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Could Your Food Be Fueling Inflammation? – Nutrition

Could Your Food Be Fueling Inflammation? – Nutrition

Jennifer Levine-Emdur, MS, RD, CNSC, explains how eating inflammatory foods may affect how you feel—especially when it comes to fatigue, joint pain, or discomfort.

Have you ever woken up after a full night’s sleep only to feel sluggish, stiff, and just a little “off”? Maybe you power through the day with work, errands, and family obligations, but that underlying fog never quite lifts. It’s frustrating, and it’s more common than you think.

When this happens regularly, it might not just be poor sleep or stress. It could be inflammation quietly building in your body. And while there’s no magic pill to fix that feeling, there may be a surprisingly simple starting point: the food on your plate.

What Is an Anti-Inflammation Diet? Who Does It Benefit?

You’ve probably heard of superfoods—nutrient-rich foods that offer health benefits beyond basic nutrition. An anti-inflammatory diet builds on that idea, focusing on ingredients that help calm rather than trigger the body’s immune response. This isn’t a restrictive trend or a short-term cleanse. It’s a sustainable approach to eating that supports your body’s ability to function, recover, and thrive.

When inflammation lingers over time, it can lead to symptoms like joint pain, brain fog, bloating, and low energy. The anti-inflammatory diet aims to quiet those signals by giving your body the tools it needs to heal. This includes foods rich in antioxidants, phytochemicals (plant compounds), and fiber, all of which help reduce harmful inflammation and protect healthy cells.

Understanding Inflammation: When It Helps and When It Hurts

Not all inflammation is harmful. In fact, it’s your body’s natural defense mechanism. When you get injured or exposed to viruses, bacteria, or allergens, your immune system jumps into action. Inflammation helps fight these threats and start the healing process. Ideally, once the threat is gone, the inflammation resolves, and balance is restored.

But when inflammation becomes chronic, meaning it sticks around even when it’s no longer needed, it can start to do more harm than good. Prolonged inflammation damages healthy tissue, disrupts normal immune function, and contributes to disease.

This is especially relevant in rheumatic autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and ankylosing spondylitis. In these disorders, the immune system mistakenly targets healthy tissue, causing ongoing pain, swelling, and fatigue. While medications are often required to control the disease process, nutrition plays a valuable role in supporting the body’s ability to manage inflammation more effectively.

How Chronic Inflammation Affects Overall Health

When inflammation doesn’t shut off, it can quietly pave the way for a wide range of health issues. These may include:

  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Certain cancers
  • Hypertension
  • Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
  • Obesity
  • Type 2 diabetes

Low-grade inflammation can also worsen fatigue, digestive problems, joint pain, and even mood disorders. Left unmanaged, it places extra stress on the body and makes it harder to recover from illness or injury.

Fortunately, your daily habits—including how you eat and move—can make a significant difference.

The Stress-Inflammation Connection: Why Your Mind Matters

Chronic stress doesn’t just affect your mood—it has a powerful effect on your body’s inflammatory response. When you’re stressed, your body releases cortisol and other hormones. But when stress becomes constant, these same signals can disrupt immune regulation and fuel inflammation instead of calming it.

This is especially important when considering hypertension. Long-term stress, poor sleep, and a sedentary lifestyle can all contribute to elevated blood pressure, which is closely tied to systemic inflammation. Left unchecked, this creates a cycle of strain on the heart and vessels, increasing the risk for heart disease, stroke, and other serious conditions.

Managing stress through movement, mindfulness, healthy sleep habits, and proper nutrition is a key part of reducing inflammation and protecting your cardiovascular health.

The Role of Food: What You Eat Matters

An anti-inflammatory diet is built around whole, nutrient-dense foods that contain natural compounds to help quiet the immune system when it’s overactive. Look for these foods:

  • Colorful fruits and vegetables (rich in antioxidants and fiber)
  • Fatty fish like salmon or sardines (a source of omega-3 fatty acids)
  • Whole grains such as barley, bran, oats, quinoa, and brown rice
  • Legumes including beans, chickpeas, and lentils
  • Mono-unsaturated fats like avocados, olive oil, nuts, nut butters, seeds
  • Poly-unsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids like walnuts, flaxseeds, chia seeds, salmon, herring, sardines, and mackerel
  • Herbs and spices like turmeric, ginger, and garlic
  • Dark chocolate with at least 70 percent or higher cocoa solids
  • Polyphenols such as berries, dark chocolate, tea, apples, citrus fruits, soybeans, and coffee

Together, these foods help reduce inflammation, protect cells from damage, and support digestion, brain health, and energy levels. The more color on your plate, the more nutritional benefit you’re likely to get.

What to Limit: Pro-Inflammation Triggers

Just as some foods calm inflammation, highly processed and packaged foods can make it worse. Common culprits include:

  • Refined sugars, sugary beverages, and high-fructose corn syrup
  • Red and processed meats like bologna, salami, bacon, sausage, hot dogs, and most lunch meats
  • White bread, pasta, and rice with refined carbohydrates
  • Commercial baked goods like snack cakes, cookies, pies, and brownies
  • Fried foods and fast foods
  • Full-fat dairy from cream and butter, partially hydrogenated oils, fatty cuts of meat and poultry, and foods high in saturated fats
  • Microwave popcorn, margarine, refrigerated biscuits and doughs, and foods with trans fats and additives
  • Excess alcohol

While occasional indulgences are part of life, a regular pattern of eating these pro-inflammatory foods can worsen symptoms and increase your risk for long-term health problems.

Inflammation and Chronic Illness: Nutrition Support for Complex Conditions

Many individuals managing chronic or rare disorders rely on specialty pharmacy therapies, including infusion or injectable medications. These therapies can treat conditions including:

  • Autoimmune disorders
  • Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis
  • Lupus
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Myasthenia gravis
  • Primary immunodeficiencies
  • Psoriatic arthritis
  • Rheumatoid arthritis

These conditions often involve an overactive immune system that mistakenly targets healthy tissue, triggering persistent inflammation. An anti-inflammatory diet can complement specialty treatment by helping to reduce flare-ups, protect healthy tissue, and improve gut health, which plays a major role in immune function.

This integrative approach—blending evidence-based therapies with thoughtful lifestyle support—can help you feel stronger and more in control of your health.

Making the Switch: Food as a Lifestyle, Not a Diet

There’s no need to overhaul your entire diet overnight. Start small. Add more vegetables to your dinner, swap refined grains for whole grains, and try new recipes featuring anti-inflammatory ingredients. These gradual changes are more likely to become lasting habits.

Diets are temporary. This approach is about building a new way of eating that supports your health for the long run. Apply it to every meal and you will notice how much better you feel, one plate at a time.

Bottom Line: You Deserve to Feel Good

Your health is a lifelong journey, and nutrition is one of your most powerful tools. The anti-inflammatory diet is more than just a list of foods, it’s a roadmap to help you feel stronger, clearer, and more resilient each day.

By choosing nutrient-rich meals, staying active, and managing stress, you’re giving your body what it needs to thrive. These small daily choices reduce inflammation, support immune balance, and improve overall well-being.

It’s not a trend. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s here to stay.

Try Eating Anti-Inflammatory: Here’s Your Sample Meal Plan

See for yourself how an anti-inflammatory diet supports your immune system, reduces chronic symptoms, and helps manage conditions like arthritis. Here’s your sample meal plan to tie it all together.

Breakfast

  • Option 1: Oatmeal with berries, nuts, and a drizzle of honey
  • Option 2: Greek yogurt with sliced fruit and a sprinkle of flax seeds
  • Option 3: Scrambled eggs with spinach and whole-wheat toast

Lunch

  • Option 1: Salad with grilled chicken or fish, mixed greens, and a vinaigrette dressing
  • Option 2: Lentil soup with a side of whole-grain bread
  • Option 3: Turkey or hummus sandwich on whole-grain bread with lettuce, tomato, and avocado

Dinner

  • Option 1: Salmon with roasted vegetables (broccoli, carrots, etc.) and quinoa
  • Option 2: Chicken stir-fry with brown rice and plenty of colorful vegetables (bell peppers, snap peas, etc.)
  • Option 3: Vegetarian chili with beans, corn, and tomatoes

Snacks

  • Fruits (apples, bananas, oranges)
  • Nuts (almonds, walnuts)
  • Vegetables with hummus
  • Hard-boiled eggs
  • Plain yogurt with berries

References:

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Articles
July 28, 2025
Jennifer Levine-Emdur

Jennifer Levine-Emdur, MS, RD, CNSC

Senior Clinical Nutrition Specialist

Jennifer Levine-Emdur specializes in Enteral and Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN). She has been a practicing dietitian for 24 years, working with both pediatric and adult populations. She strives to make patients’ homecare experience on nutrition support as safe and supportive as possible.