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Inflammation is a hot topic in medicine these days. More and more research is confirming a connection between chronic inflammation and many chronic conditions like heart disease, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and even some cancers.
Chronic inflammation affects the whole body. It can be the result of poor diet, exposure to environmental toxins, and chronic stress and can also follow certain viral infections. The good news is that while chronic inflammation can’t necessarily be cured, it may be managed with changes in one’s diet and lifestyle.
That’s where Bozeman Health’s Lifestyle Medicine team, led by Dr. Joseph Sofianek, comes in. Sofianek’s team of six board-certified practitioners are well-equipped to help guide their patients toward making real and sustainable changes to their lifestyles to help address the issue.
“All inflammation isn’t bad,”says Sofianek. “When we talk about acute inflammation, we are talking about inflammation after, for example, an illness or injury. It is the body’s active response to begin healing damaged tissue or fight infection.” Acute inflammation is generally short-lived and often evidenced by redness or swelling, heat, or pain in the affected area.
“Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, is the primary inflammatory response we are dealing with in Lifestyle Medicine,” Sofianek says. It is long-term, systemic, and presents as slow-onset and can last for months or even years if left untreated.
It can show up as fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, GI symptoms, rashes, and mood symptoms. “And we are seeing more and more of it in our practice at Bozeman Health,” Sofianek says.
One of the ways Sofianek helps patients understand where the inflammation comes from is by explaining the connection between inflammation and the gut microbiome. The standard American diet, filled with ultra-processed foods, preservatives, emulsifiers, nitrates, sugar, salt, and fat, can be highly inflammatory because so many of the chemicals in those foods destroy the good bacteria in our guts.
“About 70 percent of the calories our young people are eating come from processed foods,” Sofianek says. “At the same time, colorectal cancer is appearing in younger and younger people. The recommended age for colorectal cancer testing used to be 50. It is now 45.” The connection is becoming clear; diet is playing a role in chronic inflammation.
There is a mucinous lining in the intestines that is produced and supported by actions of a healthy gut microbiome. This mucinous layer acts as a barrier that only lets through nutrients the body needs. But when that mucinous lining is depleted, toxins seep into the bloodstream and could be the instigator of inflammation.
Sofianek says we can make our gut microbiome healthier by eating a diet that supports prebiotics, probiotics, and post-biotics—and not just by ingesting pills, which are not scientifically proven to work. Prebiotics are added to the gut through the fiber we eat, probiotic (fermented) foods can enhance good bacteria populations, and postbiotics are the products of what the good bacteria do in the body—stabilizing the mucinous lining of the gut and offering many other wonderful health benefits.
So, what feeds the good bacteria? Fiber. And fiber only comes from plants.
Sofianek likes to say, “Fiber is the new F word.” He bemoans the fact that only one out of 20 people get enough fiber in their diet. “Roughly, the minimum fiber for an adult woman is 25 grams and for a male is 35 grams per day, from a variety of sources, aiming for 30 different plant foods each week.”
“We know that when you help people lean into a more anti-inflammatory diet their symptoms improve,” Sofianek says. “Can you make autoimmune diseases go away once the immune system is activated and making antibodies against part of your body? Probably not. But you can help people into remission with things like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis by helping them increase the amount of fiber in their diets and reducing the amount of processed foods. When you pair changes in lifestyle with a plant-based flexitarian diet, the remission rates skyrocket.”
SIX PILLARS OF LIFESTYLE MEDICINE
- Nutrition
- Activity
- Sleep Health
- Stress Reduction
- Healthy Social Connections
- Avoidance of Risky Substances
For more information about Bozeman Health’s Lifestyle Medicine program, visit bozemanhealth.org/services/lifestyle-medicine.
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