Inflammation — the key to chronic disease?

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

It’s fascinating to watch the medical establishment discover inflammation. In the past few years there have been studies suggesting that chronic inflammation lies at the root of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and many other immune disorders. Many of the diseases and complaints associated with aging — including aging skin — can also be attributed to chronic inflammation.

Inflammation is a particularly important issue for women in perimenopause and menopause. Somehow — we’re not altogether sure how — this major hormonal transition stokes the fire. Inflammation caused by hormonal imbalance could be a key reason why women suffer 75% of all autoimmune disease.

At Women to Women, we’ve long recognized that inflammation plays a central role in disease and aging, and that controlling inflammation is critical to your health. But what’s remarkable is that conventional medicine still has no definitive tests for, or diagnosis called chronic or systemic inflammation. There is even no consensus in medical science about what this kind of inflammation really is or how it undermines your health.

This simply means we’re in the middle of a medical revolution — a radical advance in the understanding of the body and how to keep it healthy.

But there’s plenty of good news here. Although chronic inflammation may be a relatively new idea to conventional medicine, it’s old hat in Chinese medicine. And while it’s true that Western science hasn’t worked out every step in the pathways to chronic inflammation, we do know a great deal about how to reduce inflammation and promote health.

So let’s explore what we now know about chronic inflammation, its link to disease, and what you can do in your own life to keep it under control. Here are a few articles we’ve written for you on the many facets of inflammation.

Our most popular resources on inflammation

To access an article, just choose from the list of excerpts below. To find more articles, use the search function below. Don’t see a topic that’s important to you? Let us know.

• What is chronic inflammation?
  An explanation of how chronic inflammation arises, how it differs from the body’s innate immune response to injury or invasion, and why you may want to weigh your options before popping aspirin, Tylenol, or Advil every day.
• Reducing inflammation — the natural approach
  Reducing inflammation is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to improve your health and prevent many of the common complaints of aging — without drugs. These anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle guidelines are simple, natural, and highly effective.
• Joint pain or arthritis — quieting the inflammatory noise
  Whether you have mild or severe inflammation causing your joint pain or arthritis, here are safe, simple, and effective measures that can help you diminish joint inflammation, refurbish joint cushioning, and regain flexibility — without resorting to harmful anti-inflammatory medications.

 

Last Modified Date: 04/20/2011
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP