What is Inflammation?

Yesterday I was talking about cows, grass, and inflammation but since I didn’t want to make my “dissertation” too long, I didn’t get to explain what inflammation is. So, in a few words, here it is:

 

What is inflammation?

Inflammation is a response of our immune system to injury or irritation. Through inflammation our body attempts to remove the cause of injury by producing pain, swelling, redness and heat. The pain lets us know about the damage and the swelling protects us as it prevents us from moving that body part which could cause more irritation. Inflammation can be acute or chronic.

 

Acute inflammation
It is the initial response of our body to injury or infection. It happens over seconds, minutes, hours, or days. We need acute inflammation so that the healing takes place in our body. 

 

Chronic inflammation

However, prolonged inflammation, known as chronic inflammation, is a never ending response of the body to injuries or infections. Although inflammation is needed to heal injuries, long term inflammation can lead to serious chronic diseases. In fact, more and more studies are coming out proving that inflammation is linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes as well as Alzheimer’s and several kinds of dementia. Scary, isn’t it?

 

Factors that cause inflammation

Several factors may cause inflammation. Among them we find:

Injuries
Toxins and chemicals in our air, water and food
Poor nutritional habits
Bacterial or viral infections
Allergies
Medications
Diseases of the immune system
Physical and emotional stress

 
As you may have guessed by now, reducing inflammation seems to be crucial to prevent a wide range of chronic illnesses that have the potential of shortening our lives. You may want to check my yesterday’s blog post to see one way of reducing inflammation. We’ll talk more about inflammation in the following days.

 

Have a happy and healthy day.

 

Emilia Klapp, BS, RD

MediterraneanDietfortheHeart