“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.”
~ Dr. Gabor Mate
“He not busy being born is busy dying.”
~ Bob Dylan
Case 4: Unhealthy inflammatory response such that inflammation is much greater than what is needed
One example of this is an allergic reaction. Some relatively benign substance such as a peanut or bee venom enters the body and the body interprets it as foreign and threatening. An inflammatory process is launched and the body brings a bazooka when it really needed a tac hammer or maybe nothing at all. This is at the very least disruptive (hives, gastrointestinal upset) or, at the very most, deadly (anaphylactic shock).
Next enter autoimmune diseases. A poorly tuned or hypervigilant immune system starts a program of inflammatory shock and awe in one or more systems of the body in response to a relatively mild stressor or, apparently, no stressor at all. This immune system attack on the body’s own tissues causes damage. There is so much to say on the topic of autoimmune diseases that doing any more than touching on the subject is out of the scope of this blog. Also, I will not pretend to be the vetted expert who is worthy of writing a book on this topic. However, through my humble experience and research, I will endorse one fundamental truth that I wholeheartedly believe in. That is autoimmune diseases are absolutely curable. Ok so if your joints have become permanently deformed from rheumatoid arthritis that may not be fully reversible but, the disease process itself, I fully believe to be stoppable. If you google any autoimmune disease, webmd will surely tell you that there is no cure and that it is a lifelong illness. How fatalistic. Instead of telling people that they are destined to live a life of pain and suffering while also becoming dependent on medications they should be linking to a plethora of resources from outside-the-box thinkers who are making incredible headway with regard to autoimmune diseases. Dr. Terri Wahls is one example. She had such advanced multiple sclerosis that she had to use a power wheelchair but then returned to walking and riding a bike after completely reversing the disease with diet and lifestyle changes (you can view her TedTalk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc). Or Dr. Gabor Mate who wrote a very insightful book on the cost of hidden stress and autoimmune diseases (When the Body Says No). If you believe that you can get better and you are determined to get better then it is possible. That’s all that I have to say.
One last situation where there is poorly tuned inflammation is in, oh yeah, basically every single human being living in the modern world. There is clearly a spectrum here but most everyone I see has some amount of immune dysfunction. This can show up in the form of generally achy joints, poor digestion, inability to lose stubborn belly fat, painful menstrual cycles, brain fog and etc. One symptom that I see show up repeatedly is a large, painful, hard nodule on the Achilles tendon after a moderate amount of walking and no other apparent reason. What gives immune system? Why would you overreact as such? Well, in my opinion, a dysregulated inflammatory response may be due to any of the following (although this is not an exhaustive list): eating a Standard American Diet consisting of nutrient poor and processed foods loaded with highly processed fats and carbohydrates, poor blood sugar regulation, excessive consumption of sugary/caffeinated/alcoholic drinks, poor sleep, a sedentary lifestyle, performing exercise only in the form of begrudgingly slogging out minutes on a cardio machine, never laughing or having fun, not spending enough time in natural light, not spending enough time or any time in nature, not being exposed to microorganisms necessary to form a healthy skin or gut microbiome, being overly exposed to chemicals used for cleaning/sanitizing or otherwise just on literally everything we eat off of/wear or otherwise use, literally taking hormones that alter our natural rhythms that are marketed to us as contraceptives, being lonely, not having enough physical contact with other people, not being loved as a child and/or suffering abuse as a child, or other forms of chronic stress Sound familiar?
Anyways, knowing that any of the aforementioned can result in less-than-optimal immune attunement, it really is no surprise that everyone’s inflammatory response is a bit, you know, messed up. I don’t think anyone in our culture has quite the ideal “inflammation gone right” scenario that was mentioned in the prior blog. The ideal inflammatory response is swift, precise, and concise. Essentially, gets to the right place at the right time and does the job as called for without lingering. I would say most of us don’t have this process so finely tuned. This is why inflammation has earned a reputation as “the enemy.” But now that we have really explored what inflammation actually is I hope that you agree that inflammation is not actually the problem. Our lifestyles are.
Case 5: Unhealthy inflammatory response such that inflammation is much less than what is needed
I feel like this category rarely gets mentioned but it definitely deserves its own space. I rarely see anyone who I would put in this category anymore but I did have the opportunity to observe it frequently and thus designate it as its own classification of inflammation gone wrong when I lived and worked in Eastern Washington state. During this brief stint in my history, I often worked with people who used heroin. People who routinely use heroin are very interesting. They often times hardly eat anything, and if they do, it is total junk. Most of them hardly drink any water. They don’t sleep regularly. Most of them don’t groom or bathe at all. Many of them are incredibly entertaining storytellers. They are so intent on using heroin that they will inject themselves in an already infected wound rather than go without. These are people who are so chronically malnourished and stressed in every way imaginable that there are simply not enough bodily resources available to get the healing process started let alone completed. Inflammation is actually a very energy intensive process and we must not take it for granted. I think that cases in this group often get chalked up to be chronic inflammation greater than what is needed (see above). However, upon second inspection, I see that the inflammatory response was always quite puny and is getting drawn out while simultaneously very little healing is actually happening.
One case I want to highlight from this category was a woman that I worked with who had a total knee replacement at a young age. After her surgery her knee never really became swollen. It was edematous and painful but that inflammation just looked like a bunch of fluid unlike what I would typically see. Her knee remained in this condition for months never moving fully into or out of the inflammation stage. I inquired about her lifestyle and learned that she subsisted on of a steady diet of coffee, Mountain Dew, cigarettes and gas station snacks. Unfortunately, she was not open to changing her lifestyle even though it was so poor that any change including accidently swallowing a bug would have been a boon to her physical body at that time. Her poor health status was so apparent to me that I was shocked when she and her doctors started to grope for any possible answer as to why she was not healing as expected. She kept saying that something had to be “wrong” with her knee replacement and indeed her doctors agreed with her which was either to placate her or because they too were oblivious as to why this was happening. We’ll never know for sure. She had more doctor’s visits and underwent extensive imaging studies. They never found anything of note. It blew my mind that it never occurred to anyone that she was just too unhealthy to heal properly. Who knows, she may have been just one well rounded meal and a good night’s sleep away from feeling so much better. So simple yet so much money and time were poured into trying to finding out what was “wrong” with her.
Maybe if everyone was required to do an internship with heroin users, they would inoculate themselves from surprise to such a degree.