Chronic Inflammation

Chronic Inflammation is the root cause of many diseases chronic, inflammation is the root cause of so many diseases, including:

• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Stroke
• Arthritis
• Asthma
• Eczema
• Autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, & lupus
• Inflammatory conditions like Crohn’s Disease and Colitis
• Alzheimer’s disease and dementia
• Parkinson’s disease

There are two types of inflammation: acute and chronic. People are most familiar with acute inflammation. This is the redness, warmth, swelling, and pain around tissues and joints that occurs in response to an injury, like when you cut yourself. When the body is injured, your immune system releases white blood cells to surround and protect the area. “Acute inflammation is how your body fights infections and helps speed up the healing process,”

“In this way, inflammation is good because it protects the body.” This process works the same if you have a virus like a cold or the flu.

In contrast, when inflammation gets turned up too high and lingers for a long time, and the immune system continues to pump out white blood cells and chemical messengers that prolong the process, that’s known as chronic inflammation.

From the body’s perspective, it’s under consistent attack, so the immune system keeps fighting indefinitely. When this happens, white blood cells may end up attacking nearby healthy tissues and organs.

Research has shown that chronic inflammation is associated with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Take stress for example. Stress is the panic button for inflammation. Everyone has it, but it’s one of the major causes of chronic inflammation.

There’s no injury per say, but when you’re stressed out all your brain hears is danger, danger! And so inflammation kicks in to save the day.

The problem, however, is that if you’re always stressed out about work, money, and relationships 24/7, your worries cycle like a hamster wheel and you feel like you’re in a constant state of anxiety. And if you never find a way to cope with the stress, inflammation will never end.

What’s more, even though inflammation will do damage control, it doesn’t care what it leaves behind. The result? More health problems, visits to specialists, and disease. In fact, a recent study out of Harvard School of Medicine shows that stress can increase white blood cells and inflammation in the arteries which can lead to a heart attack.

Experts also believe that a range of factors may also contribute to chronic inflammation, like Smoking, Obesity, Excessive Alcohol, Chronic Stress, Diet like Processed food, fried food, refined carbohydrates like White bread and Pasta are known to cause inflammation.

Symptoms of chronic inflammation

Fatigue, Body pain, recurrent infections, depression and anxiety, weight gain or weight loss, Gastric complications like constipation or diarrhea are some of the symptoms of chronic inflammation.