What is inflammation and what causes it? Researchers have found that it is the most significant trigger behind many chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and other autoimmune conditions. While many may think that inflammation is a bad thing, it’s not always bad. In fact, it is your body’s natural response when something is not right. Inflammation occurs when the body experiences the presence of harmful or foreign invaders that pose any kind of threat. Its job is to aggressively communicate to or recruit the immune system to recognize these invaders and remove them.
It’s our body’s first line of defense.
When our body’s inflammatory response is in balance, all is well, but when it is out of balance, serious health risks can occur. When you are injured, in any way, certain cells identify the injury and send out an array of chemicals in response. These chemicals are designed to treat invading threats, while others like cytokines, adipokine, and eicosanoids recruit white blood cells to the site of the injury. The dispatched white blood cells ingest damaged cells, germs, and any other foreign material to help the body heal.
After this, prostaglandins are released to try and repair the damaged tissue by creating a blood clot. While your body is working overtime to heal, the influx of cells and fluids on the site of the injury causes the pain, swelling, and redness associated with inflammation and there are two types of inflammation. Acute inflammation often starts quickly but it heals in a number of days. Chronic inflammation, however, can last for months and even years due to the repeated exposure to the agent that caused it.
Research has shown that a number of factors contribute to chronic inflammation which includes:
* An autoimmune disorder that causes your immune system to attack healthy tissue.
* An untreated cause of acute inflammation
* A poor state of the body’s inflammatory response
* Our body’s response to stress, unhealthy eating, obesity, and smoking
* A buildup of bad toxins
Chronic inflammation begins when the body’s inflammatory response is exaggerated, drastically, causing it to be out of balance. This goes beyond the body’s natural reaction causing acute inflammation. It could interpret something as simple as your cartilage to be dangerous, causing an inflammatory attack on your joints. This results in rheumatoid arthritis.
Chronic inflammation can cause your body’s inflammatory response to mistakenly attack healthy tissues and calls. When this proceeds over time, it can lead to internal scarring, tissue death, and DNA damage. Diseases associated with chronic inflammation include diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart disease, kidney and lung destruction, stroke, autoimmune diseases, sleep apnea, and depression.
So What Can You Do To Relieve Inflammation Naturally?
You can reclaim your health and allow your body to naturally fight inflammation correctly using foods and herbs. Incorporating anti-inflammatory herbs and foods into your diet are effective ways to fight inflammation without medication. At the same time, you must cut out things like alcohol and sugar to allow your body to effectively do what it was designed to do, which is to heal.
Some of the best herbs for inflammation include turmeric, ginger, and cayenne pepper.