Major Underlying Cause of Disease- Inflammation
What do Atherosclerosis, Arthritis, Irritable Bowel Disease, Hypothyroid, Eczema, Cancer and Multiple Sclerosis have in common? Seemingly nothing, they all effect completely different systems from Digestive to Nervous, but they all do have one thing in common. They are all associated with inflammation. These are just a few examples out of many. For more examples and mechanisms, see the Mercola article listed below.
Inflammation is a normal response of the body to an irritating influence, the body is usually trying to remove or heal the irritation. Without this response, we would be unable to adapt to our environment and the complex system that is the human body would quickly fail. Unfortunately in our modern society, causes of inflammation are rampant and instead of being temporary stressors on the system, these stressors are not removed and become chronic. This chronic stress on the system leads to adaptations that we see as chronic illness. Think of the pathways in your body like an assembly line (although it is way more complex than that), as long as the conveyor belt is moving at a constant speed, the system works perfectly. Let’s say however suddenly the conveyor starts moving too quickly, delivers the wrong parts, not enough parts, moves too slow, etc. Suddenly the workers have to start compensating in order to put out any product at all. This is all fine and good for a short period, but if it continues, eventually the line would become completely unproductive.
Here are some common chronic stressors on your body that can trigger inflammation.
Dietary: There are many inflammatory compounds found in our diets, some of the major players in overall inflammation include, sugar and many artificial sweeteners, wheat, diary, a diet lacking in vitamins and minerals, over eating, poor quality fats, such as canola, soy, and peanut.
Environment: Toxins from the air, water or ingested, underlying chronic infections, antibiotic overuse
Lifestyle: Emotional Stress, lack of sleep or poor sleep habits, over or under exercising, over or under exposure to sunlight, dehydration
Overwhelming right? Those were just a few out of thousands of insults to the system your body endures every day. There is no way to avoid all these things and the amazing thing about the human body is that it is made to correct all these stressors to the system, however just as you may have felt overwhelmed reading that list, so does your body. Think back to our assembly line analogy, when the stress to the system becomes too much for the body to handle, it either can’t keep up or begins overcompensating, which is when you begin to see the symptoms. These symptoms manifest in the variety of ways listed at the beginning, which the medical world likes to call diseases. The great thing is that because the body is so well adaptable and a self-healing system that often removal of the stressor/stressors can produce dramatic improvement. In later articles, I’ll explain a lot of the whys and hows behind inflammation. So while you can’t live in a bubble, do what you can to help your body avoid irritations, supporting your body as the wonderful self-healing miracle that it is.
