Is inflammation behind all your health issues?

Do you often feel tired and achy for no reason? Almost like you have a flu coming on but it never develops? Or perhaps you frequently have an upset stomach or symptoms of IBS? These are common ailments that most people suffer from but never really know the source of. If you're someone who frequently feels unwell without any clear reason, you may be a victim of inflammation.

We normally expect inflammation to occur only when the body's defense system is triggered by some sort of infection or allergen, but in reality stress or poor diet are enough to get it going. Understanding inflammation may be the first step to improving your quality of life tenfold. Click through this gallery to learn more.

Inflammation

Inflammation is one of your body's defense mechanisms when it comes under attack.

The body's defense

We see this in action when the skin around a wound turns red. This is the body's inflammatory response attempting to isolate and destroy any invading elements!

Symptoms of inflammation

The body responds with inflammation in a wide variety of ways. You can experience it through joint pain or gastric distress.

Inflammation response

When the body senses one of these triggers it releases protein cells called cytokines to cause the inflammation response. These cells can be measured to assess the level of inflammation in the body.

Effects of inflammation

There is growing evidence that inflammation has an acute effect on how we feel, mentally and physically.

While there is much still to be learned, there is a clear link between inflammation and the immune system, metabolism, sleep, stress responses, cognitive thinking, memory, expression, impulse control, mood, clarity, and more.

Depression and bipolar disorder

Inflammation has been found to trigger depression in the same way that an allergen can trigger an allergic reaction.

Immunotherapy is a treatment against disease where the immune system is either activated or suppressed. It's commonly used to treat cancer or allergies.

Anxiety and trauma

Stress at a young age is linked to gut inflammation, which can cause a whole host of mental and physical issues.

A gut imbalance can lead to damage of the lining of the gut. Guess how the body responds to this damage? Inflammation, of course.

A few examples include ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, IBS, arthritis, Crohn's disease, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

The gut and the brain

The diversity of gut bacteria has also been linked to brain function. The scientists in this study could detect a difference in the brain activity of the children with more diverse gut bacteria.

Research into this has grown exponentially in the past decade and the results are eye-opening.

The gut influences so many systems in the human body that it has become known as 'the second brain.'

Inflammation causes

To summarize, inflammation can be caused by stress, poor diet, food insensitivities/allergies, infections, and toxins.

Mind-body medicine

Whether you suffer primarily from physical or emotional pain, it's not a bad idea to treat both!