Chapter 3
Determining Inflammation’s Role in Chronic Diseases
IN THIS CHAPTER
The body is equipped to take care of itself in many situations, sending signals to create healthy inflammation levels where needed. Catch a cold, and the immune system instantly sends a message to the body to start fighting it off. Twist your ankle while hiking, and the area around it instantly starts to swell, creating a cushioned protection while the injury starts to heal.
Sometimes, however, the body’s defense mechanism works against itself, creating problems instead of solving them. Whether the signals get crossed or the process kicks into high gear, the body may fight itself when there’s no real reason to engage. The result of this overreaction is chronic illness in the heart, the nerves, the lungs, the joints — just about anywhere.
In this chapter, we examine a variety of chronic illnesses, from heart disease, asthma, and diabetes to obesity and problems with the digestive and immune systems. In addition to helping you gain a better understanding of these illnesses, we identify the role inflammation plays in each of them as well as what you can do to prevent or delay symptoms.
Understanding Chronic Diseases
Chronic diseases are those that aren’t communicable; that is, they’re not contagious. They’re usually long-lasting and don’t just go away on their own like a cold or the flu does. Chronic diseases include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and arthritis — all diseases that invade the body and plan to stay. In addition, neurogenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, and even depression, are chronic illnesses that involve chronic inflammation at their root. Most chronic diseases are never cured completely, so your best bet is to avoid getting them in the first place.
Chronic diseases are responsible for 7 of 10 deaths in the United States each year.
About 133 million Americans — about half the adults — live with at least one form of chronic illness.
More than 75 percent of healthcare costs can be attributed to chronic illness.
Inflammation is a common denominator among chronic diseases. Causes of inflammation — such as an inflammatory diet, cigarette smoking, chronic infections, daily stress, nutrient deficiencies, toxins, and lack of exercise — combined with genetic predispositions are a recipe for chronic disease.
Figure 3-1 shows how these factors can lead to systemic inflammation, which can later lead to chronic diseases such as heart and cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases (diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome), bone disease, and depression. Inflammation leads to low energy and makes you more prone to getting sick and moody, making you less motivated to exercise and further leading to skeletal muscle weakness and more inflammation.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 3-1: The flow from risk factors to systemic inflammation to chronic diseases.
This cycle is self-perpetuating — unless you start to do something about it by changing your diet and lifestyle. Research has shown that dietary and lifestyle changes are more effective than any medication in reducing your risk of chronic disease and can prevent prediabetes from turning into diabetes. Keep in mind that changing your diet to stop inflammation isn’t just a temporary fix — it’s something you have to commit to following for the rest of your life.
Inflammation may be an underlying cause in multiple disease processes because it interferes with multiple body functions and even how your brain signals, called neurotransmitters, work. For example, leaky gut syndrome is a part of the mechanism by which food allergies, sensitivities, intolerances, and toxins play a role in the development of autoimmune diseases.
Autoimmune diseases are chronic diseases in which the body attacks itself through out-of-control inflammation. Besides genetics, dietary factors play a major role in autoimmune diseases. For example, studies have shown that people with certain types of autoimmune diseases, such as Sjögren’s disease and Graves’ disease, have a greater intolerance to gluten and a higher risk of developing celiac disease.
www.naturopathic.org.
Connecting Heart Disease, Obesity, and Diabetes to Inflammation
Your body often doesn’t take on one disease at a time. Instead, you may get one chronic illness initially, and that illness can lead to others. Obesity, for example, is considered a chronic disease on its own, but it’s also a factor in other chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. You can reduce your risk for all these illnesses by taking inflammatory foods and factors out of your lifestyle.
In this section, we discuss the role inflammation plays in developing heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.
Heart disease: Affecting heart function
Clinical research has uncovered a strong link between inflammation and heart disease, the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. Inflammation plays an important role in atherosclerosis, in which fatty deposits build up in the lining of the arteries.
When inflammation damages blood vessels, the body uses cholesterol to patch them up, creating plaque that can lead to atherosclerosis and other heart-related diseases. (See the nearby sidebar for details.)
The connection between inflammation and heart disease is so strong that in 2003, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a joint medical statement opening the door