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Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

harvardmagazine.com

21–30 of 240 posts

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#21

In my case, inflammation is a side effect of insulin resistance, like my fellow 83 million Americans with metabolic syndrome. If I can reverse the cause long enough, the liver should stop dumping fat into the adipose tissue and triglycerides may drop.

I did a 5-day fast last month. Water only, 120 hours.

In the 30 days since I completed the fast, my fasting blood glucose has dropped from ~80-90 down to 65-75.

I'm concerned about the accuracy of my Freestyle Libre, but it was previously consistent with professional labs.

Anyway, a long term fast like the one I did may help improve your insulin resistance; it seems it did for me.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#22
I find these sorts of arguments to be... odd.

“Inflammation” includes so many normal homeostatic processes that it’s essentially a tautology to point to inflammation as being a critical component of disordered homeostasis. The biggest key as to whether a molecule is considered inflammatory is what type of biologist discovered it first.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#24
post #19

At the same time, anti-inflammatories slow wound healing. Here are a couple of random studies I found. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17319622 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22381097

Something I experienced about 20 years ago - I threw my back out (just was sitting, and turned my torso - and that was it), major sciatica pain. Went to the doctor. I was prescribed a certain stretching exercise, plus also 800mg ibuprofen, bed rest, etc. I was popping the ibuprofen "on schedule" - 3x a day. At first, it helped some, and so did the exercise. But then, the pain came back, and nothing was cutting it. No…

I can’t find the citation right now, but as I recall, a lot of connective tissue has very little blood flow. Inflammation increases blood flow, which can help with healing.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#25
I found the last part about SPMs and anti-inflammatory molecules, very interesting and encouraging. Being a colitis patient, I have found out in my own experiments, that eating a diet rich in well sourced fish and chicken decreases my inflammatory symptoms and is very filling at the same time.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#26

In my case, inflammation is a side effect of insulin resistance, like my fellow 83 million Americans with metabolic syndrome. If I can reverse the cause long enough, the liver should stop dumping fat into the adipose tissue and triglycerides may drop.

How does one know if they are one of the 25% of Americans with "metabolic syndrome"?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#27
post #26

In my case, inflammation is a side effect of insulin resistance, like my fellow 83 million Americans with metabolic syndrome. If I can reverse the cause long enough, the liver should stop dumping fat into the adipose tissue and triglycerides may drop.

How does one know if they are one of the 25% of Americans with "metabolic syndrome"?

Start by getting your A1C measured, which many/most doctors do as part of an annual checkup for adults.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#28

As with any news article that includes "may" - reader should remember to add: "... but probably isn't".

I'm a bit concerned that the comments here are so credulous. "Inflammation" has been part of the woo-woo arsenal of certain corners of the health and wellness community for at least a couple of decades, and which I wouldn't be surprised if it supplies a not-insignificant number of the anti-vax adherents. It's that specious.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#29
post #19

At the same time, anti-inflammatories slow wound healing. Here are a couple of random studies I found. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17319622 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22381097

Something I experienced about 20 years ago - I threw my back out (just was sitting, and turned my torso - and that was it), major sciatica pain. Went to the doctor. I was prescribed a certain stretching exercise, plus also 800mg ibuprofen, bed rest, etc. I was popping the ibuprofen "on schedule" - 3x a day. At first, it helped some, and so did the exercise. But then, the pain came back, and nothing was cutting it. No…

Similar experience here. I had residual pain from a neck fusion and doc put me on those 800mg ibuprofen horse pills + PT. It seemed to help at first but then plateaued and didn't seem to help much. After I had been on ibuprofen for months I noticed that small cuts on my hands (typical for my line of work) were slow to heal.

One day I went to a lecture on brain research by some top neurologist at Stanford. As an aside about the difficulty of maintaining double-blind standard in actual experiments, she mentioned that she once worked on research involving NSAIDs. To mark the mice for tracking they punched coded holes in their ears but found they could tell which mice were getting NSAIDs because the holes would not heal for the treated mice whereas in untreated mice the holes would heal. I tossed the horse pills that night when I got back from the lecture and the cuts on my hands started healing normally again.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#30
post #22

I find these sorts of arguments to be... odd. “Inflammation” includes so many normal homeostatic processes that it’s essentially a tautology to point to inflammation as being a critical component of disordered homeostasis. The biggest key as to whether a molecule is considered inflammatory is what type of biologist discovered it first.

If it's that prevalent, maybe it's worthy of being talked about.
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