By Kenneth Proefrock, NMD

Enough cannot be said in this regard about a healthy diet! What is confusing for a lot of people is what exactly constitutes a healthy diet. There are so many fad diet books out right now, and I promise, there will be many more in the months to years to come. You already know what a healthy diet is, this is not rocket science. A healthy diet isn't from South Beach, the Zone, or Atkins; it isn't bacon and sausage for breakfast; it isn't a steak with a side order of steak. It also isn't to be found in bottle after bottle of this vitamin and that mineral; it isn't even freeze drying all the stuff you don't like to eat but that you know is good for you into a capsule like George Jetson might live on — he is a cartoon for goodness sake! A healthy diet is simply eating ample amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables in their whole, unprocessed form with a decent amount of clean, lean protein. A healthy diet might start with a couple of soft-boiled eggs, some whole grain toast and a bowl full of berries.

It might start with half a cantaloupe or grapefruit, and some cottage cheese. It doesn't come in a box with a toucan or a monkey on the front of it, it isn't predominantly sugar, and it isn't made up of stuff that was concocted in a lab in New Jersey that most of us can't even pronounce. A healthy diet is full of fresh green salads, steamed vegetables, healthy fish, healthy chickens and lean beef. You don't need a book to tell you that, your grandma told you that when you were five.

There is a good side to the whole cox 1, cox 2, and cox 3 dilemma. It is out of research in this area of physiology that we have come to a much better understanding of the roles that eicosanoids play in our bodies. It also turns out the many of the fatty acids that are essential for a person to stay alive have the ability to modify which eicosanoids are produced. The essential fatty acids that come in many leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds and fish help the body make a greater number of the inflammation resolving eicosanoids. The saturated fat that is found in bacon, corn fed beef, and margarine help the body make more of the inflammation causing eicosanoids. A person can eat more of the oils from nuts, seeds and fish and have a dramatic impact on their base level of inflammation. Simply eating more of those foods will help all by itself; and then there are several types of these oils that are prepared and commercially available. I prefer eating food to eating pills, but, a person who has struggled with a chronic pain syndrome for several years and didn't realize that their morning breakfast Jack and coffee was contributing to that pain might have to make up for lost time by consuming a larger amount than one could find in food, in this case a clean fish oil, borage oil, flaxseed oil or evening primrose oil might be an appropriate intervention to make.