{"id":6981,"date":"2010-07-30T00:59:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T04:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/living-well\/2010\/07\/red-hot-and-inflammed.html"},"modified":"2017-11-29T09:03:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T14:03:18","slug":"red-hot-and-inflammed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/living-well\/2010\/07\/red-hot-and-inflammed\/","title":{"rendered":"Red, Hot, Inflammed and Stressed out??!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s the buzz word for all the magic pills and potions. When unchecked, it’s the underlying mechanism for most chronic diseases and the reason why long-term stress contributes to so many of them. Know what it is? It’s inflammation. This means that your chronic red, hot, joint could be signaling an underlying process that is spreading throughout your whole body. How?<\/p>\n
A recent article in July’s Integrative Practitioner by Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO sheds light on how inflammation contributes to the other symptoms that seem to pop up more with your chronic joint pain (fatigue, digestive disturbances, ect.):<\/p>\n
Chronic inflammation is a complex prolonged internal response to a tissue insult. This response involves the immune and endocrine systems.The initial tissue insult results in a massive release of powerful chemical messenger molecules (cytokines, enzymes, interleukins and prostaglandins). These chemicals stimulate specific activities such as blood vessel growth and also bind to cellular membrane receptors and create cell division and anti-apoptotic signals. A powerful mediator of these reactions is nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kB). NF-kB engages the inflammatory response, stimulates cell division, alters immunity and decreases apoptosis.<\/i><\/p>\n
Huh, Dr. Sarah? In English- an inflammatory response triggers a massive release of chemicals that can enter the body systemically. If your body doesn’t have the resistance to put out the fire, these mediators could damage various organs, tissues, and cause changes in our DNA structure (cancer). <\/p>\n
How do we control inflammation? What could prevent our resistance and cause low immunity? Stress is a big factor, along with many other environmental and lifestyle choices. The stress mechanism signals a whole array of events from inflammatory mediators, blood sugar deregulation, hormonal imbalances, changes in digestive processes and circulatory functions.<\/p>\n
According to the American Institute of Stress, stress contributes to 70-90% visits to primary care doctors and the American Psychological Association reports the following:<\/p>\n
More than half of working adults-and 47 percent of all Americans-say they are concerned with the amount of stress in their lives, according to a new telephone survey conducted…Moreover, the survey finds that people experiencing stress are more likely to report hypertension, anxiety, depression or obesity.<\/p>\n
Here is a review on some of these conditions associated with chronic inflammation (and probably linked to stress):<\/p>\n
The American Heart Association<\/a>– Heart Disease<\/p>\n C-reactive protein (CRP) is one of the acute phase proteins that increase during systemic inflammation. It’s been suggested that testing CRP levels in the blood may be an additional way to assess cardiovascular disease risk. A more sensitive CRP test, called a highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) assay, is available to determine heart disease risk. <\/em><\/p>\n