Combating Excessive Inflammation
Inflammation can actually be a good thing. Anyone who has had a sore throat, rash, hives, or a sprained ankle knows that it is your body’s normal and appropriate response to infection and trauma. But too much inflammation can be a bad thing when that defense system runs out of control, like a rebel army bent on destroying its own country.
Many of us can be unaware of our own overactive immune response that results in too much inflammation. It’s actually very common and manifests itself as allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease, and asthma. This is the bad type of inflammation, and if it is left unchecked, it can become downright ugly.
Thankfully there’s a quick and easy blood test performed by Kare called a C-reactive protein test, and it measures the degree of hidden inflammation in your body.
Finding out whether you are suffering from hidden inflammation is critical, because almost every modern disease (including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, depression, cancer, and even autism) is caused or affected by it. If your immune system and its ability to quell inflammation in your body are impaired, watch out. You are headed toward illness and premature aging.
Fortunately, addressing the causes of inflammation and learning how to live an anti-inflammation and learning how to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle can dramatically improve your health. The first step is to understand what inflammation is and why it can become so dangerous.
The first step in keeping inflammation under control is avoiding these triggers: poor diet (mostly sugar, refined flours, processed foods, and inflammatory fats such as trans and saturated fats), lack of exercise, stress, hidden or chronic infections with viruses, bacteria, yeasts, or parasites, and hidden allergens from food or the environment.
By listening carefully to a patient’s story and performing a few specific tests, Kare can discover the causes of inflammation for most people.
It’s important to understand that this concept of inflammation is not specific to any one organ or medical specialty. In fact, if you read medical journals from almost any field of medicine, you will find numerous articles about how inflammation is at the root of problems with the particular organ or area they focus on.
In the future, medicine may no longer have specialties like cardiology or neurology or gastroenterology, but new specialists like “inflammologists”.
Our regenerative medicine approach to your health focuses on helping our patients better understand these concepts and core systems that are the basis of healthy living.
