What is inflammation?
That word is getting thrown around a lot lately. Most of the explanations I see are accompanied by biochemistry charts and words like cytokines and prostaglandins.
Which is cool to me because I'm a nerdy doctor who's into all that complex and very interesting detail.
But you? Maybe not so much with the doctor-words. So let me explain inflammation in a way that you’ll understand, rather than making you feel stupid.
Inflammation is a necessary and awesome process that our amazing bodies can and must perform. It's our body's way of rallying the troops when there is an invasion until our immune system gets the message and sets up a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, if necessary. (That's usually not necessary, by the way.)
Say a bee stings you--it triggers the inflammatory cascade to come protect you from The Evil Poison of The Bee. The area around the sting swells, gets red and warm, hurts, and sometimes loses some mobility. These are traditional signs of acute inflammation, and YOU WANT THIS TO HAPPEN.
Yay! Inflammation! My body is protecting me!
But you also want the inflammatory process to end. You get stung, it hurts, you ice it, maybe take some Apis 30C, leave it alone. It's back to normal in a relatively short period of time.
(Don't worry, we won't talk about the way you were flailing around screaming like a little girl trying to get away from that bee...)
No more redness, swelling, pain, heat, or loss of function. No more inflamed skin. Your immune system has taken over and determined there is no need to panic; all is well. Appropriate Inflammatory Response did its job. You forget about it until you see another bee, but that's a different reaction. ;)
Yay! No more inflammation! My body has no fear of attack anymore!
That's the way it's designed to happen.
It should turn on when needed and turn off when its job is done. However, most of us are living in a state of constant low-level inflammation, and THAT is when inflammation becomes a problem.
It starts to damage healthy tissue instead of protecting it.
Cue irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, headaches, joint pain, anxiety, depression, heart disease, autoimmunity, and even cancer.
Yeah I said it.
Almost everything can be traced back to inflammation gone wild. It's a sign that your body isn't functioning quite properly, and maybe you should investigate the actual cause(s) of the dysfunction.
“But if inflammation develops, regardless of the cause, still it is an effort whose purpose is to restore the parts to their natural functions.”
So what can you actually do about it?
Here's the deal: you can modulate your body’s inflammatory response. Seriously. It doesn't always take a prescription for steroids or biologics; in fact, stay away from that crap if you can, and look at the signals your body is showing you.
Do you get a headache/belly pain/your wrists hurt (hmm, that’s oddly specific…) after you eat that one food? Every. Single. Time.
Do your neck and upper back hurt, and you just happen to sit hunched over a desk all day long and never get any exercise?
Start with the obvious stuff.
Connect the dots. Analyze your lifestyle and food choices. Think about your genetic heritage (but don't get crazy -- genetics is only a small part of your story and you can alter that too).
Then take the simplest action to remedy the cause:
Stop eating that food that makes you headachey.
Improve your posture at your desk during the day.
Start moving more. Purposeful movement is directly correlated to decreased inflammatory blood markers.
Find out your food intolerance and stop eating it.
Simply becoming more aware of what is going on can make a huge difference. It doesn't always take a fancy Latin word and a prescription to fix what ails you. There is another way. Don't buy the lie that you can't do anything about a pain or disease that is caused by something you are doing.
This is personal.
I have significantly less joint pain, more emotional stability, and more energy when I stay away from my Carroll food intolerances. Add daily yoga, 3-4 Pilates classes per week, or some kayaking excursions into the mix, and I feel downright good. It took me a long time to figure this out, and even longer to actually implement the changes that I needed to make. I'm a work-in-progress. Be gentle and kind to yourself and others on the journey. Just because something is simple doesn't mean that it's easy.
I'm Dr. Kirsten Harrison, and I would be honored to help you with your inflammation or other health issues.
Are we a good fit? I don't know, let's find out!
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Check out the rest of my website and Windrose Clinic’s website.
DISCLAIMER: Bee stings can cause anaphylactic shock in some people, which is a violent and dangerous allergic reaction to a toxin--this is more than minor inflammation. This is when you call 911 and grab the epipen.