TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Inflammation is a symptom of both a health issue and a sign of healing – such as when inflammation forms around a cut in the skin.
At the Tahlequah Public Library July 30, Dr. Taylor Goodwin with Inner Vector Naturopaths in Jay, spoke to a very small crowd about an important issue to address for good health.
Manager Jeremy Jones introduced Goodwin, and said Goodwin’s usual talk happens once a quarter for a presentation on plants and herbs helpful in maintaining a person’s health and to combat illness.
“I’ve been coming here for a few years, and we usually do a special session in July where we branch off talking about medicinal plants and their uses and do something a little different,” Goodwin said. “This year, we are talking about inflammation; going over some of the things I find common in my clients, because almost every illness or disease has inflammation involved in some way or the other.”
He talked about a foundation that can be put in place to support good health, as a lot of it has been knocked out by the changes in day-to-day activities. He spoke on how inflammation is supposed to work, what can go wrong, and how a person can fix it.
“I had a student come to this seminar three years ago, and she told me she had been traveling, and at 70 found out she was starting to slow down, and worried about being able to carry her own luggage, due to pain specifically in her joints, and hands,” Goodwin said.
She told Goodwin she took some of the things spoken about in the seminar she attended, emphasizing she made one change at a time, and within a few weeks was able to handle her luggage without pain.
He encouraged the attendees to refer to a handout where it listed action steps. These included to pick one microbiome healing goal at a time.
“The microbiome is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes, that naturally live on our bodies and inside us,” states the site National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “Although microbes require a microscope to see them, they contribute to human health and wellness in many ways.”
Goodwin explained when the microbiome of the body can get out of balance, they can create health issues, and one of those is the production of inflammation. He went over the action items to pursue one at a time.
Action item No. 1 gave a choice of foods and supplements a person can start out introducing to their diet. These include eating fermented foods; garden produce, adding more vegetables and/or leafy greens to one meal each day; and taking a probiotic and prebiotic.
Action item No. 2 is to pick one healing goal. Avoid food allergies, and gluten is best avoided even if not allergic to it; try to work with one doctor and eat rest and repair foods often help; add a R&R food, such as oatmeal with blueberries, chia seed pudding, or plantago salad; and some helpful herbs to take are slippery elm, althea, calendula and plantago.
Action item No. 3 is pick one omega ratio goal by replacing oils like soybean, sunflower, sesame, corn, cottonseed and peanut oil, which are all high in omega-6 and low in omega-3. He said choose from oils made from a blend of omega-3, such as flax, perilla, chia and even moderate amounts of butter.
Healthy foods with omega-3 are salmon, mackerel, herring, purslane, spinach, kale, nuts and algae. Other healthy oils are safflower and moderate amounts of coconut oil.
Some of the things which can affect the balance of the gut microbiome are: antibiotics; the increase in the modern diet of foods high in sugar, colorings, chemical preservations and lost nutrient value; and damage to the gut.
“If we don’t have a good gut microbiome… we can develop something called ‘leaky gut,’” Goodwin said. “Leaky gut is where the intestines are no longer tightly linked together, allowing larger molecules in through the cracks, reducing surface area as the villi are damaged in the gut, leading to reduced nutrient absorption.”
He said leaky gut makes it more difficult for the good microbiome to grow.
One good benefit of inflammation is when an injury happens and the skin is cut, inflammation comes in and cleans the area.
“Inflammation will break down garbage,” Goodwin said. “Often bacteria will get into that cut, and inflammation helps beat back the bacteria as soon as it is in the wound.”
A third thing inflammation does besides clean and defend, is it starts a communication with the rest of the body, Goodwin said.
“Inflammation sends out signals called cytokines, which float through the blood, and the immune system sees the cytokines, and goes toward them to seek out the inflammation,” Goodwin said.
The fourth thing – and Goodwin said there are more but for the presentation was keeping it at four – is it cleans tissue where there is no external damage, and is more controlled.
Rhonda Cambiano attended the event and asked how stress is related to the excess production of inflammation.
“Stress, like emotional stress, is definitely known to increase inflammatory responses,” Goodwin said. “We have a threshold, where below that threshold is not an on-switch, and above that threshold, every drop increases the amount of on-switch we hit.”
Check it out
An article titled pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24900918/, talks about autoimmunity and the gut. The next class on health is Sept. 30, at 6:30 p.m. at the Tahlequah Public Library.