Inflammation and Nutrition From Your Northfield Chiropractor Part I

Inflammation

Inflammation is a very important and natural aspect of healing. It is a normal process that is most commonly associated with something like a sprained ankle. However, there are many different aspects of inflammation that are not discussed enough. This blog will discuss this aspect and talk about some natural treatments to what is called chronic inflammation caused by many factors including oxidation (think antioxidants).

The normal function of inflammation is to bring about the natural immune system to heal injury, fight bacteria, viruses, and other foreign invaders to our system. The system is very complicated and it takes a cascade of events for your body to do this. One way to think about it is that in order for your immune system to work it needs a garage code to work. If you only punch in one number into the code the garage door won’t open, but when the all of the numbers are used, then the door is open to fight off invaders or to start the healing of tissue.

Cytokines

One of the aspects of the code is a product released by the immune system called cytokines. There are many cytokines out there, and they are all doing very different things. However, when they are present in the system all the time they may be triggering part of a code that should not triggered causing problems in the system.

Blood sugar

One of the cytokines that is very important is IL-6. This has been linked with poor blood sugar control and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar). This means that if a person has a high circulating level of blood-sugar then this person also has a high concentration of Il-6. Il-6 is also part of many disease processes including cancer. Does that mean that if you eat a bunch of high carbohydrate food you will get cancer? No. This just means that you are priming the system have that garage door password to be easily entered.

Pretend that cancer has a garage door code of 13-17-6-18-42-15. Il-6 is the 6 in the code. In this representation the six is automatically pushed. So when your system gets 13 and 17 the 6 is automatically pushed and the code is now easier to enter, therefore cancer is more easily promoted.

This means that they system needs to dampen the amount of some of these cytokines to help combat the disease. The MOST IMPORTANT thing affecting our healthcare system is the inflammation caused by poor blood sugar control. We are just scraping the surface of the understanding of the detrimental effect of poor blood sugar control. The first thing that people should do is to control your blood sugar. I have written several other blogs about this subject. It is pretty simple once we remove many of the food industries misinformation. However, there are other natural methods that you can use to help bring down the effects of inflammation in the body;

Proteolytic enzymes

• Antagonizes fibrin and cytokines (Acute inflammation such as injury)

White Willow Bark

• Works similar to aspirin on the COX enzyme (Acute inflammation)

Ginger

Turmeric

Boswellia

• These all work to antagonize free radicals and to help reduce the effect of certain cytokines
• Chronic and acute inflammation

Magnesium

• Involved in 110s of enzymes, reduces inflammation, and regulates pain perceptionChronic and acute inflammation

Omega 3 fatty acids (fish oils)

• Precursor for anti-inflammatory mediatorsChronic and acute inflammation

Vitamin D

• Regulates 2000 genes including pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines
• Chronic and acute inflammation

Probiotics

• Reduces gut inflammation and associated systemic inflammation
• Chronic and acute inflammation

Coenzyme Q10

• ATP production, antioxidant, regulates skeletal muscle gene expression
• Chronic and acute inflammation

Alpha lipoic acid

• ATP synthesis, antioxidant, insulin sensitivity
• Chronic and acute inflammation

This is just a sample of the many things that you can get with a healthy diet, but can also be supplemented. This is just the first installment of inflammation. This is a very tricky thing to discuss without being too esoteric, but if you ever have any questions about this blog or any other concerns please visit our site www.cannonpointe.com or call us at 507-645-8000.