Women’s health testing: a guide for you

C-reactive protein (CRP and hs-CRP)
— are you on fire?

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Inflammation is slowly becoming recognized in conventional medical circles as a prime contributor to serious health concerns in women like heart disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes — to name just a few. And a test for C-reactive protein (CRP) can help determine whether inflammation is present in your body — including the vessels around your heart.

CRP is mainly released by the liver into the blood stream after the start of an infection or in the presence of inflammation. Generally speaking, inflammation is a sign that your body’s immune system is reacting to damaged or infected tissue. Though there is no definitive agreement on when the test should be done or who should have it, most practitioners in conventional medicine use this test to monitor acute infection, or distinctly inflammatory disorders like arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease.

But our bodies may also carry an ongoing low-grade inflammation depending on our nutrition, stress levels, and other environmental exposures. This low-level immune stimulation can cause problems in the body over time, possibly leading to heart disease, cancer, or other serious conditions. We measure these more subtle changes in CRP with a test known as hs-CRP, or high-sensitivity CRP.

What’s frustrating to me is that many practitioners don’t order an hs-CRP, because they don’t know what to do if it’s elevated in a patient. In 2003, the American Heart Association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jointly published their recommendations on the clinical use of these tests, explaining that CRP values are only useful as an independent marker of risk for cardiovascular disease, and that CRP testing should not be used as a widespread screening tool or to track treatment.

That may change with the most recent publication of a large worldwide study that found people with high levels of hs-CRP benefit from a reduction in risk of heart attack or stroke with the use of a common statin drug. Testing for hs-CRP may become the norm, and that’s a good thing. I’ll be watching to see what happens, and hope that practitioners of all stripes will not change the way they respond to this information by simply writing a prescription for a statin, instead of addressing the underlying causes of inflammation.

In my experience, CRP is an extremely important preventative marker. If it’s elevated, there are many things you can do to dampen the inflammatory cascade and limit your risk of inflammation-related disorders — without signing on to lifelong prescription drugs and their problematic side effect profiles. I typically start by looking at digestion — after all, the gut is key to a healthy immune system. By improving nutrition and digestion, I’ve seen marked changes in women’s CRP levels. You might also consider adding anti-inflammatory spices to your cooking. I’ve seen ginger, turmeric, and other Indian spices help to lower CRP.

For more information on ways in decrease inflammation, see my article on the natural approach to reducing inflammation. I also discuss statin drugs in my article on women’s health myths.

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Original Publication Date: 12/29/2008
Last Modified: 02/16/2010
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP