Inflammation Nation : The First Clinically Proven Eating Plan to End Our Nation's Secret Epidemic

by Floyd H. Chilton; Laura Tucker

• ISBN13: 9780743269643
• ISBN10: 0743269640
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-28
• Publisher: FIRESIDE PRESS

Summary

In Inflammation Nation, internationally renowned scientist Dr. Floyd H. Chilton exposes the root cause of a host of seemingly disparate diseases, such as arthritis, heart disease, obesity, eczema, lupus, Alzheimer's, and emphysema: unbridled inflammation. The average American diet (even when we're making what we think are healthy choices) is inflaming our immune systems. But with Dr. Chilton's revolutionary, all-natural dietary program, you can learn how to choose foods that will help prevent, treat, and reverse the effects of this secret epidemic in as few as seven days.

Author Biography

Floyd H. "Ski" Chilton, Ph.D., is widely recognized in academia and industry for his work on the role of fatty acids in human disease. Dr. Chilton also has extensive experience in leading organizations in both academia and industry. Dr. Chilton is currently a full professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Prior to joining Wake Forest, Dr. Chilton founded a biotechnology company, Pilot Therapeutics, and served as its President, CEO, and Chief Technology Officer from late 2000 to 2003. At Pilot Therapeutics, Dr. Chilton is currently overseeing development of a medical food called Airozin, which blocks inflammatory messengers that cause asthma and arthritis. In 2003, Dr. Chilton was named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist for the Carolinas (one of three finalists selected from more than four hundred CEOs in North and South Carolina in the Biotechnology/Life Sciences category). Prior to founding Pilot Therapeutics, Dr. Chilton founded the Program in Molecular Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and helped build it into one of the most successful programs of its kind in the United States. During his time at Wake Forest, Dr. Chilton has served as Director of Molecular Medicine, Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology, Professor of Internal Medicine, and Professor of Biochemistry; and he has also served as Associate Director of the Asthma and Airways Diseases Center and Associate Director of Programs in Clinical Research. Prior to Wake Forest, Dr. Chilton served on the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Chilton holds thirty-two issued and seventeen pending patents. He has authored or coauthored more than 110 scientific articles and book chapters. Dr. Chilton has served as chairman of, and organizer of, several international meetings on dietary regulation of human disease and lipid metabolism. Dr. Chilton obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Wake Forest University in 1984. He served as a postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology at the University of Colorado until 1986. He has received numerous awards during his career, including the Cowgill Scholar Award and the Sigma Xi Research Ward at Wake Forest, the 1999 Distinguished Academic and Achievement Award from Western Carolina University, and the Distinguished Service and Teaching Award from the Italian Congress on Allergy and Immunology. Charles E. "Cash" McCall, M.D, is Professor of Internal Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology; Director of the General Clinical Research Center; and Deputy Associated Dean for Research at Wake Forest University Health Sciences. Dr. McCall received his M.D. degree as the top academic graduate of 1961 from what is now known as the Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSM). After five years of postgraduate training at Harvard Medical School and two years at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), he returned as a faculty member at WFUSM in 1968. In 1972, during the early stages of Dr. McCall's career at WFUBMC, he held an NIH Research Career Development Award and a Postgraduate Medical Fellowship assigned to research at the Royal Postgraduate School of Medicine in London. He was Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, 1973-1998, Acting Chairman of Microbiology and Immunology, 1981-1983, and he served as Vice Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine for Research and Academic Affairs for eleven years. He has been Director of the NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) since its inception in 1993. Dr. McCall was the first member of the faculty of WFUSM to be elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. McCall has dedicated most of his career to translational clinical research in inflammation, and he is an author of over 160 original research publications. He has been consistently funded for inflammation research since 1970. His successful career in translational patient-oriented research in inflammation led to his being awarded the first Established Investigator Award in Clinical Research at Wake Forest University Medical School in 1997. Dr.McCall is also the recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Alumnus Award and the Distinguished Service Award of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Laura Tucker has written several popular health and medical books. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Dr. Charles E. McCall
Part 1: The Secret Epidemic
Introduction	3	(12)
Diagnosis: Affluenza	15	(14)
The epidemic rise in inflammatory disease in developed countries
The War Within	29	(16)
How this vital process turns into disease
The Inflammatory Continuum	45	(16)
Why the category of inflammatory disease includes more conditions than you think
The Billion-Dollar Pathway	61	(14)
How pharmaceutical research opened the door to a whole new way of thinking about treating inflammatory disease
Closing In on the Culprit	75	(10)
The primary driving force behind the inflammatory epidemic
Toxic Superfoods	85	(18)
Your ``healthiest'' food choices are making you sick
Part 2: The Chilton Program
Bringing Overactive Inflammation Back into Balance	103	(16)
Three strategies for attacking out-of-control inflammation
Your Anti-Inflammatory Arsenal	119	(9)
The Inflammatory Index: the Glycemic Ranking; the Chilton Fish Ranking; and the Chilton Pyramid
Some Commonly Asked Questions About the Chilton Program	128	(13)
Is it safe for children? Will it turn my immune system off? What about anti-inflammatory foods? and other frequently asked questions
Part 3: Tools for Healthy Living
What's Your I.Q.?	141	(5)
A quick quiz to determine your personal ``Inflammatory Quotient,'' or level of inflammatory risk
Getting Started	146	(7)
Losing Weight on the Chilton Program	153	(12)
The Inflammatory Index	165	(4)
The Glycemic Ranking	169	(3)
The Chilton Fish Ranking	172	(4)
The Chilton Prevention Diet	176	(29)
The Chilton Solution Diet	205	(29)
Inflammation Nation Seafood Recipes	234	(17)
Conclusion	251	(3)
Glossary	254	(2)
A Letter to Your Doctor	256	(3)
Appendix A The Equation for the Inflammatory Index	259	(1)
Appendix B J. Brooke Barham et al, ``Addition of Eicosapentaenoic Acid to Gamma-Linolenic Acid-Supplemented Diets Prevents Serum Arachidonic Acid Accumulation in Humans'' (reprinted from Journal of Nutrition, vol. 130, no. 8, August 2000)	260	(7)
References	267	(26)
Index	293

Excerpts

Introduction A silent plague is sweeping America, and the vast majority of us are at risk. It has taken the form of a statistically significant and incalculably devastating series of epidemics -- an "epidemic of epidemics."I believe this plague is largely preventable, and yet we are doing little to stop its spread. On the contrary, we're actually encouraging a tidal wave of disease. At best, these illnesses compromise our quality of life; at worst, they can be painful, debilitating, and fatal.Consider the following: Seventy million Americans suffer from arthritis -- or one in every three adults. That's twice as many arthritis sufferers as there were two decades ago. More than 20 million Americans have asthma today. It is the sixth most common chronic human disease. More than 50 million Americans suffer every year from allergies, a number that has doubled in the past twenty years. There has been a 100 percent increase in the prevalence of hay fever in developed countries in each of the last three decades. Allergic dermatitis affects us at triple the rate in 1960. Ten percent of our young children are affected by allergic dermatitis. There were 18.2 million people in the United States with diabetes in 2002, a 49 percent increase from ten years ago. This debilitating disease contributes to about two hundred thousand deaths in the United States each year. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans. Almost 64 million Americans have it in some form, and it killed almost a million people in 2001. Eczema is the most common skin condition in children under eleven; an estimated 15 million people in the United States suffer from the symptoms of this disease. One million Americans have inflammatory bowel disease. Anyone would agree that these numbers are overwhelming. But they're even more devastating when you realize that this isn't just a random laundry list of conditions. In fact, these diseases all share a single underlying cause.What's the common denominator linking these seemingly disparate diseases, and other serious ones, including lupus, Crohn's disease, and psoriasis? The answer comes from a surprising quarter: the body's own self-defense system. These are all inflammatory diseases, diseases that occur when the body's own defense system turns against itself.And our bodies are turning against themselves in record numbers. Each one of these diseases, taken individually, represents a serious health problem in this country. Taken together, as a category of diseases, this can only be seen as a pandemic. It is true that some of these diseases overlap, like allergies and asthma, which makes it difficult to make an accurate estimate of the full scope of the inflammatory disease problem in this country. But even with that overlap, I don't think I'm overstating the problem when I say that inflammatory diseases affect as many as half of the people in this country. The Inflammatory Cluster You're probably familiar, from the news and movies like Erin Brockovich, with the phenomenon called the "cancer cluster," when people in a community or a profession develop related types of cancer in disproportionately high percentages. It's an absolutely terrifying occurrence.When a cluster is identified, researchers immediately look for a proximate cause, a cancer-inducing agent to which every one of the patients has been exposed. When that proximate cause is uncovered (a factory dumping toxic chemicals into the groundwater, for example), the rest of us thank our lucky stars that it didn't happen in our neighborhood.When I began my research into the connection between diet and inflammatory disease, I was simply searching for something to help people who suffere