Inflammation
Two types of Inflammation
Acute Inflammation
Most of us think of inflammation when we get an injury and physically see swelling. Acute inflammation is your body’s immediate natural response; you often see redness and swelling and sometimes experience a loss of function. This is a protective mechanism that helps your body heal and is usually a short-term situation.
Chronic Inflammation
Inflammation which occurs for long periods of time throughout the body (systemic) without us realizing it, and can slowly cause tissue damage over time and increase risk of disease.
Chronic inflammation is low grade and systemic, constantly engaged, silently damaging tissues increasing your risk of disease. Symptoms aren’t obvious like they are with acute inflammation and chronic inflammation presents itself in various ways in various people.
Chronic inflammation contributes to everything from achy joints to asthma to irritable bowel disease to diabetes to heart disease to migraines to skin rashes, and the list goes on.
Your body sees inflammation as a priority and will try to take care of it before other issues. This could mean if you’re struggling with lack of energy, difficulty losing weight, or even digestive issues, it’s going to be difficult for your body to fix these without reducing inflammation first.
Chronic Inflammation contributes to many leading causes of death in the United States:
- Heart Disease
- Cancer
- Diabetes
- Stroke
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Kidney Disease
- Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease
What May Lead to Chronic Inflammation?
- Stress
- Smoking
- Over exercise
- Poorly controlled
How Can You Tell if You May Have Chronic Inflammation?
If you do go see a functional or integrative medicine doctor with concerns about chronic inflammation, one test they’re bound to run is a C-reactive protein levels blood test. Many traditional doctors may also order this test for various reasons.
Blood Test:
C-Reactive Protein (CRP): CRP is a general blood marker of inflammation. It measures a protein that signals a response to inflammation. It doesn’t tell us the specific cause, but it does tell us that an inflammatory response exists. Make sure you don’t have any acute inflammation going on (from a recent injury, sickness or stubbed toe) when you get this test done because CRP will be elevated in response to any inflammation, acute or chronic. You want your CRP level well below 1 and preferably at 0, indicating that no inflammation exists. Testing your CRP levels can give you an idea of your current state of inflammation, but there will likely be more questions to answer. If a patient has chronic inflammation, a doctor may choose to run labs like ferritin (for generalized inflammation), homocysteine, and MPO (to assess cardiac inflammation), and CRP and ESR (for generalized inflammation, autoimmunity, and infections).
Inflammation could come from allergies, infections, decreased immune system, autoimmunity, or more.
