9 Little-Known Ways to Fight Inflammation
We’re not going to tell you to exercise (though that helps)…and 3 of these you can do without even getting out of bed!
Avoiding junk food and getting enough exercise are good ways to fight inflammation…but those are hardly novel prescriptions.
We wanted to find some proven ways to fight inflammation in the body that are lesser-known…and hopefully a little more fun.
Here are our 9 top findings:
Get Grounded
Simply being grounded, or directly connected to the earth, seems to have a variety of surprising effects on the body.
In a review of the literature on grounding, the researchers concluded that “[g]rounding reduces pain and alters the numbers of circulating neutrophils and lymphocytes, and also affects various circulating chemical factors related to inflammation.”(1)
You can actually see the inflammation reduction in the thermal imaging here.
All that, just for being connected to the ground directly or with a grounding device!
Get Enough Sleep
For those who really hate the prescription of more exercise, let’s go the opposite direction!
Researchers have found that sleep loss is associated with increased inflammation in the body.(2)
They have detected these metabolic changes even when people get as much as 4 hours of sleep, so you don’t have to be an insomniac to experience this sort of inflammation response.
Here’s a bonus tip
Since you have to have sheets on your bed anyway, you might as well make them fight inflammation. You can buy grounding sheets, which allows you to kill two birds with one stone.
See our full review of the best grounding sheets here:
Get Enough Magnesium
According to recommendations from the University of Wisconsin, magnesium deficiency has been linked to increased inflammation.(3) They estimate that 60% of Americans don’t get enough magnesium in their diet.
For adults over 31 years of age, they recommend that men get 420 mg per day and women get 320 mg per day.
Don’t go overboard though, they found that getting more than that doesn’t seem to matter for reducing inflammation.
As an added benefit, magnesium helps you sleep, so pair it with the first two tips on this list.
Drink an Anti-inflammatory Tonic
You can pack a number of different anti-inflammatory ingredients into one delicious tonic that you take daily. This is an easy way to get more of the nutrients that you need to fight inflammation.
Healthline did a great roundup of different anti-inflammatory tonic recipes that look amazing. Check them out here.
Take a Probiotic
You’ve no doubt heard how important gut health is to your overall well-being. There’s now a well-known linkage between gut health and chronic, low-grade inflammation in the body.(4)
Watching what you eat is one way to manage gut health, but another important factor is taking the right probiotic. Probiotics can help you manage your gut health and fight inflammation–and best of all–it’s as easy as popping one daily capsule.
Meditate
Here’s another super easy one, all you have to do is sit there and do nothing!
When you are stressed, your body releases stress hormones that can irritate your joints and cause inflammation in the body. According to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the very best ways to reduce stress and get all the benefits of lower inflammation is to meditate.
The benefits of meditation are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that fighting inflammation is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Go to the Chiropractor
This is truly an odd one, and only makes sense if you have some back pain, but a lot of us do! There’s some evidence that a visit to the chiropractor can help ease inflammation, so if your back is achy, give it a go.
Filter Your Water
Dehydration can cause inflammation, so be sure to drink plenty of water.
However, not just any water will do. Research has found that some chemicals found in tap water are associated with inflammation and may even have a link to colorectal cancer.(5)
So filter your water! Installing a reverse osmosis system in your home makes it very easy to get super pure water, but a good under sink system will also help a lot.
Reduce Toxins
Chopra.com points out that one hidden source of inflammation is the toxins in everyday products that we use around the house.
Many of the products we use for cleaning and personal care are laced with inflammatory chemicals. But…they don’t need to be!
There are many great alternative products that do not contain toxins and do the same job just as well. A great place to find them is the Environmental Working Group, which publishes ratings on a wide variety of products.
Best of all, this isn’t a new habit you need to form. You just do one big clean up on your products and you’re done.
There you go, nine effective–and honestly, pretty darn easy–ways to reduce the inflammation in your body and live a healthier life.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3548567/
- https://www.fammed.wisc.edu/files/webfm-uploads/documents/outreach/im/handout_ai_diet_patient.pdf
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/6B2D26F3FA0E0B1D8E8BD77DA2A9F4C1/S0007114515002093a.pdf/div-class-title-low-grade-inflammation-diet-composition-and-health-current-research-evidence-and-its-translation-div.pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021004980
