Inflammation Explained

 

Unless you are living an off-the-grid hermit lifestyle, you've heard plenty about inflammation. Researchers and healthcare providers are increasingly pointing the finger at inflammation as an underlying cause of a long list of serious health problems. These include cancer, diabetes, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and even dementia. And for older people, the issue of inflammation grows more serious with the passing years. "As we age," says Simin Meydani, lead researcher at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University, "our ability to control the inflammatory response goes down, leaving us with gradual, accumulating inflammation."

So what then is inflammation? According to Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, "It is a strong defense mechanism that is triggered whenever the immune system activated to fight off a bacterial or viral infection." It also comes into play when the body works to repair any sort of damage, from a pulled muscle to a toxin to a cut. The damaged or infected area of the body releases proteins called cytokines that make blood vessels more permeable and draws white blood cells to the area to enter the tissues and destroy the threat. These white cells, or leucoytes, are our first line of defense against infection or injury.

So inflammation is not always a bad thing. But there are two kinds of inflammation.

Acute inflammation is the way our body defends itself and initiates healing. It does its job and subsides in a fairly short time. Without it infections would linger on and on and wounds would fester.

Chronic inflammation endures long term and is the source of the negative health outcomes we associate with inflammation. 

Acute inflammation often causes noticeable symptoms, such as pain, redness, or swelling. But chronic inflammation symptoms are usually subtler, making them them easy to overlook. These can include fatigue, fever, rashes, abdominal pain and chest pain. Or you may feel no symptoms at all. When you have chronic inflammation, your body’s inflammatory response can eventually start damaging healthy cells, tissues, and organs. Over time, this can lead to DNA damage, tissue death, and internal scarring. It can also set the stage for a host of serious illnesses and conditions. Diseases that seem to have little in common may all be caused, or made worse, by elevated chronic inflammation. It plays a role in allowing cancer cells to grow and multiply, in the buildup of the amyloid plaques thought to be a cause of Altzheimer's and in the buildup of LDL cholesterol particles in the vascular system. It also contributes to the development and severity of respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. In fact, any condition ending in -itis has inflammation at its root.

Check back tomorrow and I will talk about the many things that we can do to manage chronic inflammation, especially as we age.