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Dr. Weil explains how an anti-inflammatory diet can help prevent disease.
Dr. Weil:
We all know inflammation on the surface of the body. It’s local redness, heat, swelling and pain.
This is the way the body gets more nourishment and more immune activity to an area that’s injured or under attack.
But inflammation is so powerful and so potentially destructive that it’s very important for the body to contain it, make sure that it ends when it’s supposed to end -- stays where it’s supposed to stay.
If inflammation persists, if it serves no purpose it becomes productive of disease. Low-level chronic imperceptible inflammation appears to be the root cause of a great deal of chronic degenerative disease and especially what we call the diseases of aging.
So for anyone, for women, especially who are interested in remaining healthy as they go through life, I think it’s very important to lead an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.
There are many things that influence inflammation – genetics, exposure at toxins like second-hand smoke, but our dietary choices play a huge role when we have potentially total control over those.
I have designed an anti-inflammatory diet and anti-inflammatory diet pyramid. You can access these on my website drweil.com. Basically it’s a Mediterranean diet that’s been tweaked to make it even more powerful at containing inappropriate inflammation.
About Dr. Weil, M.D.:
Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D., was born in Philadelphia in 1942, received an A.B. degree in biology (botany) from Harvard in 1964 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1968. After completing a medical internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, he worked a year with the National Institute of Mental Health before writing his first book, The Natural Mind. From 1971-75, as a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Dr. Weil traveled widely in North and South America and Africa collecting information on drug use in other cultures, medicinal plants, and alternative methods of treating disease. From 1971-84 he was on the research staff of the Harvard Botanical Museum and conducted investigations of medicinal and psychoactive plants.
Visit Dr. Weil at his Web site