Chronic inflammation: How to put out the fire
Just like wildfires devastating the American West, inflammation can spread through your body and wreak havoc. But in many areas, wildfires aren’t always a completely destructive element; they’re part of the natural cycle of life, helping
clear out pests while fertilizing the ground so that fresh life can bloom. And sometimes in the body, well, inflammation is much the same.
Acute inflammation (a sudden marshaling of the immune response in reaction to a specific assault) is an essential part of your body’s ever-vigilant fight against invading toxins, microbes and injuries. Without it, you would become ill from every passing infection or wound.
However, when inflammation is whipped into overdrive because of inactivity, excess weight, a diet loaded with foods like added sugars and processed grains, and the great flame-thrower stress, then you’ve got chronic inflammation.
And that ups the likelihood you’ll develop a chronic ailment like diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, dementia, depression, osteoarthritis, persistent pain, cancer or an autoimmune condition such
as multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease or rheumatoid arthritis.
Recently the role of inflammation in chronic disease has been in the news because of the Canakinumab Antiinflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study (CANTOS). It was designed to explore the effect of an inflammation reducing monoclonal antibody on heart attacks and other atherosclerotic events.