Chronic inflammation is a factor that can influence many chronic conditions and is a significant cause of discomfort and health challenges around the world. Inflammation is influenced by many factors, with diet playing an important role. As science gathers more data suggesting that dietary approaches may help balance inflammation in the body, there is a growing interest in using plant-based diets to support the management of chronic inflammation.
Plant-based diets are rich in whole foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and herbs packed with phytonutrients, many of which have been studied for their potential to support a healthy inflammatory response. To address the growing burden of chronic inflammatory conditions like stroke, obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and chronic neurodegenerative and respiratory conditions, and help the body maintain balance, plant-based diets for inflammation reduction can be a helpful tool.
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What is Chronic Inflammation?
Inflammation is a necessary process that your body uses to protect itself. Inflammatory responses help you repair tissues, heal after injury, and clear infections. As the immune system responds to these issues, your body sends white blood cells and chemical mediators to the affected area. This causes you to experience the classic signs of inflammation, including redness and warmth from increased blood flow, tissue swelling from increased permeability of blood vessels, pain, and a loss of function.
Acute inflammation allows you to clear the scene of injury or infection and restore the body to balance. However, if the inflammatory response persists and/or diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors trigger the inflammatory response unnecessarily repeatedly, chronic inflammation can develop. When this occurs, the inflammatory cascade becomes chronic and may contribute to the development of health issues if nothing intervenes or changes.
Chronic inflammation has been shown to be associated with the development of many common chronic conditions. Common factors that contribute to inflammation becoming chronic and imbalanced include dysbiosis in the gut microbiome, an imbalanced diet, physical inactivity, disturbed sleep, chronic stress, and environmental exposures to infections and toxins.
This chronic and persistent release of pro-inflammatory molecules, including cytokines and reactive oxygen species, may cause widespread damage and dysfunction. Over time, this chronic inflammatory environment can disrupt normal balance and function in your cells and tissues, potentially leading to issues such as insulin resistance, atherosclerosis, fatty liver, and tissue remodeling. Chronic inflammation may also contribute to the development of autoimmune reactions when the immune system mistakenly targets healthy cells and tissues with its reactions.
Principles of Plant-Based Diets
Plant-based diets focus on deriving nutrition primarily from plant sources. Common foods that are incorporated into plant-based diets include a variety of fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, oils, whole grains, legumes, and beans.
When compared with omnivorous diets, vegetarian and vegan diets typically have different patterns of nutrient intake. While there can be many dietary patterns, plant-based diets generally have relatively high intakes of dietary fiber, carotenoids, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E, and magnesium and relatively lower intakes of animal-based protein, saturated fat, and heme iron.
These diets can take various forms, but all generally involve choosing to consume proportionately more of your foods from plant sources. When defining plant-based diets, some common eating patterns include vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian. Vegan diets exclude all animal products, including dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and honey. Vegetarian diets also exclude all meat and poultry but may include eggs, seafood, or dairy. Vegetarians who incorporate some fish, seafood, and/or meat are sometimes coined flexitarians. A Mediterranean and anti-inflammatory way of eating can often be characterized in this way.
Focusing one’s dietary choices on foods that derive primarily from plants is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, the number of Americans following a vegan diet increased by 600% between 2014 to 2018.
Plant-based diets have been studied for their many health benefits. These are especially prominent when looking at a whole-food, plant-based diet that prioritizes whole sources of plant foods and minimizes processed ingredients.
Plant-based diets have been shown to be associated with reduced biomarkers of inflammation, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) that are associated with the mechanisms underlying many chronic conditions. For example, vegetarian and flexitarian diets have been studied for their potential benefits on body weight, metabolic health, blood pressure, and other inflammatory conditions like inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease.
Plant-Based Diets and Inflammation Reduction
Whole foods-focused plant-based diets revolve around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and species. These plant-based foods provide a variety of nutrients as well as additional bioactive constituents like phytonutrients and fiber that may support immunomodulatory and inflammatory processes. In this way, plant-based diets offer many nutritional benefits by providing antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber that may help to manage chronic inflammation.
Some of the nutritional aspects of plant-based eating that make them so potentially beneficial when addressing a variety of chronic health conditions center around supporting a healthy inflammatory response. Research on plant-based diets and inflammation points to several pathways that suggest how plant-based diets may help manage inflammation.
For example, plant-based diets are rich in a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables that contain phytonutrients like polyphenols and minimize or exclude heavily processed foods. These factors may help support a healthy and diverse microbiome and manage excess inflammation.
One potential way that plant-based foods may help manage inflammation is by addressing oxidative stress. Reactive oxygen species and reactive nitrogen species are produced as byproducts of many metabolic processes in your body. They can damage tissues and contribute to inflammation if they are not neutralized. Plant-based foods are naturally rich in antioxidants that may help to neutralize these effects.
Plant-based diets also include plenty of fiber. All unprocessed plant foods contain fiber, which makes up the structure of the plant. Consuming fiber, along with the variety of phytonutrients found in plants, not only helps keep your bowels regular, but it also feeds healthy microbes in your gut that may help you manage inflammation. In this way, a plant-based diet may help you better absorb and process the nutrients from your food that support your immune system and manage inflammation.
This way of eating also helps keep you full and may help balance hormones involved in appetite, satiety, metabolism, and weight balance. In fact, following a whole foods-based plant-based diet may lead to improvements in weight, cholesterol, inflammation, and other risk factors for cardiac and metabolic conditions. Maintaining a balanced weight by following a plant-based diet may help you manage chronic inflammation since excess body fat can contribute to inflammation and hormonal imbalance.
Key Anti-Inflammatory Foods in Plant-Based Diets
Incorporating a wide variety of plant-based foods helps you consume a range of phytonutrients and bioactive compounds that may help manage inflammation and support overall health. Essential anti-inflammatory foods in plant-based diets provide these potential benefits.
Overall, studies suggest that the higher your intake of fruit and vegetables, the more you may support a healthy inflammatory response. Aiming for a wide variety of naturally colorful fruits and vegetables in your diet can help you eat a range of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals with potential anti-inflammatory impacts. Some of the most well-known plant-based sources of anti-inflammatory nutrients include leafy greens, berries, apples, dark chocolate, citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables, nuts, seeds, and olive oil. Legumes, such as lentils, chickpeas, and black beans, have also been studied for their potential to reduce markers of inflammation and provide plant-based protein, fiber, and phytonutrients.
These plant foods are considered beneficial for managing inflammation due to some key bioactive compounds they contain. Plant foods are rich in vital bioactive compounds for inflammation management, including antioxidants like polyphenols such as flavonoids and carotenoids, which may modulate inflammatory and immunological processes.
Antioxidants in plant foods protect cells from free radical damage that can trigger inflammation. These include vitamins A, C, and E, selenium and manganese minerals, and phytochemicals like flavonoids and carotenoids. Antioxidants work best in combination with other nutrients found naturally in the plant, so eating foods rich in these compounds is generally more beneficial than taking isolated supplements alone.
Some antioxidant-rich foods to consider incorporating into a plant-based diet include strawberries, which are rich in vitamin C and anthocyanins (a type of polyphenol); broccoli, which provides vitamin C and beta-carotene; leafy greens like spinach, which are a good source of vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene, Brazil nuts and brown rice for selenium, and apples and onions for quercetin.
Implementing a Plant-Based Diet for Inflammation Management
Adopting a plant-based diet for inflammation allows you to enjoy these delicious and vibrant plant sources of nutrition. You can adjust and customize your plant-based diet to meet your individual needs and preferences, but an anti-inflammatory plant-based diet often focuses on foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices.
Depending on your needs, preferences, and lifestyle, transitioning to a plant-based diet can be gradual. For example, you might prefer to start by incorporating more plant-based meals into your weekly routine, like adding a few meatless meals each week and gradually reducing the consumption of animal-based products. You can also make plant-based foods that focus on your snacks, such as crudité with hummus, salsa, or guacamole.
Aim for various colorful fruits and vegetables and other plant-based foods to ensure diversity and a wide range of inflammation-managing nutrients in your meals. You can experiment with different cooking methods, herbs, and spices to add variety and keep plant-based eating exciting and delicious. For example, baking, roasting, or sauteing your produce can bring different flavors and textures to your vegetables.
Adding different seasonings can also shift the mood of the meal. Consider options like garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, lime juice, or chopped herbs like cilantro, mint, parsley, and thyme. Be mindful of choosing a balanced amount of good anti-inflammatory fats like olive oil, olives, nuts, nut butter, seeds, and avocados to help manage inflammation and help you absorb fat-soluble nutrients like vitamins A, D, E, and K.
Considerations and Potential Limitations
Plant-based diets offer these many benefits for managing chronic inflammation and supporting overall health, but there are some considerations in plant-based diets of which to be aware.
Each person has unique health needs, genetics, allergies, sensitivities, preferences, and goals, which must be considered when developing an optimal approach to individualized nutrition. While plant-based diets are generally safe and effective for people at all life cycle stages, it can be helpful to work with a knowledgeable practitioner to help tailor your diet to your individual needs, preferences, and goals.
Some nutrients may require special attention to ensure adequate intake when following a plant-based diet depending on dietary choices, age, lifestyle, and other factors. Overall, it is essential to ensure that your diet contains adequate energy and a variety of plant protein sources that match your unique needs.
Those following long-term plant-based diets should also pay attention to levels of iron, zinc, iodine, vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamin D. For example, plant-based diets are often lower in calcium and/or contain phytic and oxalic acids in plant foods that can inhibit calcium absorption. Some strategies can help to balance these effects, like boiling green leafy vegetables to reduce oxalate content.
Although heme iron from animal foods is generally better absorbed (15–30%) than non-heme iron (typically 5–10%), vegetarians who consume a well-balanced diet are not at a greater risk of iron-deficiency anemia, to ensure balanced iron, aim to consume a varied diet rich in whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, dried fruits, and green leafy vegetables and combine vitamin C sources with plant-based iron sources.
While whole plant foods such as fermented soy foods, leafy vegetables, seaweeds, mushrooms, and algae (like chlorella and spirulina) contain some vitamin B12, they are usually inadequate for daily needs. Therefore, vegans may need to add supplements or vitamin B12-fortified foods, such as plant-based beverages.
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Plant Based Diet and Inflammation: Final Thoughts
There is a growing interest in plant-based diets, and for good reason. Whole plant foods provide a wide range of antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may help to manage chronic inflammation. A plant-based diet focused on colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices can be a helpful component of a comprehensive approach to inflammation management. This can improve quality of life and support overall health.
Enjoy the rich flavors of plants and explore the potential health benefits of the nutrients they provide. Embracing plant-based diets for health offers a tasty and effective way to support your well-being.
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