What causes inflammation?
Inflammation is essentially a response to injury, rather than a disease entity itself. The purpose of inflammation is to restore normal tissue function. Modern authors agree that inflammation should lead to tissue repair and remodeling, which allow for the restoration of function. However, when acute inflammation becomes chronic, tissue healing cannot occur. In this situation, the inflammatory process should be viewed as a disease process. Many diseases are, in fact, a manifestation of chronic inflammation (Seaman 168-169).
How can inflammation contribute to low back pain?
Inflammatory low back pain (LBP) is pain resulting from a systemic inflammatory condition, often referred to as axial spondyloarthritis. Ankylosing spondylitis is chronic inflammatory LBP characterized by early onset (mean age 24 years), with a higher prevalence in men. Five clinical parameters can help identify inflammatory LBP: improvement with exercise, pain at night, insidious onset, onset at younger than 40 years, and no improvement with rest (Ledford 15).
How food affects inflammation
Specific diets have been found to have a different inflammatory impact on the body. Each food has different properties regarding the inflammatory response elicited in the body, where quantity and frequency of each food’s consumption play an important role in the overall inflammatory effect (Enrico 3).
Pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory foods
While the number of food items that are anti-inflammatory is higher than the pro-inflammatory ones, pro-inflammatory food components are mainly macronutrients (e.g., carbohydrate, total fat, cholesterol, protein, saturated fats, trans fats and total energy intake calculated in kcal). For this reason, they are consumed in much higher quantities than the anti-inflammatory food components, which are mainly micronutrients (e.g., vitamins, oligo minerals, flavonoids), spices, higher-quality fats (e.g., MUFA, PUFA, n-3 fatty acids, and n-6 fatty acids), and dietary fibers (Enrico 83).
The main components of an anti-inflammatory diet are as follows:
- Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables
- Eat a good source of n-3 fatty acids (fish or fish oil supplements, walnuts)
- Eat plenty of whole grains (brown rice, bulgur wheat)
- Eat lean protein sources such as chicken, while cutting back on red meat and full-fat dairy foods
- Minimize the amount of saturated and trans fats that you consume
- Avoid refined foods and processed foods
- Consume alcohol in moderation
- Add a variety of spices (Marcason 1780) (e.g., garlic, ginger, curry, saffron, turmeric, pepper, thyme and rosemary)
Out of the diets identified to have clinical evidence supporting their potential to reduce oxidative stress, inflammation, and/or chronic pain, the most promising diets are the low-carbohydrate diet and the Mediterranean diet (Kaushik 493).
