Eva Ruiz I Sevilla, (EFE).- The origin of many diseases has to do with chronic inflammation in the tissues, which can be favored or eradicated depending, among other things, on the type of diet. “What you eat says what kind of disease you are going to develop,” Dr. Odile Fernández told EFE.
Family doctor and mother of three children, this doctor from Granada was diagnosed with ovarian cancer with multiple metastases in 2010. This led her to look for the relationship between the disease and diet that could help her in her process. Work that gave rise to the book “My anticancer recipes” and other later ones.
Now, in “Habits that will save your life” (Edit. Planet), he addresses how to control inflammation, glucose spikes and stress. For which he is committed to “connecting with oneself, listening to oneself and knowing what our body is saying”, together with “recovering ancestral cultures”.
Healthy habits
“In the end it’s about eating what our grandparents ate, in the order our grandparents ate and at the time our grandparents ate, but since we are so disconnected from our own nature, that’s how it goes,” summarizes the doctor, who is not in favor of of strict diets or prohibitions but of “healthy habits”.
Explain that acute inflammation processes are necessary. For example, to heal a wound, but the problem comes when this inflammation “endures over time, the immune system maintains it and is continuously reacting against something that sometimes it doesn’t even know what it is and neglecting other tasks such as absorbing food or defending ourselves of viruses and bacteria.
The inflammation is irritating the tissues through free radicals. It produces oxidative stress and damages the organs, which in the long run can degenerate into heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, fibromyalgia or autoimmune and intestinal disease, the doctor details.
“Asthma or allergies and cancer have the same origin,” says the doctor. He adds that the origin of this inflammation is not clear, but factors that favor it are known. Like the type of diet, sedentary lifestyle, environmental pollution, vitamin D deficiency, lack of sleep and emotional stress.
Glucose spikes, the “silent killers”
The problem with this inflammation is that “you can spend twenty years with it causing damage until it shows its face”, since it does not have to have external symptoms, although it sometimes causes constant fatigue, muscle or joint pain, intestinal problems, changes in spontaneous weight loss and headaches.
“Inflammation and blood glucose spikes go hand in hand, which is why I call them the silent killers,” says Dr. Fernández. She adds that the good news is that “if you learn to regulate them throughout the day, inflammation decreases and with it diseases.”
For this, he advises betting on the Mediterranean diet and on “eating in the correct order”. Since many studies have shown that glucose spikes are greatly reduced by taking vegetables first, then proteins and fats and lastly carbohydrates and sugars.
Bet on adding spices and aromatic herbs to dishes, having a salty breakfast because the body is more sensitive to glucose first thing in the day, eating fruit “better whole and for dessert” and “covering up carbohydrates”, that is, eating them accompanied of fiber, fat and protein, in addition to practicing intermittent fasting.
The management of emotions, the danger of cortisol
Along with all this, Dr. Fernández adds the importance of sleeping between seven and nine hours each night. And “what costs the most: managing stress and emotions”.
“Cortisol is the stress hormone, which alerts me if a lion is attacking me. In that case it asks the cell to give it all the sugar it has in case I have to run out and save myself, which leads to inflammation. The problem is that sometimes we live as if a lion were attacking us 24 hours a day”, he affirms.
For this reason, he is committed to learning to manage it with techniques such as meditation, mindfulness or progressive muscle relaxation. “Everyone with what suits them, but no matter how healthy I eat, if I don’t manage stress, I won’t cut the problem short,” she insists.
“They are not specific things, but rather having a life routine”, concludes the specialist. She recommends including daily exercise, eating during daylight hours and limiting the consumption of ultra-processed foods. As well as consume probiotics and control weight to suffer less chronic inflammation. EFE