Inflammation
What is inflammation?
The alarm goes off with an incessantly annoying buzz. I reach to silence the dreaded device and swing my legs to the side of the bed with ripples of pain in my joints. I try to rise to full stature while grimacing at my stiff body.
After a few steps, the kinks are somewhat reduced and I tell myself to get moving. I dress in loose-fitting clothes because of my bloated tummy and wish that my stomach would stop hurting and my flat tummy would return. As I look in the mirror I brush my hair and realize that my head is pounding.
Aches and pains are just part of life… right?
At least that is what I told myself for years. The reality is that life does not have to be spent with inflammation riddling the body.
When inflammation is present in the body there is a reason. I began to wonder if there could be an answer. As I researched I discovered something quite fascinating.
I started looking at what is this crazy beast called inflammation. It is talked about a lot. But how could that apply to me and my family? And what causes inflammation to begin with?
The answers were very eye-opening.
So what is inflammation?
I discovered that inflammation is part of the immune response in the body and a very important part of the healing process. An example would be when a bee sting occurs there is pain, the skin swells, turns red and feels hot to the touch.
When our oldest son was 5 we went camping. Good times with friends and family in the woods. We did campfires at night and hiking by day.
One afternoon as my husband and son were tromping through the woods they stumbled upon a hornet’s nest. A few disgruntled hornets came out to see who would dare to disturb them and found our son staring back at them. Needless to say… they won that battle! Our son ended up with several stings and one of which was on his face close to his eye. His eye swelled up, turned red, and reduced him to tears. We immediately took measures to reduce the inflammation. We could clearly see what needed to be dealt with. This is an example of acute inflammation.
But what we couldn’t see was the chronic inflammation we were all struggling with internally. How do we deal with something we cannot see?
The first step was to educate myself about this mysterious beast called, inflammation.
I soon learned that chronic inflammation is not as easy to identify and even harder to treat. Chronic inflammation can look like fatigue, mouth sores, chest pain, abdominal pain, fever, rash or joint pain. My family was dealing with all of these issues! Could this be the answer I had been searching for?
Inflammation can be the root of many diseases that so many of my friends or loved ones had or were struggling with. Things like diabetes, heart disease, migraines, thyroid issues, chronic pain, obesity, ADD/ADHD, dental issues, or cancer.
We experience an internal pain and often it is not very easy to identify the source or cause.
So what did I do with this information? I didn’t want a band-aid fix. I wanted to get to the root of the issue. What was causing us to have inflammation? It wasn’t just an age thing because my kids were dealing with issues too.
The question I asked was… why was the inflammation present? There had to be a reason for the body to turn on this particular immune response.
This is what I found.
The majority of inflammatory diseases originate in the gut which triggers an autoimmune reaction and eventually leads to chronic inflammation within the body. This chronic inflammation over time results in many diseases.
That is a mouthful… But basically… the root of many inflammation issues… is the gut!
So much happens in the gut that it would take an entirely new blog post to explain it. So for simplicity sake…Gut health is vital to reducing inflammation. To find lasting relief from many inflammatory based diseases gut health must be addressed.
You may be wondering how this happens.
Here is a simplified explanation of how this works. This is only one example of how this can happen and quite possibly did in my case.
I am a redheaded Irish girl with a temper to match. I know it is hard to imagine but there have been times when I have gotten into a verbal exchange that was less than pleasant. My headstrong nature has gotten me into more than one tangle like this. This level of exchange raised my cortisol levels which coursed throughout my body… which included my intestines. Then I sat down to eat lunch. Because of the raised level of cortisol, the walls of my intestines were slightly compromised and permeable so bacteria, food particles, and yeast, etc. were able to pass through the walls of the intestine and enter the bloodstream. My body then recognized the escapees as trespassers and that triggered the immune response. The immune response was inflammation within. Over time this chronic inflammation wreaked havoc on my body.
You may be better than me and never get in a heated verbal exchange with another person so you may think my example doesn’t apply to you! Think again.
I discovered that there are many factors in this inflammation puzzle.
According to Dr. David M. Marquis in an article on Mercola.com, the following are risk factors for developing chronic inflammation.
- Diet: Alcohol, Gluten, Casein, Processed Foods, Sugar, Fast Food
- Medications: Corticosteroids, Antibiotics, Antacids, Xenobiotics
- Infections: Such as H-Pylori, Yeast or Bacterial Overgrowth, Viral or Parasite Infection
- Stress: Increased Cortisol, Increased Catecholamines
- Hormonal: Thyroid, Progesterone, Estradiol, Testosterone
- Neurological: Brain Trauma, Stroke, Neuro-degeneration
Well…My family had many risk factors for chronic inflammation.
- We consumed a megaton of sugar…Check
- Processed foods…check
- Fast food…check
- Antibiotics…check
- Antacids…check
- Tylenol…check
- Yeast overgrowth…check
- Stress…check
- Hormonal issues…check
Yikes! We were walking time bombs of inflammation. Our lifestyle was feeding the inflammation and we didn’t even know it. Ignorance is NOT bliss!
The next question I asked was this…
How to reduce inflammation in the body
Here are the top 3 things I did for how to reduce inflammation in the body.
Understand what is happening- Ignorance is not bliss and knowledge is power. I educated myself on the issues and became proactive by taking charge of the health of my family.
Reduce risk factors- I looked at the above list and did my best to eliminate as many triggers as possible.
Clean up and heal the gut- This was super important. We now take a high-quality probiotic and regularly take something to keep our intestines cleaned out and moving. This gave our gut what it needed to heal and thus reduced the chronic inflammation from within that my entire family was struggling with in one way or another.
Chronic inflammation does not have to be a way of life. And it is not just a part of aging.
If you would like to know my top recommendation for gut health click here.
