Body Inflammation

Yes, I know it is cliche, but I wish I would have known then what I know now about inflammation.

The older I get, the more aches and pains accumulate. It gets harder to recover from a workout, mowing the lawn, or even walking to the kitchen from the living room.

In my youth, it never crossed my mind to ask what is body inflammation? Times have changed.

I’m over halfway to 100 years old, and now I have a much greater appreciation of inflammation, as you better believe body inflammation impacts your health and wellness every single day.

So if you have never taken the time to think about body inflammation, I hope today is the day. You will reap incredible benefits by understanding inflammation and taking steps to control it.

An Introduction to Inflammation

Inflammation is tricky to grasp because it seems contradictory. On the one hand, inflammation is a healthy process vital for the body to heal itself.

For example, the other day, I cut my hand doing yard work. It wasn’t a terrible accident and there was no mad rush to the emergency room. I simply had a cut. So my immune system released white blood cells and chemicals to fight off the damaged tissue. There was inflammation at the point of injury.

My body reacted as it should when I was injured. The skin around the cut swelled up, turned red, and hurt. These reactions were nothing more than symptoms of acute, short-lived inflammation. We need our bodies to do this.

If the story of inflammation ended here, it wouldn’t even be worth writing about. It’s a beautiful thing when the body does what the body is supposed to do. However, there is a different type of inflammation everyone needs to be concerned about. Let’s talk about it.

Chronic Inflammation

The type of inflammation we need to be on guard and fight against is chronic inflammation. This type of inflammation can last months or even years after an initial trigger is gone. If chronic inflammation is left untreated, over time it may harm your tissues and organs. When this happens, we have a problem, a big problem.

Chronic inflammation is a ticking time bomb inside your body leading to severe health issues and even death. Unfortunately, this statement is not hyperbole but fact.

Once the inflammatory response begins to damage healthy cells, tissues, and organs, a person may experience DNA damage, tissue death, and internal scarring. This level of inflammation is undoubtedly nothing you, nor I want to experience.

Causes of Chronic Inflammation

There is a strong consensus in the medical community on the primary causes of inflammation. Here they are…

• Age: Sadly, the older we get, the more prone we are to chronic inflammation.
• Stress: This has such a profound impact on our physical state and may increase the chance of getting chronic inflammation.
• Obesity: Fat tissue produces pro-inflammatory chemicals, especially visceral fat (a deep layer of fat around the abdominal organs).
• Diet: Especially a diet of highly processed foods, refined carbohydrates, and refined sugars.
• Smoking: Studies show smoking cigarettes lowers the production of anti-inflammatory molecules and increases inflammation.
• Lack of Sleep or Irregular Sleep Patterns: Those who don’t get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep on a regular sleep pattern are more susceptible to body inflammation.
• Physical Inactivity: Those who don’t exercise and lead a sedentary lifestyle are prone to inflammation.

What slaps me in the face from this list, and should you too, is outside of age, which we obviously can’t control. Everything else, to a certain extent, is in our control to fix. The solution is in the mirror every morning when you wake up.

How do I know if I have chronic inflammation?

Inflammation is insidious. It is a silent killer, at least initially. The analogy of putting a frog in boiling water is appropriate here. If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will instantly jump out; however, if you put a frog in a pan of water and slowly, over time, turn up the heat, it will just sit there until it dies.

Sadly, inflammation can slowly creep up on us the same way. The slow emergence and spread of inflammation happened to me and caused severe health issues with my gastrointestinal health, which ultimately put me in the ER with infection and pain. It took months to recover fully.

As I look back on it, I realize my lifestyle choices for years were promoting the potential for problems. I just wasn’t aware of the damage I was doing to myself. Here are some signs you may have chronic inflammation…

• Low Energy
• Poor Digestion
• Weight Gain
• Body Pain
• Skin Rashes
• Excessive Mucus Production

For me, the problems were low energy and poor digestion. Over time, I began to accept low energy & digestive problems as a new normal in life. However, it wasn’t until I was smacked across the face with a 2×4 and ended up in the ER that I made significant lifestyle changes. I discovered how much my past choices had negatively impacted my quality of life.

The thing is if you ignore inflammation, it isn’t a matter of if it will impact your life, the question is when.

You can get your body running optimally

The human body is a fantastic machine. Almost magical, really, when it is functioning correctly. Your body wants to heal itself and run like a high-performance automobile. When your immune system is working as it should, it keeps you healthy, heals you, and promotes overall well-being.

Yet, when we treat the body poorly, as I did for years, the body will react negatively. If you have a poor diet, you are not getting exercise, or make poor lifestyle choices, chronic inflammation will eventually result. Ignoring inflammation can be deadly.

The choice is yours.