The anti-inflammatory diet is not really a weight loss diet in the usual sense. Instead, it is the healthy way to live your life, all through your life, from early youth into your final senior years. Changing from the unhealthy American diet to a natural, healthy lifestyle is really surprisingly easy.
Within days after adopting the anti-inflammation diet, you will begin to see improvements in appearance, mood, energy, and your intellectual and focusing ability. You'll soon be able to notice lessening of joint aches and pains, and even symptoms of diseases like heart disease and diabetes will improve significantly as you increase your consumption of anti-oxidant rich, high fiber, colorful vegetables, fruit and nuts.
You will replace processed pro-inflammatory high-omega-6 vegetable oils (oils from corn, soybeans, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower and most other oils) and inflammatory saturated animal fats (from dairy products, red meats, pork, and farm raised poultry) with anti-inflammatory extra virgin olive oils that are rich in monounsaturated oleic omega-9 oils, and crammed with anti-oxidants. You'll enjoy other veggies rich in monounsaturated, delicious omega-9 oils, like avocado, macademia nuts, almonds, olives, and the new "high oleic" versions of safflower and sunflower oils.
And, you will be amazed that this new high fiber, high anti-oxidant, low processed sugar, low animal fats diet program will save you hundreds of dollars per month compared to your previous low fiber, low anti-oxidant, high saturated fats, low mineral, and high sugar diet. You will save thousands of dollars per year, and get healthy in the process!
Throughout your life unseen forces are shaping your health. As most people age, they usually progress through three distinct phases of health. To succeed in weight loss programs and diets, you absolutely must understand the three levels of health.
You start life in Level 1, which is a non-inflammation, non-insulin resistant state. Your body is able to maintain homeostasis -- your metabolism adjusts itself to maintain a steady weight and to fight diseases automatically. You look and feel good.
As you encounter infections and eat the wrong foods, you lose your ability to maintain a healthy balance. Infections could be similar to today's Bird Flu (H5N1) Asian Influenza, measles, mumps, pneumonia, the common cold, gum or tooth infections or a sinus problem. Inflammation increases each time you suffer one of these infections or eat high levels of sugars or "bad fats".
Each time you become inflamed, you struggle to get back to normal. But sometimes, you don't quite go all the way back. Your body "remembers" your infection and increases its "ready reserve" of inflammatory cytokines, keeping your system on a knife-sharp edge of readiness. Unfortunately, while being constantly ready for infection helps you survive the next infection, it exerts terrible wear-and-tear on your body's delicate tissues and interferes with the smooth functioning of many metabolic systems. Gradually, you move into Level 2, which is chronic low-level inflammation and insulin resistance.
Level 2 involves a powerful chain reaction of mutually reinforcing metabolic processes. Infection produces inflammation. Inflammation produces insulin resistance. Insulin resistance produces weight gain. Weight gain produces inflammatory cytokines leading to more insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance starves our muscles. They react by sending messages that lower our resting energy expenditure to conserve our reserves. Then, the insulin resistance makes us hungry in an effort to feed our starving muscles. Under these conditions, weight loss is almost impossible. We look "fat" to others, but our muscles "think" we're starving... at least chemically. Due to this process, grossly fat people are in fact starving. As a result of this starvation, we crave and finally eat more sugars, fast-burning "high glycemic load" starches and saturated fats. These energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods add to our disease. Eating them is preventing or slowing weight loss in spite of your dieting efforts.
As these conditions worsen, you finally begin to exhibit obvious diseases of Level 3 -- cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimer's, arthritis, stroke, cancer... To that list add acne vulgaris, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, benign prostatic hyperplagea, polycystic ovary disease, chronic headaches, cluster and migraine headaches, skin tags, many auto-immune diseases and so on. It's a big list.
The goal of the Level1Diet.com and the Food Guide Football™ is to return you to Level 1 ...
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The original FDA Food Guide Pyramid from 1992 is dead. It has been discarded finally by the FDA themselves. It was changed repeatedly to accommodate new research, and in 2005 it was updated with a new "sliding scale" dietary approach called My Pyramid.
A consumer research study performed by the USDA among consumers from 2002 to 2004 proved that most people are still confused about the Food Guide Pyramid. People are unclear about what to eat and why it's good for them. Today, the Pyramid approach remains confusing and unhelpful for most people. Consumers are not sure about serving sizes, and relative proportions of different types of food to include in their diet.
Scientists continue to argue about the actual details of the food approaches that ought to be recommended. Even the newer MyPyramid System remains controversial. The confusion and outright incorrect thinking behind the Food Guide Pyramid persists in many nutritional circles.
To replace the pyramid, we have developed a simple, easy to understand pictographic meal plan called the Food Guide Football™.
When we studied the kinds and amounts of foods that should be eaten on the state-of-the-art anti-inflammation diet, we found an interesting fact... they fit roughly into the shape of a traditional American football.
The football shape helps us show you what proportions the different kinds of food to place on your plate through the day. It is a relative size or layout of the foods on the plate -- the way you naturally see them when you sit at the table.
At the one small end are the "good fats" -- virgin olive oils and virgin coconut oils. Small servings of simple sugars and starches are minimized in the other small end.
Inside one white stripe are proteins from vegetables like beans, peas, nuts and seeds. The other stripe represents lean cuts of chicken, turkey, grass-fed beef or wild fish.
Finally, in the big central area are colorful, high antioxidant, high fiber, complex carbohydrates with a low glycemic index. The legal food list includes hundreds of fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits.
Antioxidant spices like ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, chile, cayenne and many herbs are powerful allies in the battle against inflammation. Green and brown teas are high on the list.
Let's get into the deadly serious anti-inflammation game. Are you ready for some football? ...
Definition of the Anti-Inflammation Diet
Research has shown that a low level of sub-clinical inflammation underlies and contributes to the causes of most degenerative diseases. Inflammation is associated with heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, liver and kidney diseases, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and most personality, sleep or mood disturbances. Certain aspects of the modern diet tend to generate inflammation, including eating too much fried food, vegetable oils high in omega-6 fats, eating too much saturated fat from animal products, and processed foods with high sugar content, trans-fats and low fiber. To reverse inflammation caused by the high sugar, high fat, low fiber diet, we eat a diet based on foods that reverse inflammation. Anti-inflammatory foods include colorful high fiber vegetables like sweet peppers, kale, parsley, celery, raw carrots, radishes, onions, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, cucumber, apples, pears, berries, nuts, plums, grapes, bananas, citrus fruits and so on. Fatty animal products like red meats and dairy are minimized. Lean cuts of chicken, turkey and fish are encouraged. Olive oils and avocado replace other unhealthy oils from corn, soybeans, safflower, and sunflower or other vegetable oils. Concentrated sweets are eliminated, including all bakery products like cookies, cakes, pies and breads. Most cereal grains are eliminated including rice, cream-of-wheat, boxed cereals like Wheaties, Corn Flakes, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, etc. All pasta is eliminated, including spaghetti, tortellini, rigatoni, etc. Mashed and stewed or overcooked products like mashed potatoes, carrots or boiled peas are limited. People on this anti-inflammatory diet tend to normalize their weight and reverse their heart disease and diabetes, and improve risks for cancer or heart attacks. Arthritis and Alzheimer's symptoms improve. In general, the anti-inflammation diet makes people healthier and improves their life in countless ways.
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Thursday, Nov. 19, 2010: FDA blocks Darvon (Propoxyphene), as well as Darvocet and other formulations containing the drug from further sale or use. Doctors are told to stop prescribing the drug and patients to stop taking the drug. Propoxyphene was used for pain relief. Recent research has proven it to be associated with significant risks for heart attacks. The FDA approved propoxyphene for use in 1957 and the drug came to the USA market in 1976. It has been used by millions of patients to relieve "mild to moderate" pain for almost 35 years. An untold number of people may have experienced serious heart attacks and died due to the drug, which caused the Food and Drug Administration to restrict it, finally. See the 
