Inflammation getting you down?

Do you sometimes ignore the pain or discomfort or tension in your body? In doing this, you’re holding your body back from optimum function and optimum health…

Many people will often ignore the signals from their nervous system and body and this lands lots of people into hot water when a seemingly small injury or niggle, turns into debilitating pain and chronic inflammation over time.

So what can we do to avoid chronic inflammation?

Let’s start with breaking down what inflammation actually is…

When we are injured or have an infection, our body will send white blood cells (aka fighter cells) to that region of the body to help repair the damaged tissues or to protect from infection.

So we can either have inflammation from tissue damage, for example if you’ve sprained your ankle or herniated a disk in your back, or if you’ve spent a big day working in the garden bending over and weeding.

Or we can have inflammation with our immune response for example, if we are fighting off a cold or flu or if we have a cut or graze that’s become infected.

In both cases we will often experience heat, redness, swelling, pain and restrictions in movement in that area.  This is an ACUTE inflammation response which is a super important part in our body’s healing process as it increases the amount of white blood cells to the injured or infected area.

If we ignore acute inflammation and pain signals or suppress our body’s healing response, we often will see that the inflammation and pain can become CHRONIC (long term in nature).

So what can we do if we have chronic inflammation?

The biggest thing we can do for chronic inflammation is to prevent it from developing in the first place… and to do this, we need to support our body’s recovery and healing when we are acutely inflamed.

There are many ways that we can support our body’s healing process, whether we are acutely or chronically inflamed…

1. Nutrition – One of the strongest environmental influencers of chronic systemic inflammation is diet.¹  Usually the more processed a food is, the more difficult it is to digest and the lower the nutrient value will be.  Aim to nourish the body with foods free from preservatives, additives and pesticides as this will help reduce much of the inflammation stemming from the gut.
2. Sleep- improving sleep hygiene and consistency can improve sleep quality. Poor sleep is associated with increase in white blood cell count (inflammatory marker) and cardiovascular disease.²
3. Reducing stress levels- stress can activate inflammatory responses in the brain as well as the body.³
4. Cold exposure therapy, meditation, breathing exercises – the combination of all three improves initiation of the immune response in acute inflammation and in chronic inflammation related to immune-mediated inflammatory conditions.⁴
5. Chiropractic care- chiropractic care has been found to improve function and reduce pain for chronic pain patients.⁵

If you feel that your body is experiencing chronic pain or inflammation, you can book in for a Chiropractic consultation via the online booking system.

References

1.  Ahluwalia, N., Andreeva, V. A., Kesse-Guyot, E., & Hercberg, S. (2013). Dietary patterns, inflammation and the metabolic syndrome. Diabetes & metabolism, 39(2), 99-110.
2.  Nakanishi, N., Suzuki, K., & Tatara, K. (2003). Association between lifestyle and white blood cell count: a study of Japanese male office workers. Occupational Medicine, 53(2), 135-137.
3. Rohleder, N. (2014). Stimulation of systemic low-grade inflammation by psychosocial stress. Psychosomatic medicine, 76(3), 181-189.
4. Buijze, G. A., De Jong, H. M. Y., Kox, M., van de Sande, M. G., Van Schaardenburg, D., Van Vugt, R. M., … & Baeten, D. L. P. (2019). An add-on training program involving breathing exercises, cold exposure, and meditation attenuates inflammation and disease activity in axial spondyloarthritis–A proof of concept trial. PloS one, 14(12), e0225749.
5.  Haavik, H., Niazi, I. K., Holt, K., & Murphy, B. (2017). Effects of 12 weeks of chiropractic care on central integration of dual somatosensory input in chronic pain patients: a preliminary study. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 40(3), 127-138.