The Link Between Inflammation and Chronic Disease: What You Need to Know

At this exact moment, either you, someone you know, your child, parents or spouse is sick or is "suffering" from a disease or condition.

For nearly half a decade, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who are facing similar challenges helping them heal and reverse some conditions they felt they had no hope to recover from.

In this blog, I wish to break down the role of inflammation in lifestyle diseases to give you powerful insights that will help you take charge of your health with confidence.

Because, in understanding what you're going through, taking the steps to help yourself becomes easier, more peaceful and healthier on the mind.

You don't have to outsource your help or rely on a system that probably doesn't have your best interest at heart.

Free Radicals are What Cause Inflammation in The Body

Have you ever heard of free radicals?

Well, here's a short crash course on what free radicals are.

Simply, free radicals are what cause inflammation.

And depending on the level of inflammation and what organs or cells have been inflamed by your free radicals, you become sick or it is said that you're suffering from an inflammatory disease or condition.

These include but are not limited to:

• Acne (inclusive of pimples)

• Boils

• Diabetes

• High blood pressure

• Arthritis (rheumatoid) - signalled by inflamed joints which cause pain and restrict movement and other forms of arthritis such as Osteoarthritis and Psoriatic arthritis.

• Varicose veins. Signified by swollen blood vessels that show on the skin almost permanently.

• Psoriasis. A disease in which the immune system becomes overactive, causing skin cells to multiply too quickly.

• Allergies such as Asthma

• Autoimmune diseases such as Lupus where your body's immune system attacks healthy cells and tissues by mistake probably due to miscommunication in the body's systems, Celiac where the body attacks its own tissues when gluten is eaten

• Fibromyalgia. Which is a disorder where you experience widespread pain around the body without any significant reason or any reason at all for the pain to be there

• Eczema

• Cirrhosis of the liver

• Fibroids

• Ovarian cysts

• PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome)

• Sinusitis (chronic) which can be signified by frequent blocking of the nose with severe pain around the eyes and forehead

• Heart diseases

• Brain degenerative conditions such as dementia and Alzheimers

• etc

Because inflammation from free radicals takes time to damage cells, tissues and eventually organs.

The longer you're exposed to them, the more the damage becomes significant.

As a result, you're likely to find these conditions being referred to as "age-related conditions or diseases".

Mostly because the continuation of an unhealthy lifestyle obviously catches up with you as you age as you've been exposed for longer.

Antioxidants Naturally Fight Against the Damage Free Radicals Cause

Along with free radicals, are some things that you've probably heard of.

Antioxidants. Antioxidants naturally fight against the damage free radicals cause your body by neutralising them.

These two, free radicals and antioxidants, are natural by-products of your body's physiological processes such as digestion, heat & energy production, cell division and fat conversion.

Free radicals are bad for you as they destroy your body's cells wherever they cause the damage. e.g. breast cancer is often caused when the cells of the breast get damaged.

On the other hand, antioxidants neutralise free radicals (I have a free guide that delves deeper into explaining this concept but long story short...)

In normal conditions, our bodies produce these two equally, making sure that free radicals are always neutralised.

The thing is, "normal" is hard to find these days because of:

• the kinds of foods we eat,

• how they are farmed using chemicals,

• the air we breathe,

• how polluted the water we drink is,

• seed oils,

• viruses and bacteria that we've been weakened against because of antibacterial everything and antibiotics,

• work and life stress,

• EMF (Electromagnetic Frequency) Radiation,

• how inactive we are,

• just to name a few - you can imagine how much damage our body takes.

All these contribute to 'stressing' your body which causes it to produce more free radicals than antioxidants during the physiological processes not to mention when we deliberately provide the body with free radicals when

• doing drugs,

• drinking alcohol,

• smoking,

• taking over-the-counter medication which is always synthetic

Damn!

All these lead to a state known as Oxidative Stress.

The State of Oxidative Stress is When Your Body Starts Showing Signs of Sickness and Diseases

Since this is a crash course, and given that you've hopefully been able to picture, where vaguely or vividly, what kind of "stress", damage and pain your body goes through on a daily basis, I would like you to think of what we're talking about in this manner.

What happens to metal(here being You) when it is exposed to water (here being Free radicals)?

It rusts.

Upon deeper observation, metal when exposed to water:

• starts out by getting bumpy and swollen which you can think to be similar to acne, boils, blocked nose, swollen throat, ulcers etc which are often the first signs of inflammation,

• with time, it leads to corrosion of the layers of the metal which is akin to degeneration or the body when cells, tissues and organs are severely damaged; for example, when a diabetic patient's legs get damaged to the point it can lead to amputation :( or where the kidney or liver starts failing,

• And eventually, without any attempt to properly treat the metal or when the attempts fail maybe because it is too late:

• the metal breaks down and becomes severely corroded, beyond repair and possible function. This, you can think of as being the point where a certain organ or multiple organs in the body fail, such as the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, pancreas etc or worse...when the body now gets to the point of death because it can no longer function.

Very sad.

What To Do To Offset The Damage Done To The Body by Free Radicals

Given the sad and despairing mood above, it is good that I close off this blog with some hope.

You can offset, reverse or actively prevent the damage done to the body by starting your journey by:

1. Actively avoiding or reducing practically the rather harmful things we've listed above as being causes of high levels of free radicals in the body. You can go back to that section by clicking here. That would be your homework. This will help you reduce the amount of free radicals that you unnaturally introduce into your body.

2. Understanding that free radicals and antioxidants are natural by-products of your body's physiological processes. Processes such as digestion, heat and energy production, cell division, fat conversion, thinking, basically everything your body does. Therefore, improving the efficiency of these processes by, for example, getting ample sleep, choosing a healthy, natural and organic diet and getting more movement into your days by walking, jogging or exercising, will greatly improve your body's ability to produce antioxidants while flushing out toxins.

3. Finally, you can introduce antioxidants into your diet through nutritious foods that contain high amounts of antioxidants such as that found in certain fruits, vegetables and even meat.

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