Could chronic inflammation be impacting your health?
When I was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 47, I desperately wanted to try and understand how I came to develop this disease. While genetic factors load the gun, it's the environmental factors that pull the trigger. Extensive evidence from human samples and animal models support the involvement of inflammation in onset or progression. This is also true for many other diseases from heart disease and stroke, to cancer, autoimmune disorders and chronic fatigue syndrome. There are many environmental factors that can trigger chronic inflammation as discussed below.
No matter what your health aspirations are, the chances are they are linked to chronic inflammation. Inflammation is a classic case of 'too much of a good thing!' Don't get me wrong, it can be a good thing, but there is a big difference between short term inflammation (a vital part of the body's healing process) and chronic inflammation.
When our immune system senses a threat such as infection or injury, it activates an intense inflammatory response to destroy the enemy - often leading to collateral damage of healthy cells. Once the operation is accomplished and order restored, anti-inflammatory antibodies step in, ready to clean up any left over mess (short term inflammation).
Unfortunately, in many cases, the immune system is left in an ongoing state of crisis: stuck between a full-blown tug o' war and everlasting ceasefire, resulting in a cytokine drizzle (a minor yet persistent inflammation) that damages healthy tissue, all while courageously attempting to shield us from harm's way!
This is chronic inflammation and has become increasingly recognised as a dangerous health threat, having a role to play in many conditions, from coronary heart disease and stroke, to cancer and autoimmune conditions, to neurological conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It's no joke when we say chronic inflammatory diseases can take a serious toll on one’s quality of life! While anti-inflammatory supplements like turmeric and fish oil can help alleviate chronic inflammation to a degree, they don't address the root cause.
Fortunately, we can do a lot to stop it in its tracks by learning what triggers it in the first place.
So what causes chronic inflammation?
Dietary Factors
The food we eat can either help to calm inflammation or add fuel to the internal fire. Some of the most inflammatory foods include:
Sugar
High fructose corn syrup
Inflammatory oils, including some vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils and trans fats
Alcohol
Processed animal products
Ultra processed food which are usually high in salt, bad fats, sugar, and mass produced from the lowest quality ingredients, grown with the most damaging farming practices, and sold to the time and money poor.
Ultimately there is no one size fits all approach to eating to reduce inflammation. Much of it will depend on the health of your gut. There is more to determining if a food is good for you than its nutritional value. To gain optimal benefit from nutritionally rich foods your gut needs to be healthy in order to digest, absorb and assimilate these foods.That said, constantly picking the wrong foods can accelerate the inflammatory disease process.
Beyond pro-inflammatory foods, food intolerances are another source of chronic inflammation. So to calm inflammation and for overall health, it’s critical to remove foods to which you are intolerant from your diet... at least for a period of time. Whereas most food allergies last a lifetime, an impaired gut barrier (“leaky gut”) is the cause of many food intolerances, and many intolerances can even be overcome by properly healing the gut.
Gut Problems
If you have what we call dysbiosis (an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in your gut), this can trigger inflammation in various ways:
Health-protecting bacteria and their beneficial functions may be lost
Pathogens and harmful bacteria can be acquired or can overgrow in the gut
A combination of both.
This imbalance in gut microbes can impact the gut barrier (the intestinal lining of cells) that, when working properly, forms a tight barricade that controls what gets absorbed into the bloodstream. An unhealthy gut lining may become more permeable and have larger cracks or holes, popularly known as "leaky gut", allowing partially digested food, toxins, and harmful bacteria and their metabolites to penetrate the tissues beneath it and gain access to the bloodstream. The body then sets in motion an immune attack on these toxins which promotes ongoing inflammation. Beneficial bacteria on the other hand create anti-inflammatory compounds which is why a healthy balance of gut microbiota is so incredibly essential for healthy digestion and a healthy body as a whole.
Toxic exposures
Another trigger of chronic inflammation is exposure to low levels of a particular toxin or foreign material that cannot be easily eliminated. Examples include air pollutants, heavy metals, prescription drugs, pesticides, chemicals in foods, food packaging, personal care products, and household cleaners, many of which are a significant source of chronic stress in the body, and drive inflammation and inflammation-related diseases.
First and foremost, it’s important to identify if and how you are being exposed to these toxins, and then take the necessary steps to remove the exposure. Then, supporting your body’s natural detox pathways with tools like dry body brushing and castor oil packs will help ensure your body is effectively detoxing and removing these toxins.
Since heavy metals bioaccumulate in the body, they aren't detoxed as easily as other toxins, and require a particular approach, which is complex, and should always be done under the care of a practitioner that knows what they are doing.
Chronic stress
It’s natural and normal to be stressed sometimes. But facing persistent psychological stressors, such as high demand jobs, financial insecurity, or living in a dysfunctional marriage or family, can drain your psychological resources and push the inflammation dial up. This is why it’s important to build stress-management skills and make stress reduction a key feature of your daily life.
I enjoy and often recommend meditation apps like Headspace, Calm, Insight timer, Buddhify, though stress reduction looks different for everyone. For you, it may be reading for an hour before bed, taking a relaxing walk during your lunch break, being in nature, listening to relaxing music, taking a hot bath with calming essential oils, snuggling with a pet, or practicing a hobby. Whatever it is, do more of it! If necessary, add it to your schedule / calendar so it doesn’t get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list and forgotten.
Lack of Exercise
Did you know that over 30% of the world population is considered physically inactive and does not meet the minimum recommendations for regular physical activity?
Recent studies show that our muscles function as endocrine organs, producing small proteins called myokines during muscle contraction. These myokines have an anti-inflammatory effect which may be why people who don't exercise regularly have higher levels of C-reactive protein and other inflammatory markers.
In addition, lack of exercise can contribute to obesity and excessive abdominal fat, a significant trigger of inflammation that accelerates aging and the risk of heart, metabolic, autoimmune, and brain diseases, as well as several types of cancer.
Poor sleep
Research shows that inflammatory molecules in the body, are usually elevated among people who are not sleeping well. Lack of good quality sleep raises blood pressure, alters the body's stress response system, interferes with normal brain function, and activates many inflammatory processes.
Chronic infections
Whenever the body encounters a harmful bug, it starts an inflammatory response as a defence mechanism to get rid of it and begin the healing process. However, some microorganisms, can resist our defences and remain active in our bodies for an extended period. This failure to eliminate the source of infection can trigger chronic inflammation. Examples of chronic infections include cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus, hepatitis C virus, and Candida overgrowth.
All these things trigger inflammation, but did you notice that most of them, you can do something about? Whether it is improving your sleep, managing your stress better, changing your diet, there are many things you can do to reduce inflammation and your risk of developing disease.