Nour E. Amin^a and Ola A. El-Deshw^a

^a Department of Drug Radiation Research and Radiation Biology, National Centre For Radiation Research And Technology (NCRRT), Atomic Energy Authority, Cairo, Egypt
^b Department of Physiology, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University

Accepted 16 April 2002. ;

Available online 5 August 2002.

Abstract

The radioprotective effect of silymarin using different modes of treatment against radiation (3 or 6 Gy) induced hepatotoxicity 1, 3 and 7 days post-irradiation was studied. Whole-body gamma-irradiation revealed an increase in serum alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity as well as liver glutathione reductase (GR) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX) activities on the first post-exposure day with respect to the control value. However, 3 days after radiation exposure, these parameters showed a significant decrease below the control level which persisted till the end of the experimental time except for serum AP activity that showed another increase on the seventh post-exposure day at 3 Gy dose of radiation. A gradual increase in serum alanine and aspartate aminotransferase (ALT&AST) as well as gamma glutamyl transpeptidase activities were observed due to irradiation throughout the experimental time. Administration of silymarin as single (70 mg kg ⁻¹), fractionated (490 mg kg ⁻¹) oral doses or as intravenous (i.v.) injection (50 mg kg ⁻¹), caused significant protection. Intravenous treatment showed the most pronounced protection. The protective effect of silymarin was attributed to its antioxidant and free radicals scavenging properties. 

The effect of silymarin and gamma radiation on nucleic acids in rat organs.

J Pharm Pharmacol. 1993 Oct;45(10):910-2.
Hakov'a H, Misúrová E.

Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, P. J. Safárik University, Kosice, Slovakia.

Abstract

The influence of silymarin on radiation-induced changes in concentrations of RNA and DNA was followed in male Wistar rats. The liver, spleen and bone marrow were examined at 30 h, 7, 14 and 21 days after 6 Gy whole-body gamma irradiation or 30 h and 7 days after 3 Gy whole-body gamma irradiation. Following silymarin treatment, a mild increase in the concentration and total content of RNA and DNA in liver and bone marrow at days 7 and 14 after administration was found; in spleen, total content of DNA significantly increased at 30 h. Silymarin administered 1 h before irradiation, moderated radiation-induced changes in nucleic acids in its target organ, liver, and in spleen and bone marrow. We suggest that beneficial effects of silymarin on radiation injury to the membranes of liver cells resulted primarily from its antioxidative ability and its ability to act as a radical scavenger, thereby preventing membrane permeability changes.

Evaluation of silymarin as a promising radioprotector.

Z Naturforsch C. 2010 May-Jun;65(5-6):337-46.

 Adhikari M, Arora R, Chawla R, Sharma J, Dhaker AS, Gupta D, Dubey N, Kumar R, Ivanov V, Gadjeva V, Gevrenova R, Sharma RK.

Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences, Brig SK Mazumdar Marg, Delhi-110054, India.

Abstract

Silymarin, a purified extract of seeds of Silybum marianum L. and well known for its hepatoprotective abilities, has been evaluated for inherent utility as a radioprotective agent. A fraction (INM-7035) was authenticated by characterizing the percentage composition of silybin A and B (39.9% and 57.4%). Free radical scavenging activities of INM-7035 against superoxide radicals (>68%), hydroxyl radicals (>33.75%), DPPH (67.2%), and ABTS (32.4%) were also evaluated. The fraction chelated (>30%) ferrous ions, thereby able to restrict amplification. INM-7035 exhibited >50% peroxyl radical scavenging activity in the lipid phase along with dose-dependent (R2 = 0.990) reducing power in the aqueous phase. Radiation-induced free radical flux can lead to disruption of biomolecules like membrane lipids. INM-7035 completely inhibited lipid peroxidative stress in case of membranes against supralethal radiation stress in the liposomal system. The ability of INM-7035 to modulate the levels of NF-kappaB, indicated its inherent potential as a radioprotective bioactive constituent.

Protective effects of silybin and analogues against X-ray radiation-induced damage.

Acta Biochim Biophys Sin (Shanghai). 2010 Jul;42(7):489-95. Epub 2010 Jun 9.

 Fu H, Lin M, Katsumura Y, Yokoya A, Hata K, Muroya Y, Fujii K, Shikazono N.

Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. fuhaiying@sinap.ac.cn

Abstract

Silybin (SLB) and similar analogues, namely, hesperetin (HESP), naringenin (NAN) and naringin (NAR), are believed to be active constituents of natural flavonoids that have been reported as chemopreventive agents for certain cancers. Moreover, SLB and analogues have been determined to fast repair DNA bases from oxidative damage by pulse radiolysis techniques. The present study was designed to evaluate the protective effects of SLB and analogues on soft X-ray-induced damage to plasmid DNA in vitro. The DNA damage was determined by agarose gel electrophoresis. SLB and analogues were found to protect DNA from radiation damage at micromolar concentrations. Among the compounds tested, HESP and SLB were the most effective in preventing X-ray-induced formation of DNA single-strand breaks (SSB). A comparison of these results with other experiments showed that the ability of SLB and analogues to inhibit DNA damage in vitro correlated with the ability of the compounds to scavenge free radicals. Our work revealed that natural flavonoids, SLB and analogues may be used as potent radioprotectors against radiation damage.