Should You Be Worried About Chronic Inflammation?
September 26, 2011, By Avery Hurt 0 comments
You might have gotten the impression lately that inflammation is the root of, if not all evil, at least most illness. But what exactly is inflammation? And what can—or should—you do about it?
Inflammation is the body’s response to infection and injury. When you get hurt or sick, a diverse group of immune cells rush to the site of trouble, begin ousting infectious agents (bacteria and viruses), healing damaged tissue and clearing out the resulting debris. When the injury (a cut on your finger) or infection (a cold) is acute, you get swelling, redness, and heat in the area. It is inflammation that makes your nose get stopped up when you have a cold and inflammation that makes your ankle swell when you sprain it. As soon as the injury or infection heals, your finger or your ankle or your nose starts to look and feel normal again. This is the routine healing process we are familiar with from the first time we skinned a knee.
However, there is another kind of inflammation, and this is the one everyone seems to be so excited about lately: chronic systemic inflammation. This is usually a low-grade inflammation and occurs throughout the body in places where you can’t see or feel it, such as the insides of your blood vessels.
In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that chronic, low-grade inflammation accompanies many, if not most, chronic illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and many cancers. The evidence that inflammation plays a role in heart disease is particularly compelling. Inflammation can cause an elevation in the blood of a protein called C-reactive protein (CRP), and high CRP can indicate an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. A few experts think that CRP-levels may be a better indicator of heart attack risk than cholesterol levels.
Chickens and Eggs Again
As with most things involving the immune system, it is not clear what is going on. The immune system is an extremely complex system, rivaling the nervous system for sheer inscrutability. Immunologists regularly find new players and discover yet more ways they interact with each other and other chemicals in the body. It does seem clear that chronic inflammation accompanies most chronic illnesses. And particularly in the case of heart disease there are clear mechanisms by which inflammation might actually cause the problems.
When blood vessels are damaged by absorbing too much cholesterol, for example, the resulting inflammatory response might actually cause further damage. Nonetheless, it is still very much a chicken-and-egg problem: Is the inflammation a cause of or a result of the heart disease? When it comes to the role of inflammation in other chronic illnesses, the situation is even more confusing. There is definitely an association, but again, there is a lot of work to be done before anyone knows what is causing what—or what to do about it.
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