Inflammation - Part 1
Acute vs. Chronic Inflammation
Inflammation always starts the same way. Your immune system mobilizes certain immune cells and sends them out to heal injured tissue in the body. Like a cut in your skin or an injured joint.
It also increases the blood supply to the area, giving the injury its “inflamed” look. The extra blood is bringing warmth, nutrients, and immune cells to the injury. It’s the magical act of healing.
Without inflammation, we wouldn’t be able to heal from the everyday wear and tear of life. We’d be covered in cuts, wounds, and injuries...that wouldn’t be very pleasant, now would it?
The problem begins in the cleanup. After your injury has healed, your immune system needs to swoop in and clean up all of that inflammation. And so our body sends in a troop of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins to clean everything up.
…or, so we hope.
For various reasons; from nutritional deficiencies to immune system imbalances, our immune system isn’t always able to do the cleanup work. Your immune system might be able to trigger this inflammatory process but it can’t clean it up.
It’s when inflammation becomes chronic that the problems begin. Bone can start to break down in chronically inflamed joints and inflamed arteries can begin to narrow. And this over-stimulated immune system might then trigger other conditions, including auto-immune diseases.
So, it’s clear that we need to have a happy and balanced immune system, but the problem can be how to create balance.
Our inner army of immune cells needs some important ingredients, like certain nutrients and lifestyle factors, to work optimally. Happily, many can be worked into our lives fairly easily.
An overwhelmed immune system –
When the immune system is overwhelmed or overstimulated, it doesn’t just struggle with cleaning up inflammation, might also start to get confused.
First, it might start to confuse pollen and bacteria. Both look very similar, but they’re different enough that a balanced immune system can easily tell the difference. But, when our immune system is overwhelmed, it may trigger attack mode on a bit of grass pollen…triggering hay fever.
Later, it may be even more confused and start to confuse our own cells for invading cells. This is the cornerstone of an autoimmune response (or, at least, it’s what we understand today about autoimmune conditions).
By balancing our immune system we can reduce the chaos and overwhelm, and bring order back to our important defence system.
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :)
Time to Head over to Part 2!