Anti Inflammation Diet

... happened I had to change diet to be able to eat... have removed sime of my inflammation with increased anti Histamines. I spent yrs on...

When I was 24, I thought I was on top of the world. I was lean, shredded, and felt invincible. But shortly after being in peak, physical shape, severe lower back pain completely derailed my life. The pain was so intense that I had to stop working out altogether. Over the next few years, I watched all my hard-earned muscle vanish. By the time I turned 28, I looked like a skinny guy with a belly that protruded so far out that I wouldn't argue with you if you said I looked pregnant. I was embarrassed to take my shirt off, let alone go to the pool or to the beach. Every single time I tried to pick up some weights to get back into shape, my lower back would flare up and shut me down. It was truly discouraging. Life threw its heaviest blow when I was 36. My mother passed away while she was away on vacation, and the grief completely shattered me. I turned to food for comfort, using it to cope with the pain of losing her. My weight ballooned, eventually peaking at 204 pounds at age 42. I panicked. I desperately wanted my body back, so I forced myself to lose 44 pounds, dropping down to 160. But I did it completely wrong. I fell into the trap of strict juicing (with a juice machine, not roids) and a low-protein plant-based diet. While the scale went down, I aggressively burned off my remaining muscle mass instead of fat. I wrecked my metabolism, still looked soft, and spent the next several years lifting weights with absolutely zero visual results. The missing puzzle piece finally arrived when I was 46. My back had gone out again and the chiropractor urged me to get an MRI because I was walking like an old man. The MRI report was a massive wake-up call (p. 1). It revealed multi-level spinal issues from L2 down to S1 (pp. 1-2): L2 to S1: Grade-1 retrolisthesis (backward slippage of vertebrae) (pp. 1-2). L2-3 & L3-4: Diffuse disc bulges compressing the thecal sac, plus facet joint effusion (pp. 1-2). L3-4: A left foraminal disc herniation with an annular fissure and active inflammation (pp. 1-2). L4-5 & L5-S1: Broad-based posterocentral disc herniations compressing the thecal sac (pp. 1-2). Edit: In my original post, I misremembered and put L1-L6 damage. All this weight loss progress and healthy eating and my memory still sucks! smh. By February of this year, my weight had crept back up to 198 pounds. I was done making excuses. I decided to launch one final, intelligent, and calculated push to do things the right way. No crash dieting, no extreme juicing, just a dedication to lifting smart and prioritizing protein to save my muscle. I completely eliminated spinal-compressing movements like traditional military presses, heavy standing shrugs, deadlifts, and squats. Today, I am 50 years old. I stepped on the scale this morning at 164 pounds, down from my 198-pound winter baseline. My navel is down to 30.5 inches, my neck sits at a solid 15 inches, and the US Navy formula clocks me at a lean 10-11% body fat. The crazy thing is, looking at the mirror today, I am actually carrying more dense, athletic muscle mass in my chest, shoulders, and arms now than I did when I was a shredded 24-year-old. I’m sharing this because I know how hopeless it feels to stare at old photos of your "glory days" while dealing with injuries and age. If you are dealing with chronic pain, grief, or metabolic setbacks, please don't give up. You don't need a perfect spine to build a phenomenal physique—you just need patience, protein, and the willingness to work around your limitations. I landed on a high protein, low carb meal plan paired with 2 full body workouts per week. If I can do this at 50, you can do it too. Since I've gotten quite a few questions about what exercises I do, I decided to include this: The Smart Training Strategy: Time Under Tension (TUT) To build a phenomenal physique with a damaged spine, you have to stop lifting heavy and start lifting smart. I apply the Time Under Tension (TUT) principle to almost every movement. It completely removes the ego, maximizes muscle growth, and drops your injury risk to virtually zero. Here is the exact formula: The Weight: Drop down to roughly 60% of your max weight. The Tempo: Focus on ultra-slow, highly controlled reps, emphasizing a very slow eccentric (lowering) phase. The Target: Force every single set to last between 40 to 60 seconds. The Rest: Take 60 to 90 seconds between standard sets. For heavy full-body movements, rest up to 3 to 4 minutes—or whatever it takes to fully catch your breath before moving on. The faster you recover, the less time you'll need to rest between sets. I rest between 1:40-2 minutes between the sled push and carries now but I needed 3-4 minutes initially. The 2-Day Full-Body Routine I run this massive full-body circuit exactly twice a week. Because of the extreme intensity of the TUT method, it had initially taken my body a solid 3 to 4 days just to get over the deep muscular soreness. This layout entirely eliminates high-risk, spine-compressing movements like barbell squats, traditional military presses, heavy standing shrugs, and standard deadlifts. Upper Body Pressing (Chest & Shoulders) Flat Bench Press Variations: Dumbbell flat press and cable presses (Swapped out traditional barbell bench to fix recent shoulder pain). Incline Press Variations: Dumbbell incline press and incline cable flyes. Shoulder Builders: Lateral raises and dumbbell shoulder shrugs. Upper Body Pulling (Back & Rear Delts) Vertical Pulls: Lat pulldowns, close-grip underhand pulldowns, and bodyweight pull-ups (there's no shame in performing assisted pull-ups either and for TUT, I prefer this to full bodyweight pull-ups). Crucial form check: Keep your scapula completely retracted throughout the pull-up to keep the focus on the lats and protect the joints. Imagine forcing your elbows in your back pockets. Horizontal Pulls: Inverted bodyweight rows (A recent addition using TUT that works incredibly well). Rear Delts: Cable face-pulls. Functional Core & Conditioning Loaded Carries: Farmer's carries and sled pushes. Anti-Lateral Core Work: Suitcase carries (Holding a heavy weight on only one side to force the core to stabilize the spine without twisting). Bodyweight Finishers Negative Close-Grip Pushups: Keep your elbows tucked strictly inside, and lean your weight forward on the way down. This specific angle hits the front deltoids beautifully while torching the triceps. I actually do this right before the farmer's carries and sled pushes. Dips: Performed strictly under the TUT protocol—slow, controlled lowering to keep tension entirely on the chest and triceps. (I actually don't perform these at the gym anymore. The grip was too wide and not good for my shoulders. I learned that the optimal distance between the bars for dips is from your elbow to the tip of your finger. Anymore than that and you could damage your shoulders) Abdominals: Hanging leg raises. Crucial modifier: These must be performed on an apparatus that provides solid back support (like a captain's chair) to stabilize the lumbar spine and prevent dangerous swinging or spinal flexion. Implementation Tips Total Time: Expect this entire circuit to take about 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes. Listen to Your Body: If a movement starts causing joint pain (like barbells did to my shoulders), switch to dumbbells or cables immediately. Proper angles are everything. The Ultimate Truth: Nutrition is King At the end of the day, it all comes down to nutrition. If you are not eating right, you will get shredded, but you just won't be able to see it because it is buried underneath the excess weight you need to shed. IMHO, the breakdown for total physical transformation looks like this: 75% Nutrition 15% Training 10% Rest and Recovery All three components are extremely important and work together, but I a have to give it up for nutrition. It won't matter how hard you are training (you can even easily overtrain), if you aren't eating right, you won't see results. I know this from firsthand experience. If you are working out 5 days a week, you are not really giving your body enough time to rest and recover. On rest and recovery days, I take 10 minutes walks after meals to curb insulin spikes. I do yard work (mowing, trimming, edging). I treat my yard so it looks green all year. I do my own pest control. I do light exercise at home. Bird dog, dead bug, hollow body hold, standing pallof press, bulgarian lunges, goblet squat, wall squats, planks and variations of it. Dips, deadhangs (daily), facepulls. submitted by /u/Complex-Extent-3967 to r/GetMotivated [link] [comments]

Wrote this as a comment - but thought I'd share it as a post as well. My wife has completely cleared her eczema by changing her diet - she's now symptom free (as long as she doesn't eat gluten). No guarantee that it'd work for any of you, of course - just thought I'd share. She's had it primarily on her hands since childhood (to the degree that it'd start to bleed). Around 8 years ago, she started to develop asthma, at which point she had enough and went online to try whatever she could find. Long story short - the thing that worked for her was an anti-inflammatory diet. The root cause is allegedly a "leaky gut," which allows larger molecules (like food antigens, bacterial fragments, etc.) to cross into the bloodstream - causing an immune response. So the idea is: heal the gut -> calm or fix the immune response. After her symptoms reduced, which took about six months, she started to reintroduce "normal" foods again. Since it seems to be personal what's causing the gut inflammation, one just has to try and see. When she was healing, for example, she couldn't eat rice - but afterwards it's been fine. Turns out it's gluten in her case. It's surprising how fast her body reacts when she accidentally eats it (actually, suggesting it's not only a leaking gut that's behind it now that I think about it - not sure the speed fits with gut absorption...). Anyway, an example: we ate sushi once (which is rare for us) and she had a reaction within minutes - she had eaten the soy sauce without thinking about it. Anyway - thought I'd share. Feel free to DM if anyone wants more information (I'm pretty sure I still have the lists of what to eat and not to eat, for example, if anyone's interested in trying). Edit: for those who are interested, her diagnosis is/was atopic dermatitis. submitted by /u/thetoblin to r/eczema [link] [comments]

I’m so glad I’ve found this group, and I’ve already learned a bit scrolling through the posts. Long story short, I’ve been committed to being anti-diet and intuitive eating for several years (after a lifetime of toxic weight loss culture). I’ve been pretty content with my body composition (which has stayed steady), happily focused on improving my fitness, but I am on the “obese” side of things. I figured that as long as my blood pressure and other numbers looked good, I didn’t want to mess with GLP-1s because I didn’t want to even dip a toe back into the weight loss world. But… my blood pressure is creeping up. And I keep hearing that these meds can help with focus and inflammation, and I would really love to improve both of those issues? I’m a runner, and my knees would probably like a little bit of an easier load. How do I even begin to research the various medication options without digging through all the diet culture muck? I’m not asking anyone here to educate me! Just please, if you have some good educational resources, help me know where to go? I prefer reading actual text, but I’m open to podcasts. submitted by /u/dani_-_142 to r/antidietglp1 [link] [comments]

I had my first visit today with Dr. Bonilla, the head of the ME/CFS/PASC clinic at Stanford. It went well—he was very kind and spent an entire hour with me. He emphasized pacing as a strategy to minimize damage to the body from reactive oxygen species produced when the mitochondria are overwhelmed by activity they can’t support. Any time I notice a spike in my symptoms, that means stop what I’m doing and rest—nothing new here, but it was worth mentioning. He said diet is an important tool we can use to lower systemic inflammation: low sugar, low carb, Mediterranean style diet. I’ve been on LDN 4.5mg. He said they’re not seeing a ton of benefit from that low of a dose, so he wants me to go up to 10mg and then 15mg and we’ll keep increasing up to 50mg until progress plateaus. Once that happens, we’ll add on low dose Abilify. The goal of both of these meds is to decrease inflammation. I told him both of those meds are bandaids and don’t fix the root cause, which he seems to believe is a combination of: Autoimmune response to COVID, which for me triggered intrinsic factor autoantibodies (pernicious anemia) and folate receptor autoantibodies. He also ordered a few more panels to check on autoimmune activity: Anti-Thyroid Antibodies, Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibodies, ANA, HEp-2, IgG IFA, Anti-Ro Antibody, CRP, Rheumatoid Factor, Anti-Phospholipid Antibody Panel. I can report back on if any of these are positive and how they’ll be treated if so. He did confirm I need to continue my b12 shots, since I’m positive for IFa. This will be lifelong. He also noted that b12 is anti-inflammatory, and that likely explains why it’s broadly helpful to CFS patients. He also said he hadn’t ever considered testing patients with high serum b12 for IFa, but he will now since that’s what happened with me. Lingering COVID virus in the body. He said they’re doing autopsy studies and finding the COVID virus in almost every organ in the body of LC patients. He thinks maybe much longer courses of antivirals may be helpful, but they’re still studying this and so it’s not a current treatment option, but it may be one day. I asked him if he considers Long COVID to be ME/CFS. He said yes, LC (with fatigue) is just ME/CFS triggered by COVID. I asked if he knew what viruses can cause CFS, and he listed a whole host of them including Zika, the flu, dengue, etc etc etc. Makes you wonder if lingering viral infections are the root cause for many people and if they’ll eventually develop more effective antivirals. Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the appointment or treatment plan! I just wanted to share in case it’s helpful to anyone. submitted by /u/daphneyhatz to r/cfs [link] [comments]

Hi Has anyone found that following an anti inflammatory vegan diet has helped their depression? Have you noticed that adding in turmeric to your diet has helped with your mood/energy? I’ve been vegan for 19yrs, and have had depressive episodes regularly for 31 years :( My new therapist recommended I read ‘The Inflamed Mind’ which looks in to the connection between inflammation and depression, and it’s really really interesting, so I thought I would look in to what the best anti inflammatory vegan foods are. There are LOADS which is excellent. So I just thought I’d put it out there to see if anyone has any experience with this..and also ask what the best way to add turmeric is, in to your diet, as I’ve heard it’s got a pretty strong taste. I thought maybe I could juice a small amount with some oranges and see how much of the taste I can tolerate. Thanks 😊 submitted by /u/Critical-Owl-5893 to r/vegan [link] [comments]

Studied attraction research obsessively for 6 months. Read dozens of peer-reviewed studies, analyzed data from evolutionary psychology, interviewed behavioral scientists. Here's what actually works, based on legitimate science rather than opinions. Most attraction advice is misguided. It's either vague platitudes ("be confident") or superficial tips ("wear red"). The scientific reality exists in an evidence-based middle ground that many people avoid because it challenges both cultural narratives and requires consistent effort. Start with the biological foundations Your physical health signals reproductive fitness more than most want to acknowledge. Not because appearance is everything, but because it's an honest signal of your overall wellbeing that can't be faked. Sleep quality matters enormously. Multiple studies from the University of Stockholm (2017) demonstrated that even one night of poor sleep makes you appear less attractive, less healthy, and less approachable to others. This isn't subjective - the research used standardized rating systems and controlled photography. Dr. Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" summarizes the overwhelming evidence linking sleep quality to physical appearance, cognitive function, and mood regulation. Reduce chronic inflammation. Research from Dr. Claire Noakes at Cambridge (2021) found that inflammatory markers directly impact skin appearance, body odor, and energy levels - all critical components of attraction. Anti-inflammatory diets improve facial symmetry measurements within weeks. The Journal of Experimental Biology published a landmark study showing how inflammation affects pheromone production and perception across species. Fix your nonverbal communication Most people have no idea how much information they're constantly broadcasting through body language. Research from UCLA found that up to 93% of communication is nonverbal, yet we focus almost exclusively on what we say. Maintain open posture. Multiple studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology confirmed that expansive postures increase both perceived attractiveness and actual hormone levels associated with confidence. Simply occupying more space by keeping shoulders back and avoiding crossed arms significantly increases attraction ratings from observers. Eye contact creates measurable changes in brain chemistry. Neuroscience research from Baylor College of Medicine (2019) using fMRI scans showed that mutual gaze activates dopamine pathways identical to those stimulated during romantic attraction. The effect is so powerful that extended eye contact between strangers can create artificial feelings of intimacy and connection. Dr. Amy Cuddy's controversial but replicated research demonstrates how "power posing" for just two minutes alters testosterone and cortisol levels, affecting how others perceive your social status and attractiveness. While some methodology has been questioned, subsequent studies support the core finding that posture affects both self-perception and others' perception. Develop genuine competence The competence hypothesis in evolutionary psychology has substantial empirical support. Studies from multiple research institutions confirm that demonstrated skill in almost any domain increases perceived attractiveness, particularly for long-term mating strategies. Master something challenging. Research from Northwestern University (2018) found that perceived competence in a skill-based activity increased attractiveness ratings by 42% compared to control conditions. This effect was particularly strong when the skill required dedication and practice rather than innate talent. The "audience effect" is scientifically documented - performing a skill while being observed increases attractiveness ratings significantly more than simply claiming competence. The Journal of Experimental Psychology published findings that observing someone in a flow state of skilled performance triggers mirror neuron activity associated with attraction. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher's research with fMRI brain scanning, observing displayed competence activates the same brain regions as physical attraction. Her studies at Rutgers University demonstrated that watching someone excel at their passion creates a neural signature nearly identical to experiencing romantic interest. Master conversation through science Conversation quality has been quantified in multiple studies. The predictors of engaging conversation are not subjective - they've been measured through linguistic analysis and brain activity monitoring. Ask follow-up questions. Harvard research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that asking follow-up questions increases likeability by 31%. The effect isn't from flattery but from demonstrated interest and attention. Brain scans show increased activity in reward centers when someone shows genuine curiosity about us. The ratio of talking to listening has been studied extensively. Research from MIT's Media Lab found the optimal ratio for perceived charisma and attractiveness is approximately 40:60 (talking: listening), with periodic bursts of enthusiasm. This creates a perception of engagement without dominance. Professor John Gottman's decades of relationship research identified "bids for connection" as critical interaction points. Responding to these subtle cues (which occur approximately 20 times per hour in conversation) determines relationship success with 87% predictive accuracy. His longitudinal studies demonstrate that recognizing and engaging with these moments significantly increases attraction. Build evidence-based confidence Confidence research contradicts popular advice. "Fake it till you make it" has been scientifically debunked. Authentic confidence comes from accumulated evidence of capability and resilience. Exposure therapy is empirically validated. Systematic desensitization to social situations through graduated exposure has a 92% efficacy rate according to meta-analyses. Each successful social interaction creates neural evidence of capability, building genuine rather than performative confidence. The "growth mindset" concept from Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has been validated across multiple studies. People who view capabilities as developable rather than fixed show measurably different brain activity when facing challenges. This directly impacts resilience in social situations and attraction dynamics. Accept the unmodifiable variables Height, facial symmetry, and certain structural features cannot be significantly altered. Acknowledging this is not defeatist but scientifically accurate. However, research from the University of Texas demonstrates that these factors account for far less variance in attraction than commonly believed. A landmark 20-year longitudinal study from Michigan State University found that while initial attraction may be influenced by unmodifiable physical traits, relationship satisfaction and long-term attraction correlate much more strongly with modifiable behaviors and characteristics. The uncomfortable scientific truth is that attraction operates on multiple levels evolutionary, biochemical, psychological, and cultural. Understanding these mechanisms doesn't make the process less magical it makes your efforts more effective and less prone to misconception. Most people know portions of this research but avoid the comprehensive picture because it requires consistent, evidence-based effort rather than quick fixes or comfortable narratives about attraction being entirely subjective submitted by /u/Deborah_berry1 to r/motivation [link] [comments]