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Life or Death...
Why reducing inflammation can make the difference. Literally.
by Dr. Harrison Weisinger, MBBS, PhD.
(Part 1 of 2-part blog series)
Many people think that the effects of inflammation are limited to the spine and other joints in the body.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth!
Decades of ongoing research continues to reveal that so many of the medical conditions and symptoms that people suffer from are actually due to out-of-control inflammation. Reducing inflammation can not only make you feel better, but it can quite literally add years to your life.
Inflammation has a far greater impact on our lives than many people recognize.
Have you, or a loved one, suffered from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, endometriosis, irritable bowel disease, arthritis, depression, anxiety, period pain, or acne?
I’m willing to bet the answer’s yes to at least one, and possibly more, of these inflammation-related illnesses. Inflammation also causes many ‘sub-clinical’ symptoms. That is, symptoms you put up with but may not be bothered visiting the doctor for. These include headache, abdominal cramping and bloating, poor concentration, low mood, general aches and pains, and lethargy or fatigue.
Therefore, reducing inflammation can greatly enhance the quality of life, as well as significantly extending it. In fact, without question, the single most important thing anyone can do to improve their lives is to pay attention to the signs of inflammation – and do everything they can to reduce it.
But before telling you about how to reduce inflammation, it’s important to explain a few things about what inflammation actually is, and why it happens in the first place.
The purpose of inflammation, believe it or not, is to protect the body from harm. Or at least to protect it from further harm. Put simply, inflammation is a natural process in which immune cells, such as white blood cells, proteins, and fluid, are attracted to a site of injury (or “insult” as doctors call it) within the body.
The classic example is if you were to twist your ankle – within minutes your ankle would be hot, swollen, and painful. Think of this as the body getting all of the materials required for repair to your ankle, while at the same time giving you the sensation of pain. That’s to stop you from standing on that ankle!
Reflect for a second just how fast and powerful the inflammatory response can operate. In many ways, it’s the body’s way of ‘bringing a gun to a knife fight’! Inflammatory processes occur within our bodies every second, and without them, we couldn’t survive. You could say that our bodies constantly manage the balance between switching inflammation on and off.
We run into trouble when that balance is disrupted, and we get inflammation in places where it a nuisance or, worse still, harmful to us. For example, one of the critical factors in heart disease is inflammatory plaques developing inside the walls of the arteries supplying the heart.
Reflect for a second just how fast and powerful the inflammatory response can operate. In many ways, it’s the body’s way of ‘bringing a gun to a knife fight’! Inflammatory processes occur within our bodies every second, and without them, we couldn’t survive. You could say that our bodies constantly manage the balance between switching inflammation on and off.
We run into trouble when that balance is disrupted, and we get inflammation in places where it a nuisance or, worse still, harmful to us. For example, one of the critical factors in heart disease is inflammatory plaques developing inside the walls of the arteries supplying the heart.
In Coeliac disease, unwanted inflammation occurs in the gut. Pneumonia, the lungs. Anaphylaxis, the upper airways. In Alzheimer’s, the brain, and so on. Of course, many of these conditions require medical and potentially, surgical therapy.
However, it is equally, if not more, important for you to reduce inflammation where possible – and doing so, extend your life and improve the quality of it.