What in Inflammation?

Inflammation is your immune system’s response to stress or injury in or to the body. Those traumas may come in different forms, physical (bone fracture, cut or scrape, burn, rash), dietary (processed food, fried food, sugar, allergenic foods), and environmental (mold, metal toxicity, chemical-laden cleaning, and personal care products, etc).

Inflammation is the first step in the healing process.

When cells are damaged, they send out chemical messengers that cause swelling, which isolates the offending substance and keeps it from penetrating more cells.

The chemical messengers also call white blood cells to the site of injury to get rid of bacteria and dead or damaged cells. The resulting product is pus.

Inflammation as part of healing is a good thing.

It’s when it develops into chronic inflammation that there’s a problem.

Signs of inflammation

The “textbook” signs of inflammation are redness, heat, swelling, pain, and loss of function that occur at the site of the injury.

Some common examples where you can actually see and experience the five cardinal signs might be sunburn, stepping on a nail, or bumping your head and getting a “goose egg.”

Chronic inflammation isn’t always as noticeable as the acute inflammation mentioned above.

Chronic pain may get your attention — which is the whole idea behind inflammation (so you protect the injured area) – but inflamed blood vessels might not.

Chronic inflammation may silently persist while it causes downstream effects, and may show up in the body as one or more of the following:

Belly Fat

Weight gain

Chronic pain

Accelerated aging

Hormonal problems, especially insulin resistance

Autoimmunity, including Hashimoto’s

Allergies

Chronic pain conditions

Digestive problems: IBS, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, etc

Cardiovascular disease

Neurodegenerative diseases

CRP-hs (C-Reactive Protein highly sensitive) higher than 3.00 mg/L (although ideally, it should be no more than 1 mg/L)

Elevated blood sugar levels (HA1C, fasting glucose or insulin)

Functional medicine practitioners today are of the opinion that inflammation is the root cause of most chronic disease.

What causes inflammation?

There are a number of dietary and lifestyle choices that can cause inflammation.

One of the primary ways we create inflammation through our lifestyle is stress.

Stress raises key inflammatory messengers in our bodies, called inflammatory cytokines. There is a direct correlation between the perceived stress in our lives and the levels of these inflammatory molecules.

Interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha are a couple of those inflammatory markers.

Interleukin-6 particularly raises your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker commonly tested to check your inflammation level.

Inflammation partly explains why women who are perpetually stressed are having a really hard time losing weight.

Diet is another main contributor. Foods can either cause inflammation or help reduce inflammation – and some foods cause inflammation in some people, but not others. Foods that generally cause inflammation include:

Sugar– including fructose, Artificial sweeteners

Processed foods of all kinds

Fried foods

Wheat + gluten

Dairy

Too much meat, especially raised in cages

Refined, high omega 6 oilsT

rans fats

Excessive alcohol

Coffee

Foods specific to you (food allergies, histamine intolerance, lectin sensitivity, thiol sensitivity, salicylate intolerance, oxalate intolerance… etc)

Nutrient deficiencies or imbalances, such an altered omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, and inadequate intake of vitamins and minerals may also tip the scale toward an inflammatory state.

When otherwise healthy foods become inflammatory, it’s because your immune system has become overactive and imbalanced. To rebalance the immune system, it’s important to address the microbiome. Resistant starch can help restore your microbiome, balance your hormones, and lower your inflammation. 

You can also get resistant starch in a supplement form, which contains two forms of resistant starch (RS) type II: organic green banana flour and organic potato starch powder.

Lack of sleep has been shown in research to raise levels of inflammatory markers in the body.

Toxicity from environmental and lifestyle factors can also raise your body’s inflammation. The body sees these foreign substances as poisons and sets off an immune response, raising inflammation.

Smoking counts as another source of toxicity and can also contribute to chronic inflammation.

Ways to reduce inflammation

First, lower your toxic load by eliminating those dangerous household, outdoor, and personal care products. Detox your home and find healthy replacements.

Quit smoking. You might even consider doing a detox program on yourself.

However, one of the easiest, most straight-forward strategies you can follow is to get rid of inflammatory foods and add in more whole foods.

Some foods that are known to reduce inflammation include:

Resistant Starch. 

Olive oil and other healthy fats

Fatty fish, like wild caught salmon (rich in omega 3s)

Richly colored berries and cherries

Green tea

Superfoods

Reducing your stress levels will undoubtedly help in lowering your inflammation levels. Some good ways to reduce stress-induced inflammation include:

Self Care Meditation

Yoga

Infra Red Saunas

Keeping a gratitude journal

Sleep! Getting a good night’s sleep is vital for lowering your stress and inflammation levels and getting you back on the path to healing.

Certain herbs and spices can also help lower inflammation, such as rosemary, oregano, thyme, chamomile, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, and turmeric. Try to incorporate fresh herbs and spices into your diet whenever you can. Not only will your food taste spectacular, but your body will thank you, too!

Sometimes it can be difficult to get in all those spices on a regular basis. To create consistency, that’s where a supplement can help.

Anti-inflammatory Supplement I recommend

Inflammavail™ is a powerful formula designed to help support a proper inflammatory response by affecting multiple pathways in your body while facilitating healthy blood flow without the undesirable side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

Inflammavail™ has a proprietary blend of proteolytic enzymes. Taken with food, they help support protein digestion. However, taken on an empty stomach – as is recommended with this product – these enzymes help break down damaged tissue, and thus, work to promote a healthy response to inflammation in the body.

Curcumin and ginger are two anti-inflammatory spices and roots with long histories of efficacy in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. These are traditionally considered “warming” spices when used in cooking, but with regard to modulating the inflammatory response, they are cooling.