Chronic Inflammation

Chronic Inflammation -

When our immune system is continuously kept in trigger mode, it continues to pump white blood cells and chemical messengers indefinitely - its chronic inflammation. It’s like – if the body is under constant attack and the immune system keeps on fighting indefinitely.

When this happens, white blood cells may end up attacking nearby healthy tissues and organs - causing tissue destruction, tissue remodelling (e.g. fibrosis) that may eventually cause irreversible tissue dysfunction and loss of organ function.

Chronic inflammation is a cardinal sign of ongoing degenerative disorder in your body. It is alarming.

Chronic inflammation is associated with Allergies, Diabetes, Cancer, Arthritis, Heart Disease like Atherosclerosis (blockage), Myocardial infarction (Heart Attack), Bowel Diseases like Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, Kidney disease - glomerulonephritis, end-stage renal disease, or chronic kidney disease (CKD). Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease..

Signs of inflammation are like a car's warning lights on the dashboard. It tells you that something is wrong with some part. Rather than switching those lights off, You actually try to find what caused the light to turn on. Inflammation accompanies a number of chronic diseases. And for many conditions, controlling that inflammation is an important part of treatment. It’s also true that unchecked inflammation contributes to long-term health problems.

Chronic inflammation is trickier to deal with because chronic inflammation is often "invisible," it does not show physical signs the way acute inflammation does.

Inflammation in obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease causes no specific symptoms.

Degenerative disorders like Diabetes, Atherosclerosis, Parkinson’s syndrome, Alzheimer disease, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis share a common pathological feature of inflammation. Obesity, Ageing and Metabolic Syndrome is also characterised by a low grade chronic inflammation.

Inflammation also precedes most cancers and is considered a hallmark of the neoplastic process.

Obesity has been considered a bad prognostic feature in people with inflammatory conditions. Hence there is a kind of shared pathology between cancers and metabolic syndrome and the common pathway is inflammation due to disturbance in micro channel circulation or rather of diffusion.

What to test to check Inflammation?

CRP - C Reactive Protein test measures the level of CRP in a sample of your blood. CRP is a protein that your liver makes. Your liver releases more CRP into your bloodstream if you have inflammation in your body. High levels of CRP may mean you have a serious health condition that causes inflammation.

hs-CRP : elevated level may be predictive of a myocardial infarction, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, and sudden cardiac death.

Inflammatory marker tests are all non-specific tests. This means they don’t identify what’s causing the inflammation: it might be as simple as a mild infection, or as serious as cancer.

Certain conditions might be irreversible if gripped by chronic inflammation e.g., pancreatitis in the pancreas, hepatitis in the liver or pericarditis, which is the inflammation of the heart muscles. These are just a few examples, though there are many more ways that inflammation can present itself in the body.

It is best to keep a lookout for signs of high inflammation such as general weakness, fatigue, recurring fever, aches and pain in joints, unexplained muscle soreness, persistent chest or abdominal pain, skin rashes, digestive problems, mood disorder.

So how can you prevent or reduce inflammation you cannot necessarily see or feel?

The best approach is to get yourself tested. If it is there, take necessary precautions in your eating and lifestyle choices. You can take certain herbs to control it. Take only those herbs which are suitable to your condition and to your body type. Never go by what others or the internet recommend.