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John Arts |
I speak daily to people affected by inflammation. This commonly affects joints, but can also affect most types of body tissue. While we can feel the discomfort of joint inflammation, we cannot feel inflammation of blood vessels until disease symptoms appear.
Our immune system responds to injury and sickness by generating inflammation. This is an essential part of our in-built repair and recovery systems.
While we cannot heal without inflammation, unwanted inflammation can not only slow healing, but also create new problems. The long list of problems with the suffix ‘itis' are all inflammatory diseases.
One of the reasons we are told to eat lots of deep coloured plants is that the anti-inflammatory antioxidants are locked into their bright colours. It is the yellow in turmeric that contains curcumin. It is the purple colour on grape seeds that contain potent OPCs.
While osteoarthritis is the most common joint problem, others such as tendonitis, bursitis and rheumatoid arthritis affect many people. The centre of any nutritional medicine programme is an anti-inflammatory diet.
Adding well formulated supplements with high grade ingredients can add healing compounds at levels much higher than through diet alone. Two of the most potent are curcumin from turmeric and OPCs (oligomeric proanthocyanidins) from grape seeds.
For example, adding 1000mg of 95 per cent curcumin has the curcumin in several tablespoons of turmeric. You would need to eat tablespoons of red wine grape seeds to get 100mg of pure OPC.
I speak to clients regularly that are more mobile and more comfortable by adding potent, natural anti-inflammatory compounds. One with rheumatoid arthritis is much more comfortable by adding 1000mg of curcumin and 200mg of OPC daily. For more information, give me a call or email: john@abundant.co.nz
You can read back issues at: www.abundant.co.nz
John Arts is a qualified nutritional medicine practitioner and founder of Abundant Health. Contact John on: 0800 423 559. To read more go to: www.sunlive.co.nz