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The wellness industry is as weird and wild as ever, with more of us looking to alternative ways to stay healthy and improve our wellness. But while wellness tells us to drink the green juice, shouldn't we be questioning what's actually in it?
Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a deep dive into our love-hate relationship with the weird and wonderful world of wellness, self-development and spirituality. How do you look after yourself in the age of anxiety? How can you tell what to believe and what's bullshit?
Join us, Katie, a yoga teacher and coach, and Annabel, a writer about wellness, as we explore the world of wellness and self-improvement and learn how to do wellness, well.
[00:00:00] Katie Gordon: Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a podcast looking at how to navigate the wellness industry well. Hosted by me, Katie Gordon, and Annabel Lee.
[00:00:15] Annabel Lee: Each episode, we cover a different aspect of wellness and self improvement, looking at ethics, scandals, and red flags.
[00:00:22] Katie Gordon: Hi, Annabel.
This week, we're going to be talking about inflammation.
[00:00:28] Annabel Lee: Great, because I don't know what that means.
[00:00:32] Katie Gordon: Well, to be honest, I'm a bit sketchy as well. I've done quite a lot of reading. It's this massive topic. There's a massive book that I've looked at called Inflamed, Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Rupa Maya and Raj Patel, which is really interesting but basically opened up the topic to a whole thing. You can talk about inflammation in many different ways. So I'm just going to read a little bit from the book and then we'll maybe circle around it.
[00:01:03] Annabel Lee: Great.
[00:01:03] Katie Gordon: And see if we come to any sort of understanding.
[00:01:06] Annabel Lee: that Something that keeps popping up, I keep seeing it, I keep hearing about how everything is causing inflammation or inflammation is like the problem, cause of everything. All my problems, joint problems, like...
[00:01:22] Katie Gordon: Cancer. All that.
[00:01:24] Annabel Lee: Yeah and because I had like joint issues and hip surgery last year and so I was like, Oh my God, is it inflammation? And I just, I still don't understand. So great, this sounds brilliant.
[00:01:34] Katie Gordon: Ok so, from this book, it says, Your body is inflamed. If you haven't felt it yet, you or someone close to you soon will. Symptoms to look for include uncontrolled weight gain or unexpected weight loss, skin rashes, difficulty with memory, fever, trouble breathing and chest pain. Inflammation accompanies almost every disease in the modern world, heart disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer's, depression, obesity, diabetes and more. Your body is part of a society inflamed. Covid has exposed the combustible injustices of systemic racism and global capitalism. So this book talks about inflammation in the body, inflammation in politics, in the world, in the structures of the world, which is super interesting but quite hard to summarise on a podcast.
So I think what might be helpful is to think about what inflammation is in the body. So it's like your immune system's response to something. So like for a cut or something, it'll get red and inflamed, which is like protective, so you are careful with it, as I understand it and there's also things, other things in your body and it's helpful, right? So short term inflammation is a healthy response by our immune system. So a foreign invader enters the body such as bacteria, viruses, allergens, or an injury, your immune cells acts quickly. So, as healing takes place, the inflammation subsides. So the inflammation that we see on social media and everywhere is long term inflammation, which as this book says, there is evidence that it is a factor maybe, maybe a cause, nobody really knows, I don't think, exactly what role it plays in things like heart disease, cancer, pressure and Alzheimer's, all those things. But there is also some research on how diets can impact on inflammation, stress, racism, loads of different things, politics, anything you can think of that causes stress, maybe can be implicated in inflammation.
[00:03:55] Annabel Lee: Oh, okay. So it's not like saying that something is inflammatory like a politician that you disagreed with is an inflammatory comment, but that can literally cause inflammation.
[00:04:09] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I think that it can be inflammatory in that they stoke like a fire, but it can literally cause inflammation in your body. Yeah. So, in the book, Deep Medicine, refer back to how they talk about inflammation in the body, which is that in a healthy balance system, once the mending has occurred, inflammation subsides, when the damage keeps coming, the repair cannot fully happen, leaving the inflammatory response running, the system of healing then turns into one that creates more harm.
[00:04:43] Annabel Lee: So then like if you're chronically stressed and you feel unwell or you get unwell, something, you, get a virus but the stress in your body means that you can't like shake it.
[00:04:56] Katie Gordon: Yeah, that's a good way to think of it, of like, or there can be autoimmune stuff going on, which can be linked to or caused by inflammation, as I understand it, so I shout if I'm wrong. So this of course has now become something to sell to people.
So anti inflammatory diets are a big thing. There's been a big jump on about ultra processed foods, how they're all terrible for you. Interestingly, that only seems to refer to things like chicken nuggets and not to things like supplements, which are also ultra processed. So I think there's quite an interesting...
[00:05:38] Annabel Lee: Classism.
[00:05:39] Katie Gordon: Classism and ableist conversation about what we should and shouldn't be eating. We should be eating, you know, whole foods, vegetables, fruit, no, nothing processed. We should be making our own bread, if you follow these things to the letter. But actually, if you look at shop bought bread, there are good things about it. It's not a terrible food. Yes, there are better breads probably to eat in terms of fibre and grains, but they're also fortified with vitamins and minerals.
So, this idea that we shouldn't be eating any of these things and we should be eating all of these things to target inflammation is being repackaged and sold and also, I don't think that the science is exactly, surprise, surprise, where the wellness industry thinks it is. So it's not like if you eat a Mediterranean diet, you won't get cancer. It's that it might help.
[00:06:40] Annabel Lee: Yeah, because you can go on social media and you see these videos. I'm seeing loads of people in supermarkets now that's coming up saying like, don't eat this, don't eat this, this is terrible and, but I'm just like, I have no, sorry, but I haven't got the energy to think about all of these things and it's so complicated and like, buy these biscuits, not this, but these biscuits. It's so overwhelming, and I wonder if it's deliberately overwhelming in a way, because how can anybody think about every single thing that...
[00:07:13] Katie Gordon: Well, also, like, if you've got kids or people with health conditions or stuff, like, it's not as simple as like, you make a plate of whole food and then you eat that plate of whole food.
[00:07:22] Annabel Lee: Who eats, what kid eats a plate of whole food? I'm sorry. But...
[00:07:28] Katie Gordon: I don't know many.
[00:07:29] Annabel Lee: You know, ultimately, and it's kind of a bit similar to the breastfeeding and bottle feeding debate, isn't it? Like, which I think we've kind of got to the place where most people I think now think doesn't matter as long as the baby's getting some food, but it's kind of similar with older children, I think, as long as they're eating something, that's good, isn't it? Because you can't, would I rather my children didn't eat if they refused to eat, like, a plate of vegetables? Like, obviously I would rather they ate a fish finger than nothing.
[00:08:00] Katie Gordon: Yeah. It's not really compatible with the structure of societies to eat like this all the time.
Obviously we all try and eat healthily and to get vitamins and, you know variations and 30 plants or whatever it is in the latest study, but it's just, it's harder than it seems and I think it, again, this idea of inflammation being related to diet, it again has this like idea of like, you're responsible for the inflammation in your body and you can cure yourself and you can self heal. Whereas actually, the inflammation in your body might be due to the fact that you are being bullied at work, that your kid is having a tough time, that you're actually physically ill. Like, it could be many factors and eating an anti-inflammatory diet might help that, it might not and like, even in these pieces it's like, it's suggested that there may be a correlation, like, it isn't conclusive. So, it's like this jump that wellness loves to make, of like, this will make you ill, this will make you well, it's really easy and simple, all you need to do is just cook a...
home ...
cooked meal every single night.
[00:09:20] Annabel Lee: And it's kind of reminding me of the sort of trad wife trend as well, which is really interesting, I think, but it assumes time and money and energy, which when you are ill, you don't have any of those things. So, you know, it's really hard and it's really exhausting. So what is an anti inflammatory diet?
[00:09:42] Katie Gordon: It's grains. you know, variety of fruits and veg. I think, like, what you think of as the Mediterranean diet, like olive oil, not like, none of these things like sausages and bacon and processed meat. It's like whole foods, fruit and veg, grains, pulses.
[00:10:01] Annabel Lee: Yeah, okay.
[00:10:02] Katie Gordon: Kind of...
[00:10:02] Annabel Lee: Yeah. Healthy fats.
[00:10:03] Katie Gordon: Everyone knows, like, that's probably quite a good way to eat, or at least, you know, it's fairly common knowledge that you probably don't want to eat tons of bacon sandwiches on white bread. You might be better off having an apple and some cucumber now and then, right?
[00:10:21] Annabel Lee: Cucumber saving, I saw this thing that said it's like cucumber doing the heavy lifting for like a lot of parents in terms of trying to like get a....
[00:10:30] Katie Gordon: Disgusting! Why do people like cucumber?
[00:10:33] Annabel Lee: I quite like it.
[00:10:33] Katie Gordon: Oh, it tastes like snot!
[00:10:35] Annabel Lee: Chuck a couple of slices of cucumber on the side of the plate.
[00:10:39] Katie Gordon: That's the vegetable. Yeah, it feels like this reoccurring theme with inflammation as it is expressed on social media and in mainstream media of like, this is your fault, this is how you cure it, take responsibility for it and there's also like, I think an interesting conversation about alternative practitioners who have had suggestions. In this book there's kind of a few examples and obviously this is just one person in each example, but about how people have suffered with something, that there seems to be a medical condition and actually there isn't and it's inflammation. Okay, so there's an interesting point in this book, it says, so fluoride is shown to reduce cavities in teeth, right? When it's used on your teeth through toothpaste. There's fluoridization of water and I think for a long time people have campaigned against that and I certainly have been like, yeah, whatever, you're just making a fuss out of nothing. You're like being over the top about it. This book says that while fluoridization may have emerged in the 1940s as a low cost public health intervention to manage working class dental problems, today it's a billion dollar subsidy for the fertilizer industry, hydrofluorosilicic acid, there you go... That is the by product. So, this industrial waste has found a lucrative afterlife in water supplies around the world. Recent findings of neurological changes in children exposed to fluoridated water are surprising only because no one thought to look. before to see what would happen if humans took a chemical that had been proven to protect teeth only when brushed on them and spat out and started drinking it every day. So I don't know what fluoride is and isn't responsible, but I think that's an interesting idea that people are dismissed for having these ideas and like, say the idea that one thing might impact on another and impact on another and that cause inflammation in a wider sense in the world, but also this idea that it's kind of so impossible to unpick all of this and find out what really is true. I mean, right wing skeptics sometimes have a point, right? Sometimes Big Pharma is doing something for the money that is detrimental to the world or health. So, how do you know when a piece of evidence is correct, but also how do you know when these companies that we rely on to basically manage the world are doing it for profit and when they're doing it for health. Does that make sense?
[00:13:52] Annabel Lee: Yeah, so I saw on my Instagram, the ultimate source of all of my information, somebody had made a video talking about the chemicals you put in your dishwasher and it was saying how to make like homemade dishwasher soap. I was just like, I can't even, I just can't. I have not got the capacity to think about making my own dishwasher tablets. But I think what is interesting is it's just, there are so many things that we put on our bodies or we ingest or we have in our homes or we put on our kids or whatever, that it's really hard to unpick what actually is the problem here and what are the things that I should rightly be concerned about and what are the things which do feel like slightly like conspiratorial and so like I don't even want to even engage with that to possibly like my own detriment because I feel so far like no that's been because things get proved and then disproved and then like you say get taken up as a mantle by certain people whose maybe ideology we don't ascribed to. So it's, I think it's really hard to get a grip on what actually matters and what doesn't and so you can either just completely disengage and just say, I don't care about any of it, or you can go the other way and get quite hyper focused on eliminating.
[00:15:23] Katie Gordon: You could spend your whole life doing it, every hour of every day. I bought a flapjack from a high profile health brand the other day. I looked at the ingredients and I was like, this is not very different from another kind of flapjack. Yes, there's fruit in it. Okay, there's probably fruit in some other brands too. But there, and there's coconut sugar. But like, how is that actually different to sugar? So you basically have to have a degree to look at packaging and understand beyond the marketing, is this something that is going to broadly be good for my body? Or is it broadly, maybe I should make another choice? In an era where we are all rushing from one thing to another and ideally I should maybe make my own flapjacks, but...
[00:16:13] Annabel Lee: Yeah, you make the flap jokes when I make the homemade dishwasher tablets.
[00:16:18] Katie Gordon: Yeah, right, okay.
[00:16:20] Annabel Lee: I think that is really interesting about the marketing and the positioning of it and I saw this really funny thread somewhere, I think it was probably on Twitter, about things that are like bougie and fine when rich people do them. But like, very problematic when it's like poorer people, basically, and they were saying about like drinking juice is a really good example of this. So when it's like just sugary orange juice, oh, that's a real problem. But when it's a juice, green juice and freshly squeezed, then that's great for your health and so I think it is...
[00:16:53] Katie Gordon: And there's no real difference.
[00:16:55] Annabel Lee: This is the same amount of sugar or the, yeah, the flapjack, which is just, you know, off the shelf and we think, oh, that's a sugary treat, versus a sort of high protein, high, like, it's really hard because there's probably pros and cons of all of it and it's just, you know, depends on the lens that you come through.
[00:17:14] Katie Gordon: Yeah and it depends on you and your body as well. Like, for some people, having some orange juice, like, you might need that sugar for something. It's just so complex and I think the one size fits all thing is so common and I think when you look at this in terms of inflammation in the body and how if individuals taking responsibility for their own bodies over and over again, while at the same time constantly being marketed to, to eat things that aren't necessarily that great for us in the name of health and it's just like this big circle of mush that you would have to spend hours researching unless you can actually cook everything from scratch, which is possible for some people and enjoyable for some people and like great if you can. But not possible for the majority of people, certainly in like, the Western world.
[00:18:14] Annabel Lee: Yeah and I think like when you think about, so people who have chronic pain, for example, I've heard about this analogy called spoons. I don't know if you heard of this, which is so you're using up the number of spoons that you have in a day when you're experiencing chronic pain and the idea that then if you have to spend three spoons on like freshly cooking all your food. Who's got the...?
[00:18:40] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:18:41] Annabel Lee: It's just, it's so unfair and it's so, and like you said, putting the onus onto individuals rather than taking any like broad direction or thinking about it collectively.
[00:18:53] Katie Gordon: Yeah and then maybe I've heard it used in mental health capacity, but it has the same meaning, I think also and then it's like an idealisation of societies which are maybe more collectivist and will bind food, cook and eat together, which sounds really lovely, but maybe there's another side to that as well, where those, why can't those people have the convenience that we have if they want it as well. But also why can't we be doing that? There should be room in everyone's week and their work to be able to do this and it, and just I feel a bit at the moment like we're all sort of banging our heads against a brick wall of like the only way everyone is going to be better in the world is going to be healthier and we're all going to be individually healthier, is through structural change but how do we make that happen?
[00:19:48] Annabel Lee: Yeah and the idea that things either are inherently better in other cultures and often we look to like Eastern cultures, I think, or that things were better, like, that things were inherently better in the past.
[00:20:02] Katie Gordon: When everyone cooked their own food and the women were in the kitchen.
[00:20:05] Annabel Lee: But it's like, it wasn't better in the past, like, objectively, it wasn't, like people died. Like, life expectancy was much shorter in the past, like, it wasn't objectively better in the past. It's just that we romanticise things because we aren't in them, I think.
[00:20:25] Katie Gordon: I suppose it depends what you're talking about, like we probably you would think, oh, we ate better because we all had, usually a mum in the past, certainly, like my grandparents generation cooked the food from scratch, but also you forget about rationing and availability of food and variety of food then. It wasn't great then either, you wouldn't be having, like, your 30 fruit and veg, there's no way. There's no way. Like, you wouldn't be having avocados and peppers and oranges and tomatoes and all these things that we're supposed to be having now for ultimate health. You would have maybe a few vegetables, the same, all the time.
[00:21:08] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Katie Gordon: So yeah, this idea that we should all be eating perfectly and It's never happened, it's never going to happen. It's an unrealistic expectation of everyone, probably in every society, because it depends on what's available where you are, your time, your resources, your health, your responsibilities. So this whole inflammation thing, I think, is really interesting to look at on a societal level. On an individual level, it's again like, oh, you're the solution to your problems.
[00:21:43] Annabel Lee: Yeah, which is a kind of a classic self help, isn't it? That you have to like, unlock some kind of perfect stasis, or kind of get on the right frequency so that you can then, you know, realise your best self or become your best self or become this like optimum version of yourself that we're promised through books or whatever, podcasts, classes, that you're on this quest to find this thing where you will be free from inflammation, you'll be free from stress or whatever.
[00:22:23] Katie Gordon: Yeah and you'll be in your perfect body at your perfect weight with your perfect...
[00:22:27] Annabel Lee: That you just, you find this perfect little thing that's right for you. But it feels to me like we have so many things like exercise, like mental health, like mindfulness, like creative outlets, all of these things, so you just, even if you find it momentarily, it's gonna go...
[00:22:48] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:22:48] Annabel Lee: ...sooner rather than later and I think, just feel there's this overwhelm of information which is, does more harm than good, I think, sometimes.
[00:22:57] Katie Gordon: It's who do you trust as well.
[00:22:58] Annabel Lee: Who do you trust? And you don't trust, like, traditional sources of information.
[00:23:03] Katie Gordon: But also some of the massive health podcasts are platforming people who are, I would say, very suspect in what they're saying. So even the more kind of alternative health podcasts or books, you can't trust mainstream narratives, but you can't also trust health narratives. So, I feel like, to maybe end on a slightly more hopeful note and of course there are things to do if you have chronic pain and stuff that will help and I know people who've followed a diet that has really helped or done certain interventions like mindfulness or yoga or whatever they are, that have really helped, so I'm not saying none of it helps and it's all rubbish, but you have to do it, right?
But I think the other thing that has proven to be powerful in terms of mental and physical help is community and connection. So maybe taking that overwhelm, I know that I've certainly felt particularly around world events and turning that into like, how can I find community in that to then go and do something concrete that makes me feel better and hopefully then contributes to positive connections that also help with the kind of inflammation in the world and maybe that also impacts on an individual level as well, but as a kind of by product.
[00:24:37] Annabel Lee: Yeah, because I think it's like a natural response, isn't it, to feel very overwhelmed by things and to sort of recede from them in a way and not know where you can begin or where you can take action in a positive way when things are, like, feel big and heavy around you. But I think you're right and I think often people want that, don't they? They want a way, or they want somebody, they want to see somebody as doing something, or they want something that they can get involved with, and then that can help like not only you the person that's doing it, but like you said more broadly and then...
[00:25:14] Katie Gordon: Yeah and then it kind of spirals out and maybe your friends see you doing it and they think, oh, maybe I'll do it, but, you know, like sharing a post on Instagram, okay, fine, that helps maybe raise awareness, but you're probably sharing it to people that know all about it anyway, because you're in your little bubble. So like, what can you do within your time and energy and all those other constraints that is going to help with the things that you feel stressed about, whatever that is, whether it's like politics, environment, whatever, that will also hopefully make you feel better because doing something usually makes you feel better than doing nothing.
So we've talked a bit about what inflammation might mean in the body, what inflammation might mean in society and it's such a huge topic there's no way we could cover all of those things in depth here, but I think it's really interesting to think of them as linked as well. I will put this book in the show notes, I haven't read all of it, but it's very Interesting, certainly, if you're interested in the links between individuals and society. What do you think, Annabel? Have you got any thoughts on inflammation?
[00:26:25] Annabel Lee: I'm still a bit woolly.
[00:26:27] Katie Gordon: So am I. Yeah, it's a, it's hard to get a grip on, I think.
[00:26:30] Annabel Lee: But I think that is really interesting. I think I was thinking about healing and how that's kind of similar in a way that, I mean, I know like healing is maybe more of a like positive thing, but how sometimes we talk about sort of healing yourself so you can heal other people or like healing the world and things like that, which I think these slightly, they're hard to grip, they're these like slippery words that don't, it's hard to be really specific with what it means and I think almost deliberately from some of the people that are using them.
[00:27:05] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:27:07] Annabel Lee: That it can mean lots of things. to lots of people. But then it, like, I hadn't thought about inflammation more broadly in terms of an inflammatory society or culture that we live in. But I think that thinking about that and yourself as a microcosm, as a tiny micro of what other people are feeling is kind of helpful and to know that your experience isn't like, you're not the only person having that
[00:27:33] Katie Gordon: experience.
Yeah and the inflammation in your body is probably kind of a natural response to what is happening.
[00:27:39] Annabel Lee: To be, to living in this, like in the same way that, you know, in the past they would have had other issues going on, but they maybe just didn't call it inflammation. Yeah, yeah, I was going to go with the plague...
[00:27:52] Katie Gordon: Rickets.
[00:27:54] Annabel Lee: But like how that is one of the things, you know and that's like a criticism that gets levied against, like, I know like millennials especially would be like that we're so individualistic and we think like every experience is so super unique to us and actually realizing that it's not and that even if you are having a bad health experience other people will have experienced that too and they've got tools and like finding community in that I think is really helpful to just try and connect like in a meaningful way with other people and then hopefully you can then see how that experience becomes bigger than just you and that might help you feel better. But, still don't know what inflammation means.
[00:28:37] Katie Gordon: No, but I think, I guess it's like kind of clear what it is in the body. No one really knows exactly how it impacts or not. physical systems and disease causing pathways and stuff. But that there's something going on that is potentially a factor in lots of illnesses and disease and then there is also something in the world that is also, you know, high stress, high reactivity. Like, in our politics system, in the environment, it's getting hotter, all these things are...
[00:29:09] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Katie Gordon: ...kind of also going through a kind of inflammation, which sounds a little bit, like, fuzzy, but I think it's interesting to look at how that society impacts on the individual and vice versa.
[00:29:26] Annabel Lee: Totally, yeah.