What is Inflammation? The Beginning of Everything…
In order to understand what Inflammation is, let’s talk about the Immune System first:
Both detective and defender, the immune system’s primary job is to Tolerate and then NOT react! It accurately identifies a real threat via molecular structures.
It is internally regulated and balanced. Inflammatory signals are counterbalanced by anti-inflammatory signals; strong innate and adaptive immunity; balanced intracellular (Th1) and extracellular response (Th2).
Inflammation is the body’s response to threat or injury. It is necessary for triage. E.g. wound-healing (swelling, redness, fever). However, it is harmful if chronic and/or systemic. Inflammation is evidence of the body’s loss of tolerance.
Like I stated earlier, cells secrete chemicals (e.g. cytokines such as interleukins) which drive the body to have an appropriate and balanced immune response: 1) Calm the body (anti-inflammatory) or 2) Alarm the body (inflammatory) .
Remember: everything you eat, drink, breathe, do, think, and experience is causing the body to respond in real-time, all the time.
Common chronic inflammatory symptoms are often what my clients think of as “what runs in my family or the consequences of “just getting old”! Swollen joints, achy muscles, congestion, headaches, diarrhea, constipation, GERD, depression, lethargy, ongoing fatigue, skin rashes, itchiness, bloating, poor memory, irritability, brain fog…
But they can become things we know to be highly-debilitating or deadly: Diabetes, Atherosclerosis, Asthma, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Cancer…
“A headache is a Gift!” Flu symptoms aren’t caused by the influenza virus. They are caused by your immune system in its effort to identify, contain, and eradicate the threat.
How do we respond to Inflammation?
➢ Ignore it and “just keep going”?
➢ Pop a pill (or 2 or 3 or 4) to suppress the annoying symptoms?
➢ Take a day off from work, drink plenty of
liquids, take some extra zinc, and go back to bed?
Listen to your body, understand where the inflammation is coming from and tackle it from there. By looking at the root cause we can avoid more debilitating disease dynamics.
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If you have any questions about how you could benefit from Functional Medicine applied to health coaching, please schedule an initial consultation with me. During this session we will discuss your health and lifestyle to determine how I can best support you in achieving your goals.
Virginia