Top 3 Dietary Hacks for Inflammation
May 12, 2026
Bottom-line:
- Nutrition can play a major role in mediating inflammation through several pathways.
- Chronic inflammation and altered immune responses are linked with delayed healing, chronic pain, and dysfunction.
- Dr. Wells reviews some of the top ways to reduce inflammation according to current research including ultraprocessed foods, sleep and melatonin, and more!
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Transcript:
Dr. Wells here from St. Augustine Beach. Today we're going to talk about the top 3 diet hacks to help lower inflammation and accelerate your healing. So you might have that patient, right, that you're doing everything. You're doing your manual therapy techniques, you're doing your modalities, you're coaching them on loading and progression and periodized their training or whatever, but their injury is not healing, right? They're not getting back to exercise. So here's some 3 of those things that you might want to look at in their particular diet to help them.
[00:28-00:58]
The first thing is looking at the actual dietary intake. The quality of diet is important, right? So a recent meta-analysis looked at individuals eating an inflammatory style diet have higher risk of NAFLD. That's non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. There's actually more individuals now with NAFLD than alcoholic fatty liver disease. It's a major issue. Specifically, the odds of liver fibrosis were 36 percent higher and NAFLD was 33 percent higher in those eating an inflammatory diet.
[00:58-01:32]
So eating ultra processed foods, foods that are rich in sugar, foods that are rich in saturated fats. These are these are foods that patients will consume quite a bit and it can promote these sort of conditions and promote inflammation. second tip, swap out those refined grains for more whole grains. So a recent study in a 12week trial, they looked at, specifically for weight loss, that C-reactive protein dropped significantly when patients took refined grains like just white wheat and replaced it with whole rye.
[01:33-01:59]
So just a simple swap like that can be a significant factor for patients in reducing their inflammation. And as we know, C-reactive protein is a significant marker for inflammation. Number 3, optimize sleep. We talk about this a lot in our courses. We talk about it in my modern rehab mastery program. But the big thing is optimizing sleep can help with recovery. It also helps reduce inflammation.
[01:59-02:17]
And in this particular study, it's a 4week randomized control trial. All they took was ten milligrams of melatonin before bed, significantly reduced eczema. improved their sleep. So better sleep means reduced oxidative stress on the body, right? So better healing and less inflammation.
[02:17-02:35]
So if you want to learn more about these cool anti-inflammation dietary hacks, check out our 3part course series. It's a certificate program specifically for physical therapists, but any rehab professional can take it as well. It's at nutritionalphysicaltherapy.com. Like, subscribe, check it out more.
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