Why It’s Dangerous to Have Long-Term Inflammation

Knee pain sufferers often struggle with inflammation and try various methods to subdue it.

What’s now becoming clear is that subduing it, by some means, is absolutely imperative.

Just consider a rather lengthy article in the latest issue of Harvard Magazine that took a look at recent research into inflammation and chronic disease.

Here are some takeaways:

• A 2007 study sought to understand why physical activity works so well at reducing cardiovascular disease. Researchers learned it was because of reduced inflammation over the long term (note: exercise does temporarily increase inflammation).

• Evidence is emerging that constant, low-grade inflammation triggers a host of conditions, from Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis and gout to anemia and Parkinson’s disease.

• Curiously enough, inflammation has an evolutionary basis. In other words, it benefited our animal skin-wearing forebears!

Half of them were felled by disease before the age of five, so a hyperactive immune system turned out to be a good thing. Insulin resistance, or a tendency to store calories as fat (and the presence of fat is pro-inflammatory) made it more likely our early ancestors would survive food shortages. And blood that was quicker to coagulate made it less likely that a woman would bleed to death in childbirth or a hunter would die after tangling with a saber-toothed tiger.

• Inflammation may appear to be a symptom of disease, not a cause. But one scientist says in unambiguous language: “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” For instance, if you make a fruit fly diabetic, then block its inflammatory response, you can cure the diabetes.

• Excess body fat is a risk factor for inflammation! No big surprise here. Overeating places a lot of metabolic stress on the body. (By the way, fun fact: the oldest cellular system is metabolism, or energy management, and the next oldest is the ability to defend, or the immune system).

To process large quantities of food, cells undergo a lot of stress, rapidly storing away useful nutrients and disposing of harmful substances. The pancreas secretes as much as 500 milliliters of enzymes each day to deal with the meals we eat. Excess food accumulates as body fat, which happens to have a lot of immune cells.

Anyway, the most important message to remember is that, just as many of us with knee pain suspected, giving inflammation a nice, comfortable place to live for too long is just inviting the worst of home wreckers in for an extended stay. The longer inflammation is on the prowl in your body, the more mischief it can wreak – and the more diseases it can help spawn.