If you have been a regular reader of my newsletters then you are probably aware that the underlying basis of most disease and bodily misery in our lives is too much inflammation. Inflammation is the slow fire that burns our cells and destroys our health.
We have to have the ability to become inflamed in order to keep from bleeding out when we have a physical trauma or to fight infections. So we can’t simply turn off inflammation in the body and expect to live very long. But in this day and age, we have way too much inflammation. This is partly due to the changes in our diet over the last few thousand years from grain consumption and particularly the last hundred years with the introduction of huge amounts of sugar and seed oils. The other major factor in the inflammation story is the industrial age poisons we are constantly exposed to in our food, water, and air. They disrupt our hormones and immune systems.
Medical science has created a number of anti-inflammatory drugs to combat the universal problem of excess inflammation. But these drugs cause potent side effects that are usually worse than the condition they are supposed to treat. These fall into two basic classes – steroids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS). Steroids are so strong they literally wipe out your immune system leaving you wide open for deadly infections, while the NSAIDS cause GI bleeding, liver and kidney disease. Every year over 10,000 people die from GI bleeding caused by over-the-counter or prescription NSAIDS. We are talking about your ibuprofen, Aleve, Advil, and so on.
Traditional cultures have found various plant substances that fight inflammation without causing negative side-effects. Some of these have been deeply studied by medical researchers trying to duplicate their benefits. The two most heavily studied substances are curcuminoids from turmeric and resveratrol. Thousands of studies have been done on these plant extracts. For instance, one recent study found turmeric extract better at managing knee pain and inflammation than ibuprofen.
Although these extracts are super powerful at fighting inflammation, they are hard to get into our systems. A simple pill does not work because very little of the pill actually gets into our system. These extracts don’t dissolve in water much at all so we don’t absorb them. They do dissolve in oil and alcohols. This is why the benefit was noted in traditional cultures as they are generally used in cooking where fats are available to help it be absorbed. Additionally, a special black pepper extract also greatly increases absorption. This principle was used in the formulation of the liquid anti-inflammatory products I carry in the office – Turmero Active and Resvero Active. These, plus the vascular anti-inflammatory Nitric Balance, make a terrific trio for fighting body inflammation without nasty side-effects.
Well, I have been playing around at home trying to find a way to get turmeric extract and resveratrol into my system at higher quantities in a tasty manner. I have purchased the powdered turmeric extract, resveratrol, and pepper extract and have blended them into chocolate to form a yummy chocolate treat with twice the inflammation fighting power per dose. Put another way, I have figured out a way to cut the cost in half for the benefits of these powerhouse inflammation fighters.
I have had several people sample the final product and the results have been very favorable both on taste and benefit. The only trouble is that I do not have the time or the desire to spend my days making chocolate bars, no matter how wonderful they are for you. So instead I have decided to make the herb extracts available to you in a prepackaged and pre mixed form that you can just add to chocolate for your own use. The package contains 48 doses of the herbal extracts. When I melt the chocolate and blend in the herbs, I pour it into 4 silicone mini bread loaf pans. Once I cut it up, I end up with 24 pieces of chocolate, each with a double dose of extracts. Each package only costs $42 and does the job of $115 worth of Turmero Active and Resvero Active.
Yes, I could make more money selling the Resvero and Turmero, but many people are either not willing or able to spend $100 to $200 a month on herbal anti-inflammatories no matter how important it is. We have to balance our financial priorities. So my feeling was that if I could make it more financially available, then more people would be able to benefit. I am very conservative in my own life with money, but I am not willing to sacrifice on quality or effectiveness. This product meets my standards for myself, so I am sharing.
Here is a photo essay of how to make the Inflammation Fighter Chocolate.
Step 1: Buy a bar of Pound Plus 72% dark chocolate from Trader Joe’s. We use dark chocolate because any milk in the chocolate neutralizes much of the beneficial antioxidants in chocolate.
Step 2: Break up the chocolate into a microwave safe bowl and melt in the microwave 30 seconds at a time until the chocolate is about 2/3 melted. You could also use a double boiler on the stovetop. Don’t melt the chocolate completely. It needs to be lumpy to maintain its temper. If you don’t know about chocolate temper, don’t ask – it is a total pain in the you-know-what.
Step 3: With a wand blender, blend the chocolate until smooth, then add the packet of herbs and blend it into the chocolate.
Step 4: Spoon out equal amounts of the chocolate mixture into each of the silicone molds. If you don’t have molds, you can pick them up here, or in a pinch just use an 8X8 cake pan lined with plastic wrap.
Step 5: Put the molds in the freezer for about an hour until the chocolate is hard. Once hard, take it out of the freezer and lift the chocolate out of the mold.
Step 6: Once the chocolate has set out long enough to come to room temperature it will cut fairly easily. If you are using the mini bread pan molds, cut each piece into six equal smaller pieces. If you are using the bigger pan, then cut the whole piece into quarters and then cut each quarter into six equal smaller pieces.
Step 7: Store the chocolate pieces in the refrigerator. Eat one piece a day for maintenance anti-inflammation. You could eat 2 or 3 pieces in a day if you have an acute inflammatory process going on.
That’s it! Just melt the chocolate and mix in the powdered herbs – pretty simple.
Using the Trader Joes 72% dark chocolate, each piece of anti-inflammatory chocolate has only about 5 grams of sugar. I will also contain a full gram of curcuminoids from turmeric, a half gram of resveratrol, and 5 mg of piperine. I also added some powdered Dr. Dave’s Double Sugar Substitute to cut the strong taste of the herbs.
Enjoy
David