Inflammation: What exactly is it, and how does it cause my chronic pain?
Click here to read our entire online January e-newsletter on inflammation and pain.
Dr. Sonya Nobbe, ND
INFLAMMATION. We’re told that it causes anything from heart disease to arthritis to aging. Medical science has developed countless pharmaceutical and surgical interventions to suppress or circumvent its destructiveness, to alleviate pain and treat chronic disease. We even have drugs that affect how our DNA is involved in the generation of inflammation! But now science is starting to understand the long-term consequences of this approach, including the real possibility that our anti-inflammatory pharmaceuticals are actually contributing to prolonged low-grade inflammation that makes us more ill. There are safer, more complete ways of addressing the inflammation that causes pain and disease.
Inflammation is a whole-body complex biochemical process initiated by the body’s immune system as a response to some form of “danger”, such as an injury or infection. It’s the red soreness of a scratch on our skin, the ache in our lower back, the stomach pain that follows a meal that didn’t agree with us. It’s the body’s warning that something isn’t right and so… we suppress it.
