- Hello, and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

If you suffer with a sore knee, an achy ankle, an angry elbow, or any of those painful symptoms of arthritis, no one has to tell you about inflammation and what it can do.

Fortunately for us, our Grover Silcox is here with a report on inflammation and some potential ways to deal with it.

- Grover, welcome.

Always great to see you.

- Good to be here, Brit.

- All right, so what do we need to know about inflammation?

- Well, you know, all of us have heard about inflammation.

You know, it's a very common topic, and the debilitating and painful effects it can have.

And certainly, that's the case with inflammatory arthritis and other forms of arthritis, and other conditions, as well.

- I guess the best way to treat it and understand it is to learn more about it.

- Absolutely.

You know, so many of us consider inflammation a bad thing, and it certainly can be if it gets out of hand.

When inflammation goes haywire or chronic, it can cause all kinds of problems for us.

We especially see this with arthritis, when joints such as the knees, fingers, ankles, and so on become puffy, tender, red, hot, and inflamed.

The pain can be excruciating.

It can prevent us from doing a whole host of everyday activities.

I recently spoke with Jessica DeLuise, physician assistant and culinary health expert, about inflammation and strategies for preventing or controlling it.

Jessica, welcome!

So good to see you.

- Good to see you, Grover.

Thanks for having me.

- Always great to get your information and insights, especially on a problem that affects millions of people - inflammation.

It seems like we're learning more and more about it all the time.

But why don't we start with a definition?

- I think the first thing we have to say about inflammation is it's complicated, it's very intricate, and there are many triggers and many pathways of inflammation.

But basically, what we have to remember is inflammation is our body's system for healing and for immunity.

So really, that is the overarching theme of inflammation.

- So, when you feel that heat and that soreness, that is actually the body's way of helping you?

- Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, I work at an urgent care all the time.

So, this is something that people are complaining of.

They come in, they've fallen, as an example - we fall, we twist our knee, we get blood flow immediately to that area because that'll bring all of those immune cells, our T cells, all of our antibodies, all of those macrophages that will look for infection.

So, all of those immune cells will flood the area.

It gets warm, because obviously, you're getting all that blood flow, and then, we have pain, and that triggers us to maybe stay off that leg and rest it a little bit more.

And that's our trigger to say, "Hey, something's going on here" and our body is working to fix it.

That's acute inflammation.

Acute inflammation can be pathologic, too.

We think about allergies, right?

That is an acute inflammatory process.

It's an exaggerated immune response.

Chronic inflammation is prolonged, over and over, inflammation when we get either recurrent exposure to toxins, or we get recurrent exposure to infection, or we have damage to joints that isn't quite healing properly.

That chronic inflammation can sometimes cause chronic disease, almost always actually can cause chronic disease.

And if we look at death and the most common causes of death, the majority of them have an inflammatory component.

So, it's important to moderate chronic inflammation.

But good inflammation is acute inflammation when it comes to healing and immunity.

- One of the big maladies, certainly for the older population, is arthritis.

And inflammation is at the root of it, isn't it?

- That's right, yeah, so there's specifically arthritis, there's osteoarthritis, there are also other types of arthritis that we have to remember, right?

Rheumatoid arthritis, which is autoimmune, or gouty arthritis, which is from that buildup of uric acid.

But I think, yeah, let's focus on osteoarthritis, or an arthritis that is often referred to as that wear-and-tear arthritis.

It's this kind of odd phenomenon, when we think about osteoarthritis, because we injure ourselves, right?

We have these injuries to our joints.

We get degeneration of some of the cartilages around the joint area, and then, we trigger inflammation because our body wants to heal.

But because we have that chronically, we actually get what's called remodeling of the joints.

So, we get bone-spurring, an osteophyte formation, which causes more pain, more swelling, and we kind of had this little nasty circle of osteoarthritis.

- Right, and so, you probably know what the symptoms are if you're suffering from chronic inflammation leading to osteoarthritis.

- Right, joint pain, joint stiffness primarily are what people are complaining of.

- Right, and it's impeding your ability to function and do the things that you normally like to do, or have to do.

- That's exactly right.

And then, because of that pain, we become more deconditioned.

We're not exercising as much.

We're not moving those joints or strengthening the muscles and all of those ligaments and tendons, and all of those structures that hold that joint nice and stable.

And so, it again becomes this nasty circle where we're getting more weak and more unstable because of pain, but because we are more weak and unstable, we'll to get more of that inflammatory response.

So, yeah, it can be a pretty nasty process.

- So, what are some things people can do about it?

- Always talk with your health care provider, right?

Look at - because we're talking about inflammation in a general sense, we can think about things like stroke, cardiovascular disease, degenerative neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, for example.

So, in general, just talk with your provider, get all of your levels in your blood checked, get your cholesterol and blood pressure checked, and anything else that's relevant to you - specifically for joint pain, stretching and some gentle exercise, so things like swimming can decrease that impact on your joints, strengthening exercises to strengthen all of the muscles around the joints and keep them nice and stable, and then, eat a whole food diet.

I mean, Grover, these things that we talk about in terms of whole food diet, making sure that things are almost exactly how you might find them in earth, can be really beneficial for general overall wellness and general overall inflammation.

Omega-3 fatty acids have an anti-inflammatory effect.

It's been shown they decrease some of those cytokines or those triggers for the inflammatory process.

So, things like both your fatty fish, your salmon, your tuna, your cod liver or fish oil, and then, some plant sources, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, things like that.

Turmeric and ginger, kind of plus or minus here.

But some studies do show some benefit when it comes to overall joint pain.

And then, tart cherry juice, which is something that's fun.

Talk with your healthcare provider again about all of these because juice is sugar, right?

It can have an effect in our blood sugar, but tart cherry juice has been shown to decrease recurrent gouty arthritis attack, and has shown some decrease in pain and stiffness associated with joint arthritis and joint pain.

- Wow.

- Pretty cool.

- And I'm sure there are millions of ways to combine those ingredients.

- I mean, just right here, I am thinking of all the ideas.

We can do a beautiful veggie frittata.

We could do a stir fry.

You're eating these whole foods, remember, Grover, these have not only implications on inflammation, but they're full of these antioxidants which can moderate inflammation, sure, they're full of vitamin C, which can help our immune system.

We already talked about that being an integral part of inflammation, but also fiber protein, things that will fill us up, minerals, vitamins that will nourish our bodies.

So, a whole food diet is so important in so many ways.

But I mean, listen, you could take a sweet potato, slice it up, and then, smear some avocado on it with some with some nuts on top and do like a really fun, sweet potato toast.

So many ideas, so many things to do here.

- We always hear about antioxidants and the oxidation process, and how does that relate to inflammation?

Because we're always looking for antioxidants, right?

Because we want to eliminate inflammation.

- Antioxidants help to neutralize free radicals, which are part of what we call oxidative stress, which is what triggers that whole inflammatory response, or one of the inflammatory responses, right?

So, oxidative stress is neutralized with antioxidants.

Right?

It's kind of right there in the name.

So, we're getting antioxidants in anthocyanins from our tart cherry juice, like I referenced earlier, lycopene in our tomatoes, which, you know, this is kind of interesting.

I grew up in an Italian household, lycopene, a very potent antioxidant, is more bioavailable in the cooked form.

So, we always ate tomato sauce growing up.

So, I like to dunk all my bread in that tomato sauce, get all my lycopene.

Peppers, they're going to get all those carotenoid antioxidants in bell peppers.

That's responsible for that beautiful orange and red color.

So, yeah, that's how antioxidants play into that inflammatory process.

- Why don't we bring it all together with some take-home tips?

- Talk with your health care provider, eat for the most part as much as you can and however you're able to, right, because I know it can be very stressful.

Eat a whole food diet and decrease your stress.

And that is important.

Rather than just eliminating food groups, manage your stress.

Chronic stress can also play into chronic inflammation, finding things that work for you in your lifestyle, whether it is canned items to keep in your cupboard, frozen items to keep in your freezer, do the best you can.

And yeah, eat the rainbow.

I think that's kind of a take-home point, too, as much as we're eating all these different foods here on our plate, we're getting all of those beautiful antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.

- Well, I'm going to leave it on "eat the rainbow", because that's such a positive, positive image.

Thank you so much, Jessica, for all your help in giving us insights and tips for controlling inflammation and all the nasty things that it causes.

I appreciate it.

I know our viewers do, too.

Thanks so much.

- Thanks so much, Grover.

It's been a pleasure.

- The three most common forms of what is referred to as inflammatory arthritis include rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and gouty arthritis.

But chronic inflammation more or less plays a role in many other types, as well.

Overall, according to the CDC, an estimated 58.5 million American adults suffer with arthritis, and it's the leading cause of work disability in the US.

- Grover, it's amazing how inflammation is actually the body's way of healing itself, I guess, except when it becomes chronic or out of control.

- Absolutely.

And then, it can be very painful.

Fortunately, there are lots of anti-inflammatory medications, many of them over-the-counter.

And, of course, there are healthy strategies for preventing it and mitigating it, such as the ones that Jessica outlined in our interview.

- Absolutely.

But she also mentioned that it's a good idea to go consult with your doctor before taking any medications or doing any of those.

- Right, absolutely.

- All right, Grover, as always, thank you so much for that great information.

- My pleasure.

All right, that'll do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.