Chronic Inflammation is the Main Cause of Most Diseases – Learn How to Prevent
Inflammation is now linked to just about every health condition from rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and even Alzheimer’s. According to a Harvard Medical School report, “Chronic inflammation plays a central role in some of the most challenging diseases of our time.”
But what is inflammation?
If you’ve ever twisted your knee, cut your finger, or been stung by an insect, you have firsthand experience with inflammation. Inflammation is an essential survival mechanism that helps the body fight off hostile microbes and repair damaged tissue. Yet there is another side of inflammation that can be harmful rather than helpful to human health. There’s evidence that inflammation, promoted in part by such factors as obesity, smoking, and a sedentary lifestyle, contributes to various diseases.
Types of Inflammation
Inflammation can be divided into three types based on the time of the process that responds to the injurious cause; acute, which occurs immediately after injury and lasts for a few days; chronic inflammation, which may last for months or even years when acute inflammation doesn’t heal, and subacute which is a transformational period from acute to chronic which lasts from 2 to 6 weeks.
Acute inflammation comes on rapidly, usually within minutes, but is generally short-lived. Many of the mechanisms that spring into action to destroy invading microbes or toxins switch gears to cart away dead cells and repair damaged ones, and inflammation dissipates within a few hours or days.
On the other hand, chronic inflammation begins as acute inflammation, with the same cellular response but for some reason does not shut off so the inflammatory response continues into a lingering state that persists for months or years when the immune system response fails to eliminate the problem. The problem is always a toxin. It could be a food from a leaky gut, heavy metals , heavy chemicals, or an immune challenge that can include viruses, bacteria, candida or parasites.
Unchecked, the immune system prompts white blood cells to attack nearby healthy tissues and organs, setting up a chronic inflammatory process that plays a central role in some of the most challenging diseases of our time, including rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and even Alzheimer’s.
Symptoms
Symptoms of inflammation are different depending on whether the inflammatory reaction is acute or chronic. There are five fundamental signs of inflammation that include: heat, redness, swelling, pain, and loss of function. The sensation of heat is caused by the increased blood movement. This reaction will also lead to redness due to increased blood cells passing through the injured area. The swelling of the site occurs due to an increase in the permeability and dilatation of the blood vessels. Pain is due to increased pain mediators, either due to direct damage or resulting from an inflammatory response itself. Loss of function occurs due to either simple mobility loss due to swelling or pain or replacement of the cells with scar tissue.
Causes
Lifestyle choices, diet, and even family history play a role in the diseases and conditions brought about by chronic inflammation. Other causes can be gut health, stress, and pollution exposure.
There is recent strong evidence that continuous stress and diverse inflammation in the brain could be a significant and direct cause of dementia and memory impairment due to the constant accumulation of inflammatory cytokines in the brain.
Foods that Cause Inflammation
Diet plays one of the most critical roles in our health. Every time we put food in our mouth we are eating something that is either inflammatory or healing. Muscle testing is great to figure out exactly what foods would cause inflammation in your body. We get the biofeedback from your body and create a list of foods you can and cannot eat for better health. In general though, I will tell you the more whole foods closer to Mother Nature we eat, the less inflammation we will have. On the other hand, the consumption of foods in most markets today creates inflammation due to additives, sugars, bad saturated fats, and all other hard-to-pronounce names used as stabilizers.
A lifestyle rich in fresh fruits and vegetables freshly picked from local organic farms, and eaten in season, is the best approach for preventing inflammation. Additionally, consumption of superfoods such as Spirulina, and other anti-inflammatory foods high in antioxidants, will help reduce damage caused by inflammation. Exercise, sunshine, positive thinking and other healthy practices such as meditation will also help more than we can imagine.
Patient Spotlight
It was generous to have one of my patients take the time to write out her healing journey with us. I found it so inspirational that I wanted to share it!
Before: 213 pounds - Age 55
After: 148 pounds - Age 58
My 3 Year Transformational Story with Healing Arts & Nutrition Response Testing
Dr. Armitstead and Nutrition Response Testing has completely transformed and restored my health and my body. After years of energetic, spiritual, emotional healing, I knew it was time to heal the body that had housed so much trauma, pain, fear and grief in its cellular memory manifesting as disease and an aged body. Healing Arts has been my passage back to physical renewal and the embodiment of health - where I am finally balanced in mind, spirit and now body.
I have been a dedicated client to this healing work for almost 3 years, abiding every appointment, every supplement, every nutritional dictate from my body’s own wisdom brought through the intuitive and skillful knowledge of Dr. Armitstead and Nova and Nutrition Response Testing. In these past three years I/we have healed (unspecified) Autoimmune Disease, Crohn's Disease, Chronic Inflammation, Chronic Migraines, Thyroid Nodules/Disease, Nervous System Disorders, Spinal Disease, Digestive Disorders, Chronic Constipation, Joint Pain, Obesity, Menopausal/Post-menopausal symptoms such as vagina dryness and thinning vaginal walls, thinning hair and sexual apathy, painful intercourse and pelvic floor dysfunction.
I have gained a body, organs, blood, heart, hormonal system, nervous system, joints, muscles, sexual organs, hair and skin that radiates the internal well being I have spent years manifesting. I have gained balance and wholeness and a belief in the wisdom of my own body’s genius. I have gained clarity, confidence, energy, wisdom, agelessness, renewed sexuality, and a love of and connection with my body that I had been dissociated with, ashamed of, and felt disdain for. I have gained a dedicated yoga practice and a love of exercising, strength training and recovery methods to care for my body because I love it, not because ‘I have to..’
When I began working with Healing Arts, It was my last hope, I had all but given up - almost buying into the belief that ‘this is just the way it is at age 50+ In post menopause...’. I had all of this light and beauty within me that I feared may be trapped forever beneath a body that had stored so much life: pain, grief, sorrow, limited beliefs, and society’s dictates of what it is to be a woman of a certain age, crying urgently to be healed. Despite having the skills to heal myself energetically/emotionally/spiritually, I didn’t know how to heal my body on my own, and the medical community only offered toxic medications and risky surgeries. I knew I needed help, and Healing Arts was the answer to my soul's calling.
Healing Arts and Nutrition Response Testing is a journey, not a quick fix - it takes dedication, faith, consistency and an unwavering ethic to what your body is asking of you. It demands an interactive approach with self and with the practitioner to take part in and responsibility for your healing. It is so worth the investment (which may at times seem ‘expensive’ but has saved me literally thousands of dollars in medical bills and medications). It is so worth the time, the supplements and the difficult releasing of some of the most addictive foods and substances we ingest in our bodies. It’s a way of life that is so worthy. It is the best gift I have ever given myself - I have lost 65 pounds, lost a dependence on medical doctors, lost a dependence on unhealthy foods and substances, lost low self-esteem and inhibitions and a fear of death and disease and gained so much joy, well-being, fearlessness, hope and possibility, healthy sexual functioning and a love of healthy and nutritious foods and cooking, and most importantly such gratitude and love for my body, it’s wisdom and my health.
I am so grateful for Healing Arts and Dr. Armitstead for helping lead me back to my body and it’s wholeness.
Thank you.