The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan

The biggest reason to own this book is the extensive list of inflammation factors for what looks like thousands of foods. There aren't too many surprises, we all have a good idea which foods are good/bad. But the NUMBERS. One itty bitty red chili pepper can negate the inflammatory effects of two chocolate bars?I have been systematically adding anti-inflammatory supplements and food to the diet. I've been on this diet for six months now and the turn around in my health has been remarkable. If you have any medical condition, you need to get rid of the inflammation because it stops healing. Once you stop the inflammation, the speed of recovery astonishes all my doctors.Observations:Each supplement or food may have very specific effects.There is not articulated very clearly in the book. But this information is found in the literature devoted to that supplement. For example, turmeric is famous as a pain killer. It also helps balance blood glucose. I'll vouch for the stuff.The anti-inflammatory compound isn't always fragile. For example, fresh garlic is powerful but so is powdered garlic.Usually, nutritional benefits take a while ( a few days to a year) before there is noticeable effect. But there are exceptions. Turmeric has been documented to improve blood glucose levels after only one hour. (I agree, this one is fast acting).The list is very long but it's doesn't even come close to covering all the foods with medicinal value.What's the biggest value from reading this book? You know how much to add to your diet so it will have impact. After reading the section on the chili peppers, I started eating 3-4 per meal, more than enough to counteract the negative effect of everything else in my diet for the day. About 2-3 days afterwards I lost my craving for junk food; including chocolate. Was it the chili peppers? I dunno. I'm eating a lot of anti-inflammatory foods now. Information like this would be a fabulous addition to the book.Since I have 5 medical conditions that cause inflammation, I do excessive things like put a whole head of garlic plus lots of red peppers and ginger when I cook. Since that time, I have:Reduced arthritis pain using turmeric supplements.Improved my HDL to LDL ratio using fish oil (yup, fish oil is anti-inflammatory - a powerful one)Lost my cravings for junk food. I don't know what caused this but I've stopped eating compulsively. Chocolate is not longer a compulsion, it's an indulgence.I get hungry - one of my medications was killing my appetite but I became hungry again after I started this diet. I switched from eating junk to healthy.I look much healthier - rosy cheeks. I used to look gaunt and prematurely aged due to recent illness.My skin looks hydrated (I do drink a lot of water) and plumper. I looked around for some deep wrinkles and they are gone. I am not wrinkle-free but I don't look prematurely aged. I cornered a friend and she fessed up. I look younger. It's as if the anti-inflammatories had switched on my own natural collagen production.Update: May 5, 2017It turns out vitamin C is required for collagen production and I supplemented with 4 gms per day. Then I started taking some collagen supplements (trying to fix thinning discs in my back) and bumped up my vitamin C to 6 gms per day for other reasons. My back started healing at an unseemly rate and the skin on the back of my hands started unwrinkling too. I've tried stuff like this before and never had any results to speak of. What's different? I never did all this at the same time, the anti-inflammatories to promote healing, supplementing with collagen and I've never taken vitamin C at 6 gms properly (you have take one gram at a time, it's all that your body can assimilate).It's true! The anti-inflammatory diet can erase *premature* wrinkles! Two other medical sources confirms this. But other (more crucial I guess) systems tend to show progress before the skin. I'm guessing you won't see it happen until you're ready for hard core Szchewan hot. But this is a good way to test if you are taking enough anti-inflammatories. Erasing wrinkles is "hard", once they start to disappear, you've put enough in your food and don't need to increase the amounts anymore. Just keep going. Or you can get the blood test for C reactive protein. Watching your wrinkles disappear is way more fun!These are the things I notice. I'm wondering if this diet is behind the improvements in my brain: better recall, better concentration, more connected thinking. My sleep has improved but that might be the medications. But all this might be recovery from my illness.Update Sept. 11, 2017I discovered that inflammation does affect memory the hard way. I had a flare up with one condition and my ADHD went nuts. I've actually pinpointed how this condition triggers inflammation but wasn't prepared for the super high levels. So I dealt with the inflammation by encapsulating my powdered garlic and ginger and just popping 1.5 gms of each daily in addition to what's in my food. My memory hasn't recovered yet but I've noticed my arthritis pain went away in two days flat. I also have clicking noises in my back from thinning disks and they are gone as well. Not sure what's going on there but I will take it.End update.My allergies seem improved - less sneezing, less eczema.My energy level is higher. It's not an amazing change but it's definitely there. I'll take it.Of course, I do other things that probably help. For example, I take special vitamin supplements formulated for people with mental conditions like ADHD (you don't want to take these unless you have one of the target conditions - it's over $100 per month).My doctors have remarked "Your results with anti-inflammatories and supplements is simply remarkable". They don't see astonishing improvements in other patients who have tried similar approaches. I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but all the improvements fell into place when I started the anti inflammatory diet.I've done many things to improve my health but this one is so easy. I just add a lot more of my favorite spices then I add some others which are almost undetectable. My cooking hasn't changed very much.

I was disappointed to see that this is copyright 2006. I had the book recommended to me and bought it without checking out whether this was recent information. While much of it is still current, there is a question about coconut oil, for instance. Whether it is good or bad for you. I've been told it helps inflammation. It also does not even mention salt once. Salt is a huge inflammatory! It is a main cause for inflammation! For the most part, I did not find anything new in this book except the fact that poultry is a bigger inflammatory factor than beef! It also doesn't define all parts of the chicken. Thighs are more inflammatory than other parts. But it doesn't matter whether it has the skin on or not. It doesn't tell you that. All it lists is chicken with the skin, not chicken with skin. Still I give it 3 stars because it has information most places don't have. It needs updating.

If you are not familiar with this book and her "The Inflammation Factor" I strongly recommend getting one or both, as things have changed in the 20th and 21st century . We don't eat the way we used to, not enough fiber, vegetables, and too much prepared and junk foods. It is literally killing us way before our time. Certain foods create reactions in our bodies, resulting in inflamed digestive tracts, excess fluid in the the sinuses , throat, and lungs, and can result in long term distress to the body,serious illness, and even cancer. Oh no, another scare book? No. It is common knowledge that repeated insults to the body can result in cancerous reactions. (Smoking, anyone?) These books give you an idea of what to eat, and just as importantly , balancing your diet. It is not a rigid plan. It is guideline for food's potential good or harm in the bodies. It is up to you to work out he balance, for no one can eat perfectly at every meal. Think of it this way: pizza today, ok. Pizza everyday, no way. This is especially important for adults, as most kids seem to be a bit more bulletproof. However, bad habits can lead to a lifetime of bad eating, with bad results. Educate yourself.

This book contains a lot of great, healthy information if you read it. If you just skim the first few chapters and go to the tables and recipes, you will miss out on some valuable information. It is a quick read, so please take the time to read chapters one and two so you understand how the ratings were derived, and get a basic overview of how foods cause inflammation in your body.Some new foods that I have added to my diet recently also increase my daily IF: beet greens, cod liver oil pills (incredibly high IF), Brazil nuts (great source of selenium), and I am cooking with a lot more spices now. Almost all spices have a high IF which makes it easy to increase my daily IF value.For now I am using cod liver oil pills each night to increase my daily IF as I get used to modifying my diet. Changing a few oils here and there, using a variety of beans in my cooking, and adding more onions and garlic to foods is a good start.Note: Some people are going to find that they feel worse following this (or any) diet modification. If that is the case, you have most likely added a food to your diet that you are sensitive (or allergic) to. Add new foods slowly so you will know what could be the cause, and then remove that food from your diet and see how you feel. Everyone is different, and just because you eat a food regularly doesn't mean that you are not sensitive to it.

I wouldn't recommend it at this point -- a lot of the information is outdated. And a large percentage of the book is meal plans and recipes. The rest of the content could practically have been published as a pamphlet instead.

This book has enabled me to considerably reduce the pain in my joints. I found the index of foods disappointing because while it had over 4 pages of pork variations, it lacked many key ingredients of my near vegan diet, for example tofu. I have been using the book daily to assess how inflammatory my choices of foods are and am amazed at the difference a few small changes can make - for example just adding some ginger or chilli to my diet is greatly reducing the overall inflammatory score. I was surprised to find out how inflammatory some ingredients could be: the book has an example of a day's menu which appeared very healthy, but in fact was highly inflammatory. The author then showed how a few adjustments in food choices could turn the overall inflammatory impact around. I think what Miss Reinagel has done is amazing - regular doctors give none of the advice contained in this book, palming you off with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs which eat through your stomach lining. Here at last is real help for allergy, arthritis, and other inflammatory disease sufferers. After over 10 years of searching for help from the medical profession and other books, I think that this one really has provided the answer.

Very good advice but geared for American market. Designed to have an overall anti-inflammatory diet however it balances complete rubbish with anti-inflammatory food so while balance is in the plus zone it's still a pretty vile diet if you choose to eat all the puddings, gm meat, refined carbs and sugary junk! I suppose it encourages some good eating which is perhaps the best some people can do.I found the information part very interesting and some things were completely new to me. I use the principles to have a good diet rather than log every item and work out if it's overall in the plus. I don't eat sugar and haven't for years - nor refined carbs so I have a pretty good diet already. Using fat which is more omega 3 rather than the many veg oils which are too high in omega 6 - useful to know and guard against. So much convenience food is full of omega rich oils so you are on a hiding to hell to try and balance that!

Whilst I can understand the concept, this book is so American that it is difficult to use it effectively. The list of foods is not to English requirements and therefore not very helpful. The website the book recommends in order to keep up to date with the data has taken this data off line as apparently much of the info is incorrect. A useful read but disappointing with regard to the data.

This book overturns all we thought we knew about eating healthily! It was recommended to me and I am re-thinking my diet as a result. It is a well written, science-based book with several recipes. Foods are rated according to their inflammatory values and some of these are surprising. I would definitely recommend this book as a guide to good health.

This was recommended to me by a herbalist. I have ME/CFS and am desperate so I foolishly bought it. It's faddy, fussy, would take a lot of planning and more energy than I have. It's not really suitable for anyone outside the USA as it refers to a lot of foodstuffs not readily available in the UK and uses American measurements which I can't be bothered to work out. I am vegetarian and there is very little in the menu plans for me. I was also surprised when I searched for alcohol and caffeine in the index and neither was listed as I know both make my symptoms worse.