Is Inflammation Stopping You From Losing Weight?

You are probably familiar with the term inflammation. A lot has been written about the topic in recent years as we discover the enormous impact it has on health and disease. Having too much inflammation in your body can lead to pain, fatigue and low mood, but did you know it can also stop you from losing weight?

When your body is inflamed, hormones don’t work as well and neither do hormone receptors. You are more likely to become insulin resistant and that can stop you from losing weight. Your liver can produce high levels of inflammatory chemicals, which cause wear and tear in your body and raise the risk of fatty liver. This is quite common in people who are doing all the right things with their diet and exercise, yet failing to see results. Reducing inflammation may be the key to weight loss you’re looking for.

Inflammation is the way our body responds to injury. We can usually tell a part of our body is inflamed when it is red, hot, swollen and we can’t move it properly. Think of a stubbed toe or a sprained ankle. Inflammation is present in all ‘itis’ conditions, such as arthritis, hepatitis, bursitis and many others. However, inflammation can also occur inside our body in a much more silent way, where we don’t even know it is happening.  Fatigue and pain are classic indicators that there’s too much inflammation in your body.

Ideally inflammation should do its job in your body and then leave. If it sticks around for longer than it’s needed, this is called chronic inflammation, and it can cause problems. Inflammation stalls fat loss and creates weight loss resistance in several different ways, such as creating insulin resistance, fluid retention, low energy levels and digestive problems. People with those conditions lose weight much more slowly, or not at all. Excessive chronic inflammation also contributes to almost every disease on the planet.

Lowering inflammation should be at the top of your list for becoming lean and healthy. Your diet plays an enormous role. Inflammation can occur when a food sensitivity triggers an immune reaction and your digestive lining becomes inflamed.

These strategies can help you bring down inflammation so it doesn’t stall your weight loss efforts:

• Keep your blood sugar healthy.  Certainly diabetics experience a great deal of inflammation in their bodies because of elevated blood sugar, but you don’t have to be a diabetic to experience this.  Regularly consuming sugar, grains and high glycemic load foods will flood your bloodstream with glucose.  Sugar is sticky and it can bind to proteins in your body and damage them. Berberine is excellent for helping to promote healthy blood sugar.
• Ensure you have a healthy liver. Your liver performs more jobs in your body than nearly any other organ. Two of its main jobs are burning fat and detoxification. If your liver is sluggish or fatty, or you have gallstones, you won’t be an efficient fat burner. Livatone Plus improves liver function and n-acetyl cysteine is required for detoxification, via glutathione production.
• Resolve infections.  Any type of bacterial, viral, fungal or parasitic infection raises inflammation because your immune cells produce massive quantities of inflammatory chemicals as they try to fight the infection.  The infectious organisms also produce waste products (metabolites) that can make you feel very tired and unwell. This is particularly a problem in chronic, long term infections. Selenium is a mineral that helps your body to overcome chronic or acute infections.
• Identify food allergy, intolerance or sensitivity.  Whenever you consume a food you are sensitive to, your body behaves as though you swallowed a harmful toxin.  As your immune system tries to cope with this scenario, it produces a host of inflammatory chemicals.  This can become a significant problem if you unknowingly eat this food(s) every day.
• Manage stress.  Unfortunately the hormones your body produces while you are stressed cause inflammatory damage, free radical damage, leaky gut and a great deal of wear and tear to your body.  Magnesium helps to counter some of this damage because it is wonderfully relaxing for your nervous system.
• Try to get adequate sleep.  Good solid sleep is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory remedies there is, and it’s free and feels great.  Unfortunately most people know this but try as they might, they can’t get good sleep consistently.  Insomnia or just poor quality sleep is endemic in modern society.  I have provided a range of effective remedies in my book Tired of Not Sleeping?

The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.