Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I don't know much about inflammation. What I do know is that immune cells can run amok, mistaking your own tissue for invaders, damaging it and inflaming it. It's also called autoimmune reaction and it can be systemic, throughout your body. And it's miserable. Food, especially wheat and dairy, is a major cause of inflammation for some people. We focus on carbs around here, but it's funny proteins that cause problems from paranoia to arthritis: gluten, gliadin, whey and casein, for instance. The proteins can also come from your own body: serious injury can cause a release of the DNA from your mitochondria, tiny organelles in your cells, but with their own DNA separate from yours.( 1 ) Interleukin-6 is an inflammatory protein your body makes ; homocysteine (another protein) may cause inflammation when there's too much of it. How do we get these rogue proteins under control? Tess wrote a post on systemic enzymes , calling them THE BEST anti-inflammatory supplement...

Everyone loves a good mystery, but in real life, we all love a good solution even more. The book Why Isn't my Brain Working? by Datis Kharrazian is the latter. Even if your brain is working (and I think mine works pretty well), it's worth reading for the insights into the gut-brain connection, cross-reactivity of foods, and what you can do if you get glutened. In my younger days, I read self-help books and went to counseling to be happier. It didn't help much--all they talked about was attitude. Relying on attitude to solve a biological problem is like trying to smile your way out of an infection of H. pylori. I guess I was lucky that I didn't go in for drugs and didn't think doctors could help me. Good thing. I now know my problem was largely hypoglycemia. The management of [certain patients with poor blood sugar control] is so fundamentally basic and easy....[Yet] It is not uncommon for [them] to be put on psychotropic drugs, sleep medications, or labeled ...

My mom is back to normal, able to walk a little with a walker and doing a little cooking. Perhaps because her recent infection is gone and she isn't eating any more hospital food, her blood sugars have gotten low enough that she's decided to reduce her insulin dose. My TMJ pain has been acting up. But last weekend, a friend invited me to her restorative yoga class, and the next day, for the first time in weeks, I didn't need any aspirin. I'm planning to take her class on a regular basis. I had some anxiety that's now gone. I've always been good on the phone, and good on the Internet, but tended to get kind of freaky in person. I was the weird girl in The Breakfast Club. The anxiety defied all reason and most experience. And yet it just evaporated over the past couple weeks. Why? I quit all dairy except butter around two months ago and I'm finally finished healing from my bike wreck. Those are the only things I can think of that happened recently. There...

There's a lot of conflicting dietary advice around, but conventional wisdom contradicts itself on diet for a healthy heart v. diet for healthy teeth. The commonly recommended heart-healthy diet is low-fat, little meat, lots of whole grains, and fruits and vegetables. That doesn't quite square with "Foods and Drinks Best for Your Teeth" from that pillar of medical dogma, WebMD.com: The best food choices for the health of your mouth include cheeses, chicken or other meats, nuts, and milk. These foods are thought to protect tooth enamel by providing the calcium and phosphorus needed to remineralize teeth (a natural process by which minerals are redeposited in tooth enamel after being removed by acids). Other food choices include firm/crunchy fruits (for example, apples and pears) and vegetables. These foods have a high water content, which dilutes the effects of the sugars they contain, and stimulate the flow of saliva (which helps protect against deca...

As much as people complain about stress, they go out of their way to create it. They over-schedule, overspend, under-sleep, and under-nourish themselves. I'm still working on getting enough sleep, but I've found some ways to reduce other sources of stress. Poor diet will affect your mood. Contrary to what's written by a lot of self-help authors, your mood isn't just a matter of attitude. Your brain is mostly made of fat and cholesterol and requires various nutrients to run properly. It needs glucose, but the glucose needs to be in your bloodstream, not your stomach in the form of carbohydrates. (Your liver can make glucose out of protein.) Drs. Phinney and Volek describe how low-calorie, high-carb diets can affect the brain in The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. (The short answer: depending on how much you exercise, you can mentally and physically hit the wall.) If for example you decide to eat 1200 kcal per day, composed of 25% protein (75 grams), 25...

You've probably attended a family holiday dinner like this: the dinner is served a few hours late, the adults are slumped in front of the TV, and the kids run around the house screaming. What can account for these different behaviors? It could be what I've heard called sugar hangover, and when I say sugar, I mean carbohydrates in general. Consider a typical Thanksgiving Day: breakfast is some combination of cereal, juice, toast, jam, fruit, waffles, granola bars, pastries, yogurt, smoothies, and so on. It's all high carb food. Four hours later, everyone's blood sugar has crashed. For most adults, this means feeling tired and hungry. They won't snack because they don't want to ruin their appetite for dinner. For kids, though, some research has shown that they get a big adrenaline rush when their blood sugar crashes. Adrenaline is the fight-or-flight hormone--the one that sends them screaming around the house while their parents are too tired to send them outsi...

Have you seen or heard the ads for a nonprofit that aids veterans? "One in five returning vets has a traumatic brain injury." I pictured thousands of troops returning from duty, unable to perform everyday tasks--and the image didn't seem realistic. What does the statistic on the radio ad really mean? First, the image of severe brain damage doesn't apply to every case. According to the Mayo Clinic , Traumatic brain injury is usually the result of a sudden, violent blow to the head — which launches the brain on a collision course with the inside of the skull. This collision can bruise the brain, tear nerve fibers and cause bleeding. Traumatic brain injury may also be caused by objects such as bullets or even a shattered piece of the skull entering brain tissue. The severity of traumatic brain injury can vary greatly, depending on the part of the brain affected and the extent of the damage. A mild traumatic brain injury may cause temporary confusion and headache, but a s...