Inflammatory Stress And Human Health
Hey Human,
Ryan here. You are reading this blog post because I think you are ready, on some level, to start thinking about making healthier changes into your daily life by aligning more closely with natural law. The more we live in accordance with natural law, the better our well being tends to be. The more we live irrespectively to natural law, the steeper the price we pay with our health. Functional Patterns is all about nourishing yourself in the most functional way possible. This is just one reason why you see the amazing results from FP practitioners from around the world.
The information contained here is merely suggestions for you to start thinking about implementing into your daily habits. The incentive is to optimize results for improving your biomechanics and overall health. The better we can move within our gait cycle, the healthier and more resilient we become all across the board.
Whether you struggle with obtaining greater results with your own fitness or if you are trying to recover from poor health, nagging pain or a frustrating injury, the following protocols may help immensely with decreasing stress and inflammation within the body.
Ryan here. You are reading this blog post because I think you are ready, on some level, to start thinking about making healthier changes into your daily life by aligning more closely with natural law. The more we live in accordance with natural law, the better our well being tends to be. The more we live irrespectively to natural law, the steeper the price we pay with our health. Functional Patterns is all about nourishing yourself in the most functional way possible. This is just one reason why you see the amazing results from FP practitioners from around the world.
The information contained here is merely suggestions for you to start thinking about implementing into your daily habits. The incentive is to optimize results for improving your biomechanics and overall health. The better we can move within our gait cycle, the healthier and more resilient we become all across the board.
Whether you struggle with obtaining greater results with your own fitness or if you are trying to recover from poor health, nagging pain or a frustrating injury, the following protocols may help immensely with decreasing stress and inflammation within the body.
Why does stress and inflammation matter so much ?
Stress literally dictates how much our bodies and minds can create healthy or unhealthy changes. The terms inflammation and stress can be used interchangeably, both of which greatly restrict our body’s functioning all across the board.
Higher stress and inflammation levels increase the likelihood for the following outcomes: excess weight, inability to lose weight, pain, sickness, compromised immune system, mental struggles, mental fog, emotional instability, anxiety, headaches, digestion problems, diseases, lack of self confidence, low energy, hormone imbalances, dehydrated tissues, cancer and the list of ailments goes on. To sum it up, just about anything that can go wrong with your health has to do with inflammation and a poor stress response impeding the body’s ability to function properly down to the cellular level of biology.
Stress literally dictates how much our bodies and minds can create healthy or unhealthy changes. The terms inflammation and stress can be used interchangeably, both of which greatly restrict our body’s functioning all across the board.
Higher stress and inflammation levels increase the likelihood for the following outcomes: excess weight, inability to lose weight, pain, sickness, compromised immune system, mental struggles, mental fog, emotional instability, anxiety, headaches, digestion problems, diseases, lack of self confidence, low energy, hormone imbalances, dehydrated tissues, cancer and the list of ailments goes on. To sum it up, just about anything that can go wrong with your health has to do with inflammation and a poor stress response impeding the body’s ability to function properly down to the cellular level of biology.
The greater we can minimize and resolve inflammation at the root causes, the higher likelihood we will succeed in changing our biomechanics, functioning pain free and looking better aesthetically, which includes weight loss. Changing gait cycle mechanics effectively is one of the hardest things we can do as it relates to becoming healthier, but also one of the most rewarding endeavors we can commit ourselves to.
This list looks at multiple factors that can either increase inflammation or reduce inflammation.
The factors we will look at here are nutrition, fasting, sleep, light and EMF exposure, exercise, word usage and grounding.
How to utilize this information effectively
These suggestions can be daunting and challenging! Most of you will not change at all and that is your choice. Change is uncomfortable. This list will challenge your perception and your attachments to specific coping mechanisms, specifically how you respond to your daily stressors.
If you can change how you respond to stress in a healthier way, what do you think your life would be like?
How will the people around you respond?
Is this change worth the investment to you?
Reality is, you aren't going to be perfect or follow this list to the minut detail overnight.
The goal here is to start thinking about making changes where you are comfortable and do your own research to understand the pros and cons of each situation.
Always consult your medical professionals before making drastic changes to your health.
This information is not medical advice.
If you are thoroughly attached to a behavior that is not recommended to partake in on this list, try slowly weaning yourself off over time. Or focus on another subject area until you're ready. Be patient with yourself, this is a process and you have the rest of your life to figure this out.
It all comes down to a specific question to ask yourself,
“How functional do I want to become and what am I willing to sacrifice in order to become the healthier version of myself for the rest of my life?”
Exercise
Intentional movements & stimuli that help to reverse dysfunctional imbalances in the human body and lessen the nervous system’s negative stress responses to daily demands. IE: Movements that aim to improve the human evolutionary blueprint: standing, walking, running and throwing.
Prioritize Healthy Sleeping Patterns
Light Exposure
Grounding
Nutrition
Sugar
Sugar is unfairly demonized and gets a bad rap for causing poor health. Did you know that sugar is used by the brain as a primary source of fuel? Almost all the foods we eat eventually breaks down into glucose, so that the brain and body can use it for fuel. Since sugar is already a form of glucose, the fuel is burned at a faster rate than other more complex food molecules such as fats and proteins.
Sugar alone is used efficiently by our body as fuel (barring in mind that you do not have a personal food sensitivity). Since sugar is considered a fuel to power our engine, we will compare sugar to that of gasoline powering a gas powered car’s engine. A gas powered car works well when fueled properly. The same properties of gasoline (sugar) can be used to fuel a different kind of chemical reaction as well. Gasoline (sugar) when combined with a tiny spark or a small candle flame (inflammatory foods), within the car's gas tank (your body), can cause a violent and unpredictable explosion (your body undergoing the inflammation process).
Essentially, sugar will fuel the environment that it gets put into, similar to that of gasoline. If the body consumes an inflammatory food, the sugar will amplify the inflammatory process many times greater.
So the key here is, avoid the inflammatory foods and eat sugars by itself, or paired with foods that will not cause inflammation within the body.
** Brushing and flossing teeth after each meal is highly recommended, especially when consuming sugar.
Grains
All grains are dry and when grains are consumed, the dry grains will suck the water right out of your bodily tissues. Yup, that's right. Grains dehydrate your body and stress out your neuromyofascial system. Dehydrated fascia is what leads to many issues such as poor posture, biomechanical imbalances, inflammation, stress, pain, neurological diseases, unexplained health issues and so on.
If your fascia is dehydrated and calcified, the tissues will not re-hydrate just by drinking water alone. You must learn to do self mfr and learn how to move effectively in order to hydrate your tissues properly and keep them hydrated long term. This is the main reason why we advise against grains and other inflammatory foods/behaviors, all across the board.
The more stressed and dehydrated your body is, the more difficult it is to activate your muscles to create the necessary biomechanical changes to improve your movements. Take the following situation as an example:
If you eat grains that cause inflammation within your abdominal wall, your ability to engage your deepest core muscles decreases significantly. If you cannot engage your core properly, the lack of structural integrity will transfer to your joints. The spine, hips and knees will have to unfairly take on the workload that your core muscles should be harboring. This cause and effect chain reaction, unfortunately puts your joints at risk for degenerative trauma, leading to dysfunctional movement patterns and pain.
Fasting And Intermittent Fasting
Word Usage and Meaning aka Semantics Effect On Psychology and Stress Response
Other Environmental Factors
LIVE INTENTIONALLY, NOT HABITUALLY
*** MEDICAL DISCLAIMER :
All information in this website is intended for informational purposes only. The authors are not responsible for any harm or injury that may result. Significant injury risk is possible if you do not follow due diligence and seek suitable medical professional advice about your injury. No guarantees of specific results are expressly made or implied on this website. Functional Fitness Ohio and affiliates thereof, are not part of any established "standards of care" or "scope of practice" in any licensed health care profession, including the practice of medicine. These collective pages are not representative of a binding contract between the reader and the aforementioned parties; that contract is solely between the reader and themselves. If the reader feels they need professional therapy, it is their sole duty to fulfill that need.
This list looks at multiple factors that can either increase inflammation or reduce inflammation.
The factors we will look at here are nutrition, fasting, sleep, light and EMF exposure, exercise, word usage and grounding.
How to utilize this information effectively
These suggestions can be daunting and challenging! Most of you will not change at all and that is your choice. Change is uncomfortable. This list will challenge your perception and your attachments to specific coping mechanisms, specifically how you respond to your daily stressors.
If you can change how you respond to stress in a healthier way, what do you think your life would be like?
How will the people around you respond?
Is this change worth the investment to you?
Reality is, you aren't going to be perfect or follow this list to the minut detail overnight.
The goal here is to start thinking about making changes where you are comfortable and do your own research to understand the pros and cons of each situation.
Always consult your medical professionals before making drastic changes to your health.
This information is not medical advice.
If you are thoroughly attached to a behavior that is not recommended to partake in on this list, try slowly weaning yourself off over time. Or focus on another subject area until you're ready. Be patient with yourself, this is a process and you have the rest of your life to figure this out.
It all comes down to a specific question to ask yourself,
“How functional do I want to become and what am I willing to sacrifice in order to become the healthier version of myself for the rest of my life?”
Exercise
Intentional movements & stimuli that help to reverse dysfunctional imbalances in the human body and lessen the nervous system’s negative stress responses to daily demands. IE: Movements that aim to improve the human evolutionary blueprint: standing, walking, running and throwing.
- Functional Patterns 10 Week Online Course
- Self myofascial release
- Functional Patterns exercises
- Training with a certified Functional Patterns Human Biomechanics Specialist
- Walking intentionally
- Understanding your biomechanical dysfunctions
- Being barefoot as much as possible and avoid wearing shoes
- Personal health limitations such as constant foot pain and diabetes should be carefully considered prior to being barefoot more often
Prioritize Healthy Sleeping Patterns
- Optimize circadian rhythms:
- Wake up within a few hours of sunrise and go to bed within few hours after sunset
- Avoid artificial blue light exposure within few hours of bed time
- Turn Wifi off at night
- Sleep with mouth closed (use scotch tape on lips if needed)
- Nasal breathing is ideal at night when sleeping and during the day as much as possible
- Avoid mouth breathing
- Research: James Nestor and the effects of mouth breathing
- Expose your face to morning sun for 20 minutes
- Watch candle flame for 20 minutes at night
- The light spectrums here help to regulate sleeping hormones naturally
Light Exposure
- Research the work of neurosurgeon, DR. Jake Kruse, for better understanding
- Limit & avoid artificial blue light:
- computer screen, phone, television, ceiling lights and lamps, LED lights, laptops, I-pads, ect
- Avoid blue light all together a few hours before bed time
- Wear blue light blocking glasses when exposed to blue light for extended periods of time
- Wear blue light blocking glasses 1 hour before bedtime
- Absorb infrared light and Vitamin D from the sun while grounding at same time
- Avoid sunscreen and avoid sunglasses
- Use shade and clothing as protection
- Invest in red light therapy and infrared technology to help simulate the sunlight spectrum and regenerate cells during times of the year where sunlight is minimal. IE: winter time in Northeast Ohio
Grounding
- Watch “The Earthing Movie” on YouTube
- You want direct skin contact with the natural earth, aim for at least 30 minutes a day
- Be outside and in nature everyday for at least 1 hour, get outside during winter too
- Think about investing in a grounding mat to sleep on
Nutrition
- Research the work of Ray Peat on his website
- Avoid Inflammatory Foods And Non-Food Products:
- All grains: flour, breads, wheat, corn, oats, rice, etc.
- Processed “food” products, chemical additives and fluoridated water
- Nuts, seeds, seed oils, vegetable oils, legumes
- Polyunsaturated fatty acids aka PUFAs
- Alcohol, nicotine, coffee, caffeine, smoking, drugs
- Consume More:
- Natural spring / mineralized water (at least half gallon per day)
- High quality mineral salts and trace minerals with magnesium
- Organic grass fed beef
- Humanely raised meats and animal organs from your local butcher or farm
- Fatty fish such as wild caught salmon
- Free range eggs
- Organic fruits and vegetables
- Organic unpasteurized, non homogenized dairy as tolerable
- Organic virgin coconut oil, unpasteurized butter, lard, ghee, tallow
- Organic candy, quality ice cream (sugar ok when by itself, no PUFAs or grains)
- Organic herbal teas, herbs, spices, raw local honey
- Food For Thought
- Everyone responds to food differently. You will have to test certain foods out for yourself and eat more intuitively based on how your body feels and responds.
- Consider investing in a food sensitivity test for personal nutrition needs.
- What does my body need to consume at this moment?
- How will my body feel if I eat this or that right now?
- How will my body feel 20 minutes after I eat this?
- How efficiently can I now engage my deepest core muscles after I have eaten this meal?
- What non-inflammatory foods can I eat right now and enjoy eating at the same time?
- Out of the gate, do not give up 100% all of your favorite foods right away
- Be mindful of what foods cause inflammation and what foods do not when you are eating them
- Slowly make changes overtime
- Create non-inflammatory versions of your favorite foods
- IE : making a homemade cauliflower crust pizza instead of eating a processed grain based crust pizza
- Start organizing your life to prioritize meal prepping and being successful in eating non-inflammatory foods
- No plans to succeed in the future often lead to a poor outcome
- Prioritize your life around implementing functional behaviors on a daily basis
Sugar
Sugar is unfairly demonized and gets a bad rap for causing poor health. Did you know that sugar is used by the brain as a primary source of fuel? Almost all the foods we eat eventually breaks down into glucose, so that the brain and body can use it for fuel. Since sugar is already a form of glucose, the fuel is burned at a faster rate than other more complex food molecules such as fats and proteins.
Sugar alone is used efficiently by our body as fuel (barring in mind that you do not have a personal food sensitivity). Since sugar is considered a fuel to power our engine, we will compare sugar to that of gasoline powering a gas powered car’s engine. A gas powered car works well when fueled properly. The same properties of gasoline (sugar) can be used to fuel a different kind of chemical reaction as well. Gasoline (sugar) when combined with a tiny spark or a small candle flame (inflammatory foods), within the car's gas tank (your body), can cause a violent and unpredictable explosion (your body undergoing the inflammation process).
Essentially, sugar will fuel the environment that it gets put into, similar to that of gasoline. If the body consumes an inflammatory food, the sugar will amplify the inflammatory process many times greater.
So the key here is, avoid the inflammatory foods and eat sugars by itself, or paired with foods that will not cause inflammation within the body.
** Brushing and flossing teeth after each meal is highly recommended, especially when consuming sugar.
Grains
All grains are dry and when grains are consumed, the dry grains will suck the water right out of your bodily tissues. Yup, that's right. Grains dehydrate your body and stress out your neuromyofascial system. Dehydrated fascia is what leads to many issues such as poor posture, biomechanical imbalances, inflammation, stress, pain, neurological diseases, unexplained health issues and so on.
If your fascia is dehydrated and calcified, the tissues will not re-hydrate just by drinking water alone. You must learn to do self mfr and learn how to move effectively in order to hydrate your tissues properly and keep them hydrated long term. This is the main reason why we advise against grains and other inflammatory foods/behaviors, all across the board.
The more stressed and dehydrated your body is, the more difficult it is to activate your muscles to create the necessary biomechanical changes to improve your movements. Take the following situation as an example:
If you eat grains that cause inflammation within your abdominal wall, your ability to engage your deepest core muscles decreases significantly. If you cannot engage your core properly, the lack of structural integrity will transfer to your joints. The spine, hips and knees will have to unfairly take on the workload that your core muscles should be harboring. This cause and effect chain reaction, unfortunately puts your joints at risk for degenerative trauma, leading to dysfunctional movement patterns and pain.
Fasting And Intermittent Fasting
- Avoid food after 6pm as tolerable
- Eat your biggest meals during mornings and afternoons
- Implement fasting protocols to build up tolerance to 24-36 hours of fasting as needed
- Be sure to have adequate amounts of quality water, salt and trace mineral intake
- High quality, no calorie vitamins and caffeine-free herbal teas ok
- When detoxing during a fast, limit work load responsibility, sit and do nothing outdoors
- How efficiently can I now engage my deepest core muscles now that I am currently on a fast ?
- Have a plan for the healthy meal you will eat once you break your fast
- Avoid binge eating, especially after a fast
Word Usage and Meaning aka Semantics Effect On Psychology and Stress Response
- Read the book “The Tyranny Of Words” by Stuart Chase
- Start thinking more mechanistically about solving problems and improving movement
- Avoid using abstract words
Other Environmental Factors
- Limit stressful or inflammatory activities and behaviors unnecessary for your life to function properly
- Start sitting still outside and doing nothing
- Eye gaze focused on peripherals to induce parasympathetic response, best when grounding at same time
- Be mindful of your daily environment and how you respond to your surroundings
- Read the book, “Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers”
LIVE INTENTIONALLY, NOT HABITUALLY
*** MEDICAL DISCLAIMER :
All information in this website is intended for informational purposes only. The authors are not responsible for any harm or injury that may result. Significant injury risk is possible if you do not follow due diligence and seek suitable medical professional advice about your injury. No guarantees of specific results are expressly made or implied on this website. Functional Fitness Ohio and affiliates thereof, are not part of any established "standards of care" or "scope of practice" in any licensed health care profession, including the practice of medicine. These collective pages are not representative of a binding contract between the reader and the aforementioned parties; that contract is solely between the reader and themselves. If the reader feels they need professional therapy, it is their sole duty to fulfill that need.