What’s the Fuss About Inflammation?

🔥 What’s the Fuss About Inflammation?

It’s one of the top conversations we’ve been seeing in health and wellness over the last couple of years, and some researchers believe it holds the key to several disease cycles. It’s inflammation and the role it plays both in the healing process for your body after injury or illness, and the unwanted effects of chronic inflammation in the body. It’s a two-sides of the coin scenario; a certain type of inflammation means your body is repairing itself, and the other type means you’re at risk for certain health conditions. So how do you know the difference and what to do about it?

🧠 The Inflammation 411

First up are the two types of inflammation you experience: 

• Acute inflammation: From bug bites to overdoing it at the gym, this is the type of inflammation that means your body is healing. It’s the good kind of inflammation, an indicator that you are physically on the mend. It can look like redness and puffiness around that mosquito bite, or a soreness in your quads as you come down the stairs the day after a leg workout. Acute inflammation is your friend, and resolves quickly, usually in a couple of days.
• Chronic inflammation: This is the baddie of the two types of inflammation. It’s when you feel achy all the time. It’s when your gut health seems touchy and unpredictable. It can look like chronic skin conditions and itchiness, when a rash just won’t go away. It’s when your joints hold onto fluid and are always sore. This kind of inflammation can be a sign that your body is reacting to stress, poor nutrition, toxins in your environment, or an underlying disease. When your body is under chronic long-term inflammation, it puts you at greater risk of health problems. As Dr. Barry Sears, author of The Anti-Inflammation Zone, writes, “Chronic inflammation is a silent killer—one that plays a role in almost every major disease.” ¹

That list includes:

• Heart disease
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Certain cancers
• Autoimmune conditions

Elevated markers of chronic inflammation are considered a “unifying mechanism” of age-related diseases, according to a 2022 review in Nature Medicine. ²

A helpful way to understand your personal risk for chronic inflammation is an inexpensive lab test for CRP, c-reactive protein. CRP is released into the bloodstream during an inflammatory response. While a CRP test won’t tell you what is causing a rise in inflammation in your body, it can be a helpful piece of data in monitoring your inflammation levels. If you’re an Altrua HealthShare Member, you have access to pre-negotiated rates and discounts with Grassroots Labs, who offers the CRP test. You don’t need a doctor’s orders for the test. If you’re not yet a Member of Altrua HealthShare or have questions about your level of membership, call 1-888-244-3839 to speak with a Member Services Representative. 

In addition to the CRP test for inflammation levels, the PV test and the ESR test can also look for markers in slightly different ways. This can help you have a fuller understanding of how your body is handling stress, injury, and chronic conditions.

📊 A Natural Defense System Gone Sideways

Your inflammation response has good motives, originally in place to help you heal. But when the balance shifts from acute to chronic, the results can have unintended health impacts:

• 3 in 5 people worldwide die from diseases linked to chronic inflammation. ³
• Over 80% of Americans have at least one risk factor related to chronic inflammation, according to a  2023 study in The Lancet Regional Health. ⁴
• According to recent studies, the CRP test shows elevated inflammation markers in more than 50% of adults with no known chronic illness. ⁵

✝️ Faith as an Inflammation Antidote

Your emotions, your sense of well-being, purpose, connection to God, it all has a lot to do with your overall wellness of body, mind, and spirit. And it’s backed by science. A recent study from the Annals of Human Behavior from the Oxford University Press found that, “United States adults who are more religious and/or spiritual have less chronic inflammation than those who are less religious and/or spiritual.” Subjects in the study had their CRP and interleukin-6 levels tested, and those individuals who reported that they had daily spiritual and religious practices and greater faith had lower chronic inflammation, meaning that they were also at a lower risk for several diseases. 

Daily habits like prayer, Bible reading, generosity, forgiveness, trust in God’s provision, and releasing stress can all be important factors to reducing your risk for chronic inflammation. 

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” 

Proverbs 17:22

If you find you are struggling in your faith journey and would like prayer, you can reach out to Altrua Ministries. Altrua Ministries director Heather Nanni oversees all prayer requests. (You can also learn more about Heather here.)

🥗 Easy Ways to Reduce Inflammation………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2

Supporting your body to help reduce inflammation doesn’t have to be complicated. You have a host of tools that help support your well-being and that are easy to put into practice:

1. Eat More Anti-Inflammatory Foods

• Foods like berries, fatty fish, broccoli, avocados, and green tea make the top five anti-inflammatory food list. You’ll also find foods like leafy greens, turmeric, olive oil, and nuts as healthy inflammation-reducing agents on the list. ⁶
• Just as there are foods that lower inflammation, there are also foods that seem to increase it. Avoid processed foods, refined sugar, and food additives and dyes.

A 2023 study in Nutrients showed that people who follow an anti-inflammatory diet have 38% lower CRP levels and significantly lower risk of metabolic syndrome. ⁷

2. Get Moving

• Even moderate exercise (like walking 30 minutes a day) has been shown to reduce inflammatory markers. ⁸ This does come with an important caveat: extreme exercise can raise inflammation in the body. The latest research suggests that you should focus on Zone 2 activity levels, in order to control cortisol levels. You can read more about exercise, inflammation, and new studies by clicking here.
• When you increase your movement and activity, you’ll have improved circulation, mental health, and immunity, all of which can help lower inflammation.

3. Prioritize Sleep

• Poor sleep kicks your system into inflammation and researchers find that our modern culture of late nights, high stress, and light-emitting screens all play a role in our negative sleep experiences. Prioritize sleep, and aim for 7–9 hours per night to combat inflammation cycles. ⁹

“In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Psalm 4:8

4. Keep Those Connections Strong

• Friendship and a sense of community turn out to be critical to battling inflammation. Loneliness and isolation have shown to have a link to increased inflammation. ¹⁰
• Make living life in community, through your church, neighborhood book club, work out group, and family, a priority. These relationships should be supportive, safe relationships in which you are there for people and they are there for you. 

💬 Listen

If you’re experiencing mood changes, joint pain, gut issues, or fatigue, chronic inflammation could be the culprit. Tune in to the symptoms and signals your body is sending you. Inflammation may be silent, but your body is speaking. While we often try to push past the messages our bodies send through inflammation signals, you could be pushing off long-term health as well. Inflammation is an important calling card, an indicator light that can let you know when something is off, when you need to make some changes. Listen to yourself to learn more about yourself. Your health will thank you.

¹ https://www.today.com/popculture/save-yourself-hidden-killer-silent-inflammation-1c9015761
² https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2022.882211/full
³ World Health Organization. “Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion.” https://www.who.int/
⁴ The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, 2023. “Inflammation and Public Health: A Hidden Epidemic.”
⁵ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009912000001867#:~:text=The%20investigators%20demonstrated%20that%20a%201%20SD,morbidity%20has%20also%20been%20confirmed%20in%20women.
⁶ https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/13-anti-inflammatory-foods
⁷ Hermsdorff HHM, et al. “Anti-inflammatory dietary patterns reduce CRP and IL-6 levels: A meta-analysis.” Nutrients. 2023.
⁸ https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00414.2007
⁹ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0190-z#:~:text=Inflammatory%20response%20to%20sleep,abnormal%20increases%20in%20inflammatory%20responses.
¹⁰ Slavich GM, Cole SW. “The Emerging Field of Human Social Genomics.” Clinical Psychological Science. 2020.