How to Fight Inflammation
by Haley Scellick, ARNP
Inflammation is our immune system’s response to protect against infection, disease, or injury. In most circumstances this is a normal part of our immune health. During this complex process, the cells release chemicals to alert the immune system. In the short term, our body may be fighting off a cold or healing a wound and the inflammation is essential for the healing process. Over time, too much of a good thing can turn bad and cause damage to the heart, brain, or other organs.
The long-term causes of inflammation can be damaging to the body that can lead to more severe conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or even cancer.
Chronic or long-term symptoms of inflammation is when your body is under attack for more than six weeks, which may produce fatigue, frequent infections, insomnia, weight gain, chronic pain, rashes and more.
Meta-inflammation is often the cause of the lower grade type inflammation, which is very common. This is also known as metabolic inflammation. A common cause is insulin resistance, visceral adipose tissue or obesity.
How do we diagnose or detect inflammation?
There are multiple ways to detect inflammation. At Empowered Health, we measure with blood tests. Inflammation can be detected through a few different inflammatory markers:
- A high sensitivity C-Reactive protein test (hsCRP)
- Erythrocyte Sedimentation rate (ESR)
- Homocysteine
- Inter-leukin 6
We monitor trends over time with frequent monitoring. The tests are sensitive but not specific. In other words, these tests do not tell us the exact root cause of the inflammation. We must look closer at other markers and rule out other conditions that may be contributing to the inflammation. Many autoimmune conditions often cause the hsCRP to be elevated in a higher range. We will do further testing to determine the root cause and rule out autoimmune conditions such as systemic lupus erythematous (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, or other causes such as high-grade infections, or malignancies.
How do we remove inflammation from our body?
Lifestyle management is first and foremost for removing inflammation in the body. At Empowered Health, we begin with an elimination diet to rule out the most common proinflammatory foods. The elimination diet, removes these foods/drinks for 3+ weeks and then slowly reintroduces them back in.
Prior to this re-introduction phase, we will often check inflammatory markers to detect any decreases from diet alone. Inflammatory foods are one of the most common sources of low-grade inflammation.
Other ways to target inflammation are to correct any deficiencies within the body, such as:
- Optimizing the thyroid
- Correcting any vitamin deficiencies such as vitamin D, vitamin B12 and folic acid
- Targeting good oral hygiene
- Managing stress management with yoga, meditation, and/or deep breathing
- Improving restorative sleep (7-9 hours for adults)
- Engaging in150 minutes of cardiovascular physical activity per week
At Empowered Health, our comprehensive annual lab panel includes these inflammatory markers, insulin resistance markers, vitamin panels and more. Through precision medicine, we tailor individual plans to detect any abnormalities, as we strive to get to the root cause of the inflammation to optimize the patient’s health for disease reversal and/or prevention
Resources
“Understanding acute and chronic inflammation-Harvard Health”
www.health.harvard.edu
“What is inflammation?”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate and C-reactive protein measurements and their relevance in Clinical Medicine. WMJ. (Bray, et. Al., 2016). Volume 115, No.6