Immune system misbehavior threatens your body, making you more likely to develop diabetes and heart problems. But you can take a big step toward reining in this destructive immune inflammation at dinner tonight.
Just eat less.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that our penchant for packing in way too much food at just about every meal – and in-between meals – is not just adding pounds around the waistline.
More calories causes serious problems in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus – the area primarily responsible for keeping the body’s energy supply in balance.
When the hypothalamus starts malfunctioning, even if your weight is normal, it leads to inflammation in several organs that endangers your health.
In metabolic terms, the difficulties start when the hypothalamus, stimulated by your overly enthusiastic efforts at breakfast, lunch and dinner, starts playing around with a protein by the name IKKß/NF-κB.
Normally, the hypothalamus never messes with IKKß/NF-κB. But, apparently, we don’t live in normal times.
“This pathway is usually present but inactive in the brain,” says researcher Dongsheng Cai
Cai admits he doesn’t really know why IKKß/NF-κB is even in the hypothalamus and primed to start causing inflammation. He guesses it might have played a role in innate immunity, the body’s first line of defense against infectious disease, eons ago.
“In today’s society,” he says, “this pathway is mobilized by a different environmental challenge —overnutrition.” he says. Once you are in the habit of overeating day after day, he notes, “..the pathway leads to a number of dysfunctions, including resistance to insulin and leptin,” which regulate blood sugar and appetite.
When you gain belly fat, the fat in your abdomen releases chemicals that boost inflammation in your body that makes you more prone to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. But this study shows that just overeating all the time also leads to inflammation, even before the belly fat appears.
The two factors – being overweight and eating too much – set off a vicious cycle of increasing inflammation that endangers your health.
One of the first things you can do to interrupt this process is to simply eat less. Stop eating your meals before you feel completely full.
In order to feel more satisfied on less food, you can do two things.
- Eat your carbs in the form of fruits and vegetables. They’re high in fiber that fills you up faster. Also, eat fewer foods sweetened with high fructose corn sugar – studies show that the fructose in those processed foods make you feel less full than natural sugar.
- Eat protein with healthy fats first. Protein and fat signal the hunger hormones in your brain that you’ve eaten – that you have enough nutrients and that you’re full. This feeling lasts a long time and it’s why you can go much longer during the day without being hungry if you eat eggs for breakfast instead of a bagel or grain cereal.
