Transcription
A few years ago, I was in constant pain. My stomach ached every day. I was exhausted, and I couldn't think straight, and I felt like I was losing myself. And I was a doctor myself. I had the degree, I had the title, but I couldn't fix my problems.
Every day I woke up feeling exhausted. I had gut pain, brain fog, and fatigue, which was so crushing that I couldn't function at all. And when I asked for help from other medical specialists, they said, "Your labs are normal, and we can't help you." That was a big shocker for me because the system I was part of failed me. But that was also a wake-up call for me. And what I discovered, nearly after losing myself, about inflammation, about healing and food, completely changed my life. And that's what I wanted to share with you today. My powerful anti-inflammatory routine of what I eat every day that changed my life completely.
Hi, I'm Dr. Anul Gupta, a former Cleveland Clinic functional medicine physician. I help people with chronic diseases in healing their body in natural ways. After completing my family medicine residency, I was working in my dream job helping others. But I couldn't help myself. Acid reflux burned my chest, and the fatigue was dragging me down, and the pain was really unbearable. I was gaining weight. I developed fatty liver issues, and plus, one day, eczema also showed up on my body. I went to multiple doctors and got multiple different tests, but everything came back normal. I was suffering each and every day, and unfortunately, nobody had any answers. They kept on adding more and more pills to my regimen. And at one time, they also told me that it was all in my head. But I knew something else had been going on in my body. And I dove into research. I discovered functional medicine and learned how inflammation was damaging my body. I made some changes in my lifestyle, my diet, my stress management, exercising, and within weeks, I felt alive again. I lost 40 lbs. My energy soared, my mind cleared, and even my skin healed, and I was able to reverse my fatty liver also. And so I wanted to share with you, if I can do it, you can also do it.
During this time, food became my medicine. And today, I'm so excited to share with you my daily routine that helped me to kill inflammation in my body completely. And these were simple recipes. And by consistently following these things in my daily routine, my inflammation went away completely. So let's get started, and let me share with you my anti-inflammatory routine with you.
The first thing that I do as soon as I wake up is have this anti-inflammatory tea. This tea has simple ingredients, but over the course of time, this made a very huge change for me. How do you make this anti-inflammatory tea? For this, you need one cup of warm water, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, half a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger, one teaspoon of lemon juice, and you need half a teaspoon of either extra virgin olive oil or extra virgin coconut oil, and then a pinch of black pepper. And basically, you just warm up one cup of water and add all of the above ingredients into this warm water. Do not boil the ingredients. Just warm water is the key over here. Let it sit for five to six minutes. You strain it, and then you drink it. If this is too strong for you, you can always add some honey, but I prefer taking it without honey.
Now, what is special about this tea? Turmeric and ginger are very powerful anti-inflammatory herbs. They block the NF-kappa B pathway, thereby reducing inflammation in your body instantly. The lemon juice and the coconut oil or the olive oil act as detox agents to cleanse all the toxins from your liver, thereby reducing toxins and inflammation in your body. So this is not a simple drink, and it was a really big game-changer for me because it started my day on the right track.
After drinking this tea, I will do a 10 to 15 minute workout, which can be either a cardio exercise on the elliptical or a treadmill, or sometimes weight training with my own body weights.
Then comes the time for breakfast. It took me a long time to understand breakfast was the most important meal of my day, and I need to prioritize my breakfast to make it anti-inflammatory so that my body can heal completely. So for that, I created my own anti-inflammatory smoothie, which actually took me a couple of months to master it. So here's the recipe. So for this, you need one scoop of protein powder. Either you can use vegan protein powder made from pea protein or chia seed protein, or you can do collagen protein powder. Do not use whey protein powder because that is not good in the morning to use. After that, I will use two tablespoons of soaked chia seeds overnight into it, five overnight soaked almonds into it, half an inch of ginger into it, one handful of spinach leaves into it. And sometimes I will add a fruit, which can either be half a cup of blueberries, strawberries, or half an apple. And then I will just add water and ice, and I will blend this smoothie. And this would be my breakfast.
Now, smoothies are a breakfast trend, but this is not a trend. This is actually your mitochondrial fuel. It gives you the right amount of protein, good fats, good fiber, lot of antioxidants and minerals, which is needed by your body and your mitochondria to start fueling your body properly. So I will recommend to you using this smoothie as your breakfast as many days as possible because this is going to help rejuvenate your body in the morning.
And then comes the time for lunch. In case I do get hungry between my breakfast and lunch, so typically my snacks are nuts and seeds. Especially I love pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. I roast them myself and add a little bit of sea salt to it, as well as a pinch of black pepper. And this snack again fuels my body without raising my blood sugar or inflammation in my body.
Now let's talk about lunch. So typically for my lunch, I will start with a salad. So in that salad, I will put some greens, whether it is lettuce, spinach, or any other leaves into it. Then it has cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados into it. So I start with this salad, and then after that comes my protein. My protein choices are either lentils or chickpeas during this time, as I'm a vegan. But if you do eat animal proteins, then roasted chicken or fish would be a good option along with your lunch also. So one cup of lentil soup or one cup of chickpeas is what I will have. Then after my protein comes my grains. My grain choices are either half a cup of brown rice or half a cup of quinoa. And on top of my brown rice and quinoa, I add my good fat, which can be one teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil or one teaspoon of A2 Indian ghee. So that's my lunch, which is power-packed with a lot of varieties of vegetables, good quality protein, good quality fats, as well as dense carbohydrates. Again, all of these things help to reduce inflammation in my gut as well as in my body.
Then comes the time for dinner time. In dinner time, I try to avoid grains as much as possible, and I try to have an early dinner between 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. So that way, I have an intermittent fasting window of around 12 to 14 hours in my day. For typical dinners, again, I will start with a salad. Or if I'm not in the mood of salad, then I will just sauté some vegetables like broccoli and onions and garlics and some greens with it, and then drizzle some olive oil and eat those sautéed vegetables. So both with lunch and dinner, I start them with eating vegetables, and that's something that you should also be doing. Start with your vegetables and eat your carbohydrates in the end. So I start with my vegetables, which can be either a salad or sautéed vegetables. Then go to my protein, which either is a variation of lentil soup or sometimes I cook beans and eat them also. I will try to use turmeric and ginger with my dinner because that improves my digestion and also sends signals to my body to start reducing inflammation in the night when I'm sleeping. With my protein, which can be either a lentil soup or beans. Then I will add good fats, which can be half an avocado, or it can be nut butters like almond butter or sunflower seed butter. And then sometimes, if I'm really hungry, I will have a side cup of coconut milk, where sometimes I will add some stevia or some cardamom into it to add some flavor to it. So that's my dinner. I will not eat anything after my dinner.
And then comes the bedtime. My bedtime ritual is that I will turn off all screen time one hour before my bedtime. I will typically read a book, and I make sure that I do a 10 to 15 minutes of meditation before I sleep because that helps me in going into a deep sleep phase and also gives signals to my body to start producing the right hormones, which is melatonin, to improve my sleep quality and decrease my cortisol levels.
So this is it, a very simple routine with easy recipes which anybody can follow, which has helped in reducing my inflammation. The key over here is consistency. Most people will do this routine for a day or two and then leave it. What I learned was that consistency is the key. If you keep doing it day after day, weeks after that, you will see amazing results. Typically, it took me two weeks to start seeing a change in my body. The first difference I saw was that I felt my gut was working better, my bloating was less, my gas was less, as well as my bowel movements were better. Around the three weeks' time is where I started noticing that my energy was better, as well as my mood was consistently better too. My stress levels were low, as well as my anxiety was also low. And by the four-week time, I have already lost 8 lbs when I was following this routine. So this worked for me really good. And since the time I've shared this routine with several of my patients who saw similar results, and today I shared this with you also so you can implement it in your life and see amazing results of reducing inflammation and getting your life back.
At that time, I did not have good quality supplements to support my journey. But you have this opportunity of getting good quality supplements to support your initial journey, where Inflamm is a great supplement which I have created, which has all the right herbs to reduce inflammation in your body. If you want to buy it, the link will be in the description. Please try this routine and share in the comment section what difference you felt in your body. I hope you like this video. If you do, please like and subscribe to my channel, as well as share this video with others who can benefit from this great information. Until next time, take care.