I always thought I was pretty good with my food options, that I ate fairly healthy food and considered what food I put in my body. Most days I have a couple of pieces of fruit and at least one serve of vegetables. I don’t have too much chocolate or chips, and for the last twelve months, no takeaway food at all, though we do eat out a couple of times a week. I knew that I ate more now than years ago – Pete is a good cook – healthy awesome food, and that I now pretty much have three meals a day instead of one and a half. I could do with losing weight. I don’t get to exercise as much now, for three reasons, the knee operation, the long time in the car to and from work each day, so no real time to exercise, other than walk. It did come as a surprise to me that at the last lot of blood tests I was diagnosed with high cholesterol. Seeing as my Dad died at 56, when I was 10, of a related issue, and I am turning 50 this year, it was time to reassess my eating pattern.

I have already stopped smoking (coming up for two years now) and haven’t had any alcohol of any kind for more than seven years. I sure had my fair share of both in the ten years prior though, but was determined to overhaul my patterns for dealing with issues.

There are some foods recommended for lowering cholesterol. I read all I could find about these, and the most common recommended foods are oats and barley, nuts, fruit and vegetables, eggplants, beans, vegetable oils, soy, fish, green tea. So more fibre, less processed foods, more good fats, less bad fats. Less meat, red and white, no sugar, salt, all the things we all pretty much know. I am quite happy to eat weet bix or rolled oats and spinach for the rest of my life if it means I will be around to see my kids live their lives, and to retire and enjoy all the plans we have. I am not sure what Pete would make of such a diet change, though he wouldn’t have to follow the same diet.

Then I saw a post about the anti-inflammation diet. It peaked my interest. To summarise what this is all about, from my reading, is as follows. Most if not all dis ease or illness is a result of inflammation. When we stub our toe, jam our finger in a door, or bruise our knees for example, that is inflammation we can see. The inflammation that is discussed in the articles I read is the inflammation we cant see, the dis ease our body fights, that manifests as cancer, lupus, irritable bowel, food intolerances, infection, Alzheimer’s or dementia, even depression. Other examples, we can see, like eczema, or acne.

From my reading thus far, the types of foods we should be eating more of, to follow an anti-inflammatory diet include, leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, beans, beets, fruit, berries, oats, nuts, fish, good fats, turmeric, ginger, garlic, coconut oil, chia seeds, green tea and bone broth. This is a fairly basic summary, I am going to do heaps more research and if anyone is interested I will be happy to share my findings, and eventually my recipes, with you.

So why am I writing this? Not just to tell you about my change in diet, but to illustrate that we never stop learning and investigating new aspects in our lives, no matter how old we are. We are very lucky, that we live in an age where it is easy to find information to make informed life choices, new recipes, new ideas for food and exercise. We are fortunate that the world has evolved and that people have tried many food options, and have used a variety of natural alternative healing food and herb combinations, and that we can benefit from the wisdom of the ages.