In today’s fast-paced world, we often eat on autopilot—grabbing meals on the go, eating while scrolling through our phones, or rushing through dinner to get to the next task. Unfortunately, this hurried, mindless approach to eating can contribute to inflammation in the body, a root cause of many chronic diseases. By adopting mindful eating practices, you can reduce inflammation, improve digestion, and create a deeper connection with the food that nourishes you.

Understanding Inflammation and Mindful Eating

Inflammation is the body’s natural response to injury or illness, but when it becomes chronic, it can lead to conditions like arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, and even depression. While diet plays a significant role in managing inflammation, how we eat can be just as important as what we eat.

Mindful eating is a practice rooted in mindfulness, where you bring your full attention to the experience of eating. It involves awareness of your hunger and fullness cues, the flavors and textures of your food, and the impact of your meals on your body and emotions. This approach not only supports healthy digestion but also reduces stress, a known trigger for inflammation.

Mindful Eating Practices for Reducing Inflammation

Here are six practical ways to incorporate mindful eating into your daily routine:

1. Slow Down and Savor Each Bite
When you eat quickly, you may overeat or stress your digestive system, both of which can promote inflammation. Slow down and take smaller bites, chewing thoroughly to aid digestion and allow your body time to register fullness. Savoring your food also enhances your appreciation for its flavors and textures.

2. Choose Anti-Inflammatory Foods
Be intentional about what you put on your plate. Incorporate foods known for their anti-inflammatory properties, such as:
   - Fruits and vegetables: Focus on colorful options like berries, spinach, kale, and broccoli.
   - Healthy fats: Add avocados, olive oil, and nuts like almonds and walnuts.
   - Lean proteins: Opt for fatty fish like salmon or plant-based sources like lentils and beans.
   - Spices: Use turmeric, ginger, and garlic for their potent anti-inflammatory effects.

3. Create a Distraction-Free Eating Environment
Eating while distracted can lead to overconsumption and poor food choices. Turn off the TV, put away your phone, and focus solely on your meal. A calm, distraction-free environment allows you to fully enjoy your food and become more attuned to your body’s hunger and fullness cues.

4. Listen to Your Body’s Signals
One of the core principles of mindful eating is tuning into your body’s signals. Before eating, ask yourself, *Am I truly hungry, or am I eating out of boredom or stress?* Stop eating when you feel comfortably full rather than stuffed. This practice can help prevent overeating, which often triggers inflammatory responses.

5. Practice Gratitude
Take a moment to appreciate your food before you eat. Reflect on the effort it took to grow, prepare, and bring it to your table. Gratitude shifts your mindset, helping you build a positive relationship with food and reducing stress, which is closely tied to inflammation.

6. Stay Hydrated
Mindful eating includes being mindful of what you drink. Staying hydrated helps flush toxins from the body and supports overall health. Replace sugary beverages with water, herbal teas, or green tea, which contains antioxidants that combat inflammation.

The Mind-Body Connection
Stress is a significant contributor to inflammation, and mindful eating can help break the cycle. By bringing your focus to the present moment and slowing down, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the "rest and digest" state. This promotes better digestion and reduces the body’s inflammatory response.

Conclusion
Mindful eating is more than a dietary strategy—it’s a way of fostering a deeper connection between your mind, body, and food. By slowing down, choosing anti-inflammatory foods, and listening to your body, you can not only reduce inflammation but also enhance your overall well-being. Start small, incorporating one or two mindful practices into your daily routine, and watch how they transform your relationship with food and your health. 

Mindful eating is a gift you give yourself—a moment of peace, presence, and nourishment in a busy world. Let each meal be an opportunity to heal, both physically and emotionally.

Superfoods that are considered anti-inflammatory typically contain high levels of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats. Here’s a list of some of the top anti-inflammatory superfoods:
 1. Berries
   - Examples: Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries
   - Why: Rich in antioxidants (like anthocyanins), vitamins C and E, and fiber.

 2. Leafy Greens
   - Examples: Spinach, kale, Swiss chard, collard greens
   - Why: Packed with antioxidants, vitamins A, C, K, and minerals like magnesium.

 3. Fatty Fish
   - Examples: Salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring
   - Why: High in omega-3 fatty acids, which reduce inflammation.

 4. Nuts and Seeds
   - Examples: Walnuts, almonds, chia seeds, flaxseeds
   - Why: Provide omega-3s, fiber, and antioxidants.

 5. Turmeric
   - Why: Contains curcumin, a powerful anti-inflammatory compound. Pair with black pepper for better absorption.

6. Ginger
   - Why: Contains gingerol, which helps reduce inflammation and pain.

 7. Green Tea
   - Why: Rich in polyphenols and catechins, which reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.

 8. Cruciferous Vegetables
   - Examples: Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage
   - Why: Contain sulforaphane, a compound that fights inflammation.

9. Olive Oil
   - Why: Extra virgin olive oil is high in oleic acid and polyphenols, both of which are anti-inflammatory.

10. Tomatoes
   - Why: High in lycopene, especially when cooked, which has anti-inflammatory properties.

11. Garlic and Onions
   - Why: Contain sulfur compounds that enhance immune health and reduce inflammation.

12. Avocado
   - Why: Rich in healthy fats, fiber, and carotenoids with anti-inflammatory effects.

 13. Dark Chocolate and Cocoa
   - Why: Contains flavanols, which have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. Opt for 70% or higher cocoa content.

 14. Mushrooms
   - Examples: Shiitake, maitake, and reishi
   - Why: Provide bioactive compounds like polysaccharides that fight inflammation.

15. Legumes
   - Examples: Lentils, chickpeas, black beans
   - Why: High in fiber and polyphenols that support gut health and reduce inflammation.

Incorporating a variety of these foods into your diet can help support your body’s natural ability to reduce inflammation and promote overall health.

Do’s:
- Embrace Anti-Inflammatory Foods:
  -Vegetables: Prioritize alliums (e.g., garlic, onions), cruciferous vegetables (e.g., broccoli, cauliflower), dark leafy greens (e.g., spinach, kale), and root vegetables (e.g., beets, sweet potatoes).
  - Fruits: Include berries, citrus fruits, apples, and avocados.
  - Healthy Fats: Use olive oil and consume nuts like almonds and walnuts in moderation.
  - Whole Grains: Incorporate quinoa, amaranth, and brown rice.
  - Proteins: Choose plant-based options (e.g., beans, tempeh) and lean proteins like fish rich in omega-3s (e.g., salmon, sardines).
  - Herbs & Spices: Use anti-inflammatory spices such as turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and rosemary.
  
- Opt for Whole, Unprocessed Foods: Fresh, frozen, or canned options without added sugar or sodium.
  
- Hydrate: Drink plenty of water, unsweetened green or black tea, and coffee in moderation.

- Fermented Foods: Add probiotics like kefir, yogurt (low-fat), and fermented vegetables to support gut health.

- Cook Mindfully: Steaming, baking, and sautéing are preferred over frying or grilling at high temperatures.

 Don’ts:
- Avoid Pro-Inflammatory Foods:
  - Refined grains (e.g., white bread, white pasta).
  - Packaged snacks (e.g., cookies, crackers, pastries).
  - Sugary drinks and sweets (e.g., candy, syrups, desserts with added sugars).
  - High-sodium and processed foods.

- Limit Saturated and Trans Fats:
  - Stay away from butter, margarine, lard, and high-fat dairy (e.g., cream, full-fat cheese).

- Minimize Red and Processed Meats:
  - Avoid fatty beef cuts, bacon, and charred meats. Opt for grass-fed beef if consumed.

- Reduce Alcohol: If drinking, limit to moderate red wine intake.

- Skip Artificial Additives: Stay clear of processed meat alternatives with artificial preservatives or fillers.

- Beware of Overcooking Proteins: High-heat cooking can form compounds that contribute to inflammation.

Consider with Care:
- Some foods like peanuts, eggs, and coconut oil may be tolerated well by some individuals but can be inflammatory for others. Monitor how your body responds.

By following these guidelines, you can reduce inflammation and promote overall health while enjoying a varied and satisfying diet.

The ideas in this list are from the book The Complete Anti-inflammatory Diet for Beginners by Dorothy Calimeris and Lulu Cook, RDN

​Adopting an anti-inflammatory diet can transform your health, but building new habits takes time and preparation. Here’s a simple day-by-day plan to ease into this lifestyle while setting yourself up for long-term success:

Day 1: Take Notes
Start a food journal to build awareness of your current eating habits. Note what, when, and how much you eat. This can be as simple as jotting in a notebook, using a tracking app, or snapping pictures of your meals. Awareness often leads to healthier choices naturally.

Day 2: Practice Mindful Eating
Focus on savoring each bite of food without distractions like screens. Notice the flavors, textures, and how the food makes you feel. This practice helps you tune in to your body’s hunger and fullness cues.

Day 3: Set SMART Goals
Establish clear, actionable goals for your dietary shift. For instance, “I will plan and shop for anti-inflammatory meals every Sunday.” Writing down your goals solidifies your commitment.

Day 4: Plan Ahead
Review your calendar and map out your approach. Schedule grocery shopping, meal prep, and contingency plans for special occasions. Preparation helps you stick to your goals, even during busy periods.

Day 5: Build a Support Network
Share your goals with a trusted friend or family member who can cheer you on and hold you accountable. Social support boosts motivation and resilience.

Day 6: Embrace Imperfection
Adopting an anti-inflammatory lifestyle isn’t about perfection. Plan for indulgences and focus on the overall pattern of your diet. When slip-ups happen, forgive yourself and refocus on your long-term goals.

Day 7: Commit to 30 Days
Research shows it takes 30 to 60 days to establish new habits. Expect challenges, but celebrate small wins. Lean on your support network and remind yourself of the long-term benefits of reduced inflammation.

Essentials for Success
- Mindset: Stay positive and use setbacks as learning experiences.
- Kitchen Tools: Stock up on essentials like knives, mixing bowls, and storage containers.
- Pantry Basics: Include spices like turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon, along with whole grains, nuts, and fresh produce.
- Holistic Health: Pair your diet with adequate sleep, hydration, mindfulness, and physical activity.

Start small, stay consistent, and watch your health transform. By the end of 30 days, this lifestyle will feel more natural, empowering you to live with greater vitality and less inflammation.

These ideas were gathered from the book The Complete Anti-Inflammatory Diet For Beginners by Dorothy Calimeris and Lulu Cook, RDN

Things will never be the same. People wished me well before the birth of my first child and told me to enjoy my last few months before he came. I have to say I am very glad for the experience of being a mother but I could do without the changes to my body pregnancies have brought me.
It was during my first pregnancy that I noticed a deep stretching, burning pain at my belly button area. I later came to find out that is my linea alba or white line, a band of connective tissue that connects the two rectus abdominus muscles. These are the "six pack" muscles that go down the center of the abdomen. This burning stretching pain should have been my first clue that I would have a rectus diastasis or a separation of the linea alba. But after he was born I didn’t notice pain there, in fact I didn’t have much pain at all. It wasn’t until I went back to work fulltime and my exercise regime was decreased to keep up with the responsibilities of work and taking care of baby that I started to have low back pain and a feeling of instability in my pelvis and at my pubic symphysis, this is the joint in the front of the pelvis where the two halves come together.
My sister is a different story, she has had three children and despite boxing, hot yoga and spinning and being in awesome shape she has a separation and instead of pain, she has bulging of the rectus diastasis. This is another presentation of the same problem, an intraabdominal pressure issue. It is not that she is weak, it is that her muscles are just confused about which ones should be working. So when she sits up from laying down, "pop" a little bulge occurs right down the middle of her belly. Other people do this same motion and instead of a bulge they get a deep pit between the two muscles.
Our bodies truly are amazing, they are able to go from a 28" waist, to having a basketball inside and back to a 28" waist all within a few months’ time. Why are we amazed then when the abdomen doesn’t go back to working the way it should? One reason is that it isn’t just the basketball that changes. There are many postural changes of pregnancy and postpartum baby care that help to perpetuate some of the changes that have occurred because of the basketball. In fact there are 85 joints in the torso that are attached or have influence on the stresses placed on the linea alba. Changes to the positions or functioning of any of these joints can cause muscle spasms in the surrounding muscles that actually fight against closure of the diastasis.
For example, the external oblique muscles are rotators of the trunk and they are attached to the six pack muscles. Therefore if I have a rib cage that is stuck open and out because my baby was pushing up into my ribs when I carried him, then my external oblique muscles are likely engaged in spasm or they turn on too soon when I go to move my body. This action works to continually pull the linea alba apart widening the gap and keeping us looking like we are still pregnant!
Though things will never be the same after baby there are a lot of plans and braces out now to finally help us get back to our pre-pregnancy function. Unfortunately the one size fits all plan doesn’t fit everyone. Working to improve posture, working on bringing the diaphragm back down to its original position (instead of staying up like the baby is still there under the ribs) and working to bring the muscle groups into better synergy to create the optimal tension on that linea alba are all things that need to be addressed to return to pain free and flatter post baby bellies! I’ll admit, I tried the braces, I tried the different plans, but it wasn’t until I delved deeper and took everything into consideration that I got better. You can get better too, it may not be the same as before but you can recover function, strength and stability.

So many of us dread the onset of winter because the icy temperatures seem to increase our pain. For that matter, many with surgeries on joints or past broken bones will complain of stiffness when the weather changes. Why does it hurt so much more in the cold?
To answer this question that many are facing these next few months, we should probably look to what causes us to feel pain in the first place. Pain is our body’s way of saying, “Hey, watch out, you are damaging me! Do something different!” But what if there is no danger or you’ve healed from the injury, but your body keeps acting like there is danger or an injury? What if there was never an injury, but you still have pain, and it’s worse when the temperatures drop?
Well there are some things you can do, and the first thing is to understand pain. It is not the same for every person. This is why it is so hard to describe and explain. What if I told you that just by understanding the way it is created in your body, or what causes you to have the sensation, it can actually help you to be less sensitive?


"Huh...You are telling me that just by understanding how pain is created in my body/mind I will feel less pain?"

That’s right, just by understanding it, your pain levels and sensitivity levels will decrease.
There’s another thing: If your visual system can see that you are doing something about your pain, to take the danger away, then your pain levels will decrease. Creating a management program will help address your symptoms, can decrease your sensitivity to pain, and can help you live a fuller life.
So how does this help with the cold? We can’t change the climate (unless you are like my parents and head down South for a month at a time), but we can change the state of your body right now. You see, pain is created in your body by neurotransmitters. If you have enough of them you get a message that feels like pain and starts a whole cycle of muscle guarding and discomfort. But the neurotransmitters are from all kinds of different inputs, like mechanical, temperature, and acidity. Regardless of where they come from, if you have enough of them they equal pain and start that same pain cycle.
So, the magic bullet for riding out winter in relative ease is to stick with your management program that addresses those things you do have control over, including dressing in layers to better control your environment. I know I own gloves and hats and warm boots but sometimes I feel like it is too much trouble to get all decked out. This is really not the right attitude to take on it though, because skimping on warm gear can mean I inch closer to that pain message. Even putting on the gloves, hat, and scarf can be something that your brain sees as addressing the danger and it may be the answer to keeping you in less pain this winter!
Want to learn more about pain? Check out the book Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley. Want to learn how you can create your own pain management program? A physical therapist, versed in pain neuroscience education, can help!

If you could do something to decrease stress, improve your body's ability to make vitamins, digest nutrients and decrease pain, would you? Our microbiome is ours to use or abuse, and it exists largely on the inside. Take a look at the shape of our digestive tract; the intestines are a twenty to twenty-five foot long tube lined with microvilli, the shag carpeting-like structure where digestion occurs. If you could flatten out the microvilli, the surface of our intestines would be the size of a tennis court. We need that much surface because there is so much activity in our intestines. Covering every inch are parts and pieces of the microbiome (bacteria, yeasts, fungi and viruses) packed in between the shags. The microbiome is a primary component of the immune system in the gut. Seventy percent of our entire immune system resides in the gut, and the microbiome comprises the majority of that system.
What is the microbiome?The microbiome is a community of bacteria, yeast and viruses that live in our guts, vaginal canals, nasal passages, mouths, throats, and on our skin. In the gut, it is critical for more than just digesting food; it is the control center for the whole body. The microbiome is linked to making vitamins, regulating metabolism and blood sugar and influences gene expression and brain chemistry. To exemplify this: for every message from the brain to the gut there are nine messages from the gut to the brain! Furthermore, your microbiome can weigh up to 5 pounds, nearly twice as much as our brains! There are 100 to 150 times more genes in our microbiome than the 23,000 genes in human DNA. There are 10X more cells of bacteria in our gut than all the cells in the rest of the body put together. Because of this, many experts have come to think of the microbiome as less like an additional organ in the body and more like a completely different organism, with a life of its own. For more information on the microbiome check out Dr. Tom O'Bryan's book The Autoimmune Fix at theDr.com.
What does this have to do with my pelvis?If a web search is done with just the search words microbiome and pelvis, 6 pages of results pop up! Scientists are trying to get to the bottom of the cause of pelvic pain and have drawn correlations between people with IC, overactive bladder, male and female pelvic pain, depression and anxiety and how their microbiomes are different from healthy controls. The reason this could be so impactful is that changes in the microbiome can have impact on sensitivity of the nerve endings that cause pain.
We are just hitting the tip of the iceberg with research in this area. Even in the infancy of research, one thing has been established; there is a statistically different microbiome in patients with just about any type of pelvic disorder compared with controls. This imbalance means there are higher levels of some bacteria and viruses and lower numbers of others, this is a term called dysbiosis. For the most part, I tell my patients that altered gut flora has been found to be detrimental to all kinds of pelvic issues.
So how do I improve my microbiome?Dr. DJ Klumpp suggests we should look toward therapy through mechanistic probiotics. Other researchers at this point are saying there is some evidence to supplement with lactobacillus probiotics. They see a particular decrease in the bacteria lactobacillus, which is why they are recommending probiotics with lactobacillus. That seems like a good idea on the surface, but a better plan is to improve your habitat for this amazing organism. It seems daunting because there are many factors at play, but decreasing stress is one way to make the microbiota thrive, oftentimes creating a positive feedback loop. Altered microbiota creates anxiety and increased stress, balanced microbiota creates decreased stress levels.
OK, so what can I do to improve my microbiota habitat?So, what are we to do when we are sick, stressed out and in pain? Make our insides hospitable to the microbiome by changing what we put into our mouths. In Dr. Mark Hyman's book, Food – What the Heck should I Eat? he describes the why's, and what to eat to clean up our diet so we can thrive. Here are a couple of hints regarding cleaning up our body to be more hospitable to the good bacteria, fungi and viruses that inhabit or no longer inhabit our guts.

• Avoid sugar and ALL processed foods.
• Add a LOT more vegetables—50-75% of each plate at each meal.
• Eat grass fed meats and organ meats.
• Avoid dairy and gluten (for most people).
• Eat 2-3 organic fruits a day.
• Add in non-pasteurized fermented foods like sauerkraut and Kimchi, and drinks like Kombucha. Fermented foods are an even better source of probiotics than a probiotic capsule.
• Decreasing stress levels and getting more sleep are also good ways to take on a lifestyle that would improve the microbiota.