Inflammation — Like It Or Not, It’s Here To Stay.

It’s one of those classic situations where too much of it isn’t good, but too little of it ain’t good either.

It would suffice to say that the word “inflammation” is causing quite a stir these days. When we’re injured, for instance, the site of injury is experiencing acute inflammation, and that contributes to unpleasant sensations of pain and swelling that we can feel until the injury has been healed. Ditto, when we do catch a bout of the flu as well.

We don’t like those feelings of discomfort, and we do get prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs to quell the painful sensations somewhat.

At the same time, we do know that some of those chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease have some form of inflammation in them too. We’re afraid of that happening to us.

Some of us would then look at tinkering with our diets. An anti-inflammatory diet, for instance. Trying to sleep better. Doing some meditation. Reducing stress. Whatever it is that can help to “reduce inflammation” in our lives.

But what’s so important about the inflammatory response? It is creating quite a fair bit of drama in most people’s lives today, and the problem is that most methods to “reduce inflammation” don’t even provide a holistic understanding of the drama behind inflammation in the first place.

Going back to basics…

If we do go back to basics, we would find that the inflammation response is a signalling response that the immune system generates. When we’re injured, a pro-inflammatory signal in the form of various biochemicals (also known as cytokines) is raised to signal the immune cells to get to the site of injury to commence repairs.

These cytokines are biochemicals — they are proteins that are synthesised by a cell according to its DNA code. When the damage has been completely repaired, other anti-inflammatory cytokines are synthesised and released to disperse the crowd of immune cells.

In that way, we have that balance of cytokines to ensure that there is no drama in the body at all. We want to do things right. But the problem is that we may feel like we’re doing nothing at all when we do things right.

We need both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines IN THE RIGHT AMOUNTS

We don’t function on the basis of a singular cytokine signalling everything in the body. We have various cytokines that are responsible for specific signalling processes. Some cytokines may be pro-inflammatory in one instance and anti-inflammatory in another — it’s always about achieving a balanced activity out of all these cytokines.

The cells that are responsible for expressing these specific cytokines, therefore, ought to be on their best behaviour to avoid any drama. However, as team managers will know, trying to get each member on their team to pull their fair share of weight in a project can be a demanding task indeed.

If the cells are expressing too much or too little of these cytokines, then various different drama scenarios can pop up.

For example, excessive amounts of interleukin-4 (IL-4) cytokine expression will contribute to a dramatic, exaggerated immune response to a stimulus that a healthy human body will generally regard as safe. We call that dramatic response an allergy.

For example, excessive amounts of interleukin-17 and interleukin-23 (IL-17 and IL-23) can contribute to the development of an autoimmune disorder.

When the body has dramatic over-the-top responses, we do know that there is something inherently wrong with how the immune system is functioning.

Of course, we can do things to our own body to disrupt the balance as well — for example, if we consume too much junk refined carbohydrates, or if we’re drinking too much alcohol. Or even if we’re just not getting enough sleep.

The problem is that our modern lifestyles aren’t supportive of the balance