The Villain in the Story: Inflammation

I’ve written about chronic inflammation a number of times. It’s sort of like writing about the hazards of being overweight, a subject that I think deserves multiple posts, even if they do become a bit repetitive.

My thoughts returned to inflammation recently because of an article in the New York Times that I happened to see in a newspaper I scavenged one day on my commuter train into the city.

Near the top is this paragraph, written with plenty of dramatic flair:

Specialists in the biology of aging have identified a rarely recognized yet universal condition that is a major contributor to a wide range of common health-robbing ailments, from heart disease, diabetes and cancer to arthritis, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. That condition is chronic inflammation, a kind of low-grade irritant that can undermine the well-being of virtually every bodily system.

Chronic inflammation is a dangerous beast. It’s hard to understate this. I had it. It started in my knees and, I’m convinced, spread in small, practically undetectable ways throughout my body. I say this because at one point (as readers of my book know), I went in for a blood test, thinking I might have rheumatoid arthritis, after experiencing weird problems with multiple joints.

My blood test was excellent: no signs of systemic inflammation. However, I am still convinced that there was something going on throughout my body that was related to my troubles with my bad knees. A knee doesn’t exist in perfect isolation. It’s not walled off from the rest of the body.

At one point I had bursitis in an elbow. And I had throbbing, constant back pain.

Now, being blissfully free of knee pain for a decade now, I see the inflammatory aspect of the condition as even more alarming than I did back then. To escape knee pain, I think it’s partly a race against time, if you have constant burning, or inflammation. You need to get beyond that, and as soon as you can.

Inflammation of course is a natural reaction by the body to injury, or even to vigorous exercise. What becomes a problem is when the inflammatory response doesn’t die down, when whatever is prompting the reaction continues to fire up the immune system. It becomes a problem as we age, the Times notes, because “immune responses become less regulated.”

So what’s the solution? The Times mentions five recommendations:

* Fix your diet. A diet focused on fruits and vegetables is less inflammatory than one full of foods that are heavily processed, deep-fried, or sugar-sweetened.

* Lose weight.

* Make sure you get enough sleep.

* Minimize mental stress in your life.

* Be careful about overuse of antibiotics, antacids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. They can kill off good bacteria in your stomach and lead to a “leaky gut” that lets bacteria loose in your body that encourage inflammation.

* Exercise regularly.

How do you rank on these five recommendations? Personally, I know I could be better. My diet isn’t great, but I am very fastidious now about maintaining a lean weight. On sleep, I slip behind (like most people) during the workweek. Sometimes I feel stress building up.

Where I can excel now, thank goodness, is in exercising. I work out hard on the weekends.

What about you? What steps are you taking to control out-of-control inflammation?