Inflammation Can Be Helped with Hemp

Inflammation is basically your body's natural immune response against things like infections and viruses. It's the cavalry dressed as white blood cells riding in to defend you against foreign invaders! Inflammation also occurs when tissue is injured, such as skin abrasions and orthopedic injuries, so it has a beneficial purpose in the healing process. Often you can find areas of inflammation in your body by feeling warm spots on your skin, or seeing redness and swelling. Pain caused by inflammation is usually what gets our attention, though, and is a pretty strong motivator for making lifestyle changes.

Inflammation is also your body’s defense against basic wear and tear that is often a part of aging. This tends to become Chronic Long Term Inflammation, and the causes include:

• Overeating and excess weight
• Stress
• Lack of exercise
• Smoking
• Excess alcohol consumption
• Poor dental health
• Exposure to environmental pollutants

Considering the list above, it's obvious that chronic inflammation is very common. When you consider the astronomical amount of money we spend every year on pharmaceutical drugs worldwide, it's a safe bet that a lot of us suffer from pain associated with some form of inflammation.

How to Address the Root Causes of Inflammation

Rather than treating the symptoms of inflammation, most notably pain and general discomfort, how about trying some lifestyle changes that will eliminate the cause of the inflammation? It's not always easy to make changes, so I would suggest adding some hemp food items you may not have considered before, and see if you can work that into eliminating some of the more toxic, inflammatory ones you buy out of habit. Hemp hearts/seeds are an easy food item to add to your daily routine. Not only are they high in protein, amino acids and essential fats, they taste good and are filling.

Hemp Oil (CBD), is also an anti-inflammatory and can be used both topically and as a dietary supplement. There are many hemp oil products available online, with more limited availability through health food and vitamin stores like Whole Foods and GNC. Hemp seeds are readily available at most grocery stores. I bought my first hemp hearts at Costco a few years ago, and used them to help me lose weight.

The alternative to these natural remedies is pharmaceutical drugs. Often, the side effects of drugs are as bad, if not worse, than the condition being treated. Nourishing the body with whole foods like hemp is a lot more pleasant and a considerably cheaper alternative. Hemp fits well with a healthy, natural, whole foods diet.