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Summary
On episode 262 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Beverly Lynn Bennett, a vegan chef, baker, writer, and animal advocate who has written more than a dozen books, including Almond Flour, Spiralized Kale, and her latest, Anti-Inflammatory Foods and Recipes.
Beverly explains how a serious back injury in a restaurant kitchen, which left her with a permanently compressed vertebrae, led her away from a surgery-first doctor and toward healing through diet and lifestyle instead. Coach Allan walks through the biology of inflammation itself: histamines, eicosanoids, cytokines, and C-reactive proteins, and why the process is meant to heal you, not hurt you, until it becomes chronic.
The two also get into which foods fight chronic inflammation, how Beverly rebuilt her diet around anti-inflammatory smoothies and whole foods, and why listening to your own body is the best tool you have for knowing what’s working.
Links
- https://veganchef.com
- https://bookpubco.com
Key Takeaways
- Inflammation is a healing process, not automatically a bad thing. Coach Allan explains that histamines, eicosanoids, and cytokines are the body’s way of mobilizing white blood cells to repair an injury, and shutting that process down too early, say with an anti-inflammatory right after a sprain, can actually slow healing.
- Beverly rebuilt her health after a severe back injury using diet instead of surgery. A first doctor pushed straight to cortisone shots and surgery with a real risk of paralysis; she chose physical therapy, yoga, and anti-inflammatory foods instead, and says her mobility has improved rather than worsened since 2002.
- C-reactive protein is the marker that shows a doctor how much inflammation has been in your system for the past few days. Unlike histamines and cytokines, which clear out fast, C-reactive protein lingers in the blood, so an elevated result signals your body is actively fighting something.
- Chronic inflammation is linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, and Alzheimer’s. Beverly notes that higher omega-6 intake relative to omega-3 has been tied to greater Alzheimer’s incidence, along with blood clots, irregular heartbeat, and increased insulin levels.
- The balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats drives a lot of that inflammation risk. Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory while omega-6s, common in many nuts and seeds, are pro-inflammatory, so the ratio between them matters more than avoiding any one food group.
- “Eating the rainbow” is Beverly’s simplest rule for getting a wide range of anti-inflammatory nutrients. She builds meals, like her eat-the-rainbow salad with rainbow chard, multiple colors of kale, beets, and carrots, around variety instead of leaning on one single “superfood.”
- Fermented foods belong in an anti-inflammatory diet. Beverly includes homemade sauerkraut and pickles in her book because fermented foods support gut health, which ties back into the body’s overall inflammatory load.
- Chronic inflammation shows up in visible ways, like skin, energy, and how you feel first thing in the morning. Beverly says her skin and stiffness are her own early warning signs, and Coach Allan calls your skin and eyes a daily report card on what you did the day before.
“I don’t like to pop the pill. I’d rather have something that was real, real food, real sources, things I know what they are.”
Beverly Lynn Bennett
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