Could something as simple as a quick and easy blood test save your life?
Absolutely.
It is called a C-reactive protein test, and it measures the degree of HIDDEN inflammation in your body.
Finding out whether or not you are suffering from hidden inflammation is critical, because almost every modern disease is caused or affected by it.
If your immune system and its ability to quell inflammation in your body are impaired, watch out. You are headed toward illness and premature aging.
Fortunately, addressing the causes of inflammation and learning how to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle can dramatically improve your health.
Today, I am going to review what the primary causes of inflammation are and give you a simple, 7-step approach that will help you cool the fires raging out of control in your body.
Cooling off Inflammation is Key #3 to UltraWellness and in this blog -- the third in this 7-part series on the 7 keys to UltraWellness -- I am going to teach you how to do just that.
The first step is to understand what inflammation is and why it can become so dangerous.
Inflammation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Everyone who has had a sore throat, rash, hives, or a sprained ankle knows about inflammation. These are normal and appropriate responses of the immune -- your body's defense system -- to infection and trauma.
This kind of inflammation is good. We need it to survive -- to help us determine friend from foe.
The trouble occurs when that defense system runs out of control, like a rebel army bent on destroying its own country.
Many of us are familiar with an overactive immune response and too much inflammation. It results in common conditions like allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease, and asthma. This is bad inflammation, and if it is left unchecked it can become downright ugly.
What few people understand is that hidden inflammation run amok is at the root of all chronic illness we experience -- conditions like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, depression, cancer, and even autism.
A study of a generally "healthy" elderly population found that those with the highest levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6 (two markers of systemic inflammation) were 260 percent more likely to die during the next 4 years. The increase in deaths was due to cardiovascular and other causes.
We may feel healthy, but if this inflammation is raging inside of us, then we are in trouble.
The real concern is not our response to immediate injury, infection, or insult. It is the chronic, smoldering inflammation that slowly destroys our organs and our ability to function optimally and leads to rapid aging.
Common treatments such as anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen or aspirin) and steroids like prednisone -- though often useful for acute problems -- interfere with the body's own immune response and can lead to serious and deadly side effects.
In fact, as many people die from taking anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen every year as die from asthma or leukemia. Stopping these drugs would be equivalent to finding the cure for asthma or leukemia -- that's a bold statement, but the data is there to back it up.
Meanwhile, the real effects of statin drugs like Lipitor in reducing heart disease may have nothing to do with lowering cholesterol, but with their unintended side effect of reducing inflammation.
But is taking medication the right approach to addressing the problem of inflammation?
No. It is DOWNSTREAM medicine.
Here's how UPSTREAM medicine thinks about inflammation ...
How to Locate the Causes of Hidden Inflammation
So if inflammation and immune imbalances are at the root of most of modern disease, how do we find the causes and get the body back in balance?
First, we need to identify the triggers and causes of inflammation. Then we need to help reset the body's natural immune balance by providing the right conditions for it to thrive.
As a doctor, my job is to find those inflammatory factors unique to each person and to see how various lifestyle, environmental, or infectious factors spin the immune system out of control, leading to a host of chronic illnesses.
Thankfully, the list of things that cause inflammation is relatively short:
• Poor diet--mostly sugar, refined flours, processed foods, and inflammatory fats such as trans and saturated fats
• Lack of exercise
• Stress
• Hidden or chronic infections with viruses, bacteria, yeasts, or parasites
• Hidden allergens from food or the environment
• Toxins such as mercury and pesticides
• Mold toxins and allergens
By listening carefully to a person's story and performing a few specific tests , I can discover the causes of inflammation most people.
It's important to understand that this concept of inflammation is not specific to any one organ or medical specialty. In fact, if you read a medical journal from any field of medicine, you will find endless articles about how inflammation is at the root of problems with the particular organ or area they focus on.
So what's the problem?
There is almost no communication between specialties. Everyone is treating the downstream effects of inflammation, but addressing the causes of inflammation that are upstream could help people who have multiple problems that are really linked together by this common root cause.
Take, for example, a man who came to see me recently. He wanted to climb a mountain and asked for my help to get healthy. He was 57 years old and took about 15 medications for six different inflammatory conditions: high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, colitis, reflux, asthma, and an autoimmune disease of his hair follicles called alopecia.
Yet when I asked him how he felt, he said "great". I told him I was surprised because he was on so many medications.
Yes, he said, but everything was very well controlled with the latest medications prescribed by the top specialists he saw in every field--the lung doctor for his asthma, the gastroenterologist for his colitis and reflux, the cardiologist for his high blood pressure, the endocrinologist for his pre-diabetes, the dermatologist for his hair loss.
But did any of those specialists ask him why he had six different inflammatory diseases and why his immune system was so pissed off? Was it just bad luck that he "got" all these diseases -- or was there something connecting all these problems?
He looked puzzled and said "no".
I then searched for and uncovered the cause of his problems: gluten. He had celiac disease, an autoimmune disease related to eating gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats.
Six months later he came back to see me. He had lost 25 pounds, had no more high blood pressure, asthma, reflux, or colitis, and said he had normal bowel movements for the first time in his life. His hair was even growing back. And he was off nearly all his medications.
7 Steps to Living an Anti-inflammatory Life
So once you have figured out the causes of inflammation in your life, gotten rid of them, the next step is to keep living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. But how do you do that?
Here is what I recommend. It's a disarmingly simple but extraordinarily effective way to achieve UltraWellness:
1. Whole Foods -- Eat a whole foods, high-fiber, plant-based diet, which is inherently anti-inflammatory. That means choosing unprocessed, unrefined, whole, fresh, real foods, not those full of sugar and trans fats and low in powerful anti-inflammatory plant chemicals called phytonutrients.
2. Healthy Fats -- Give yourself an oil change by eating healthy monounsaturated fats in olive oil, nuts and avocadoes, and getting more omega-3 fats from small fish like sardines, herring, sable, and wild salmon.
3. Regular Exercise -- Mounting evidence tells us that regular exercise reduces inflammation. It also improves immune function, strengthens your cardiovascular systems, corrects and prevents insulin resistance, and is key for improving your mood and erasing the effects of stress. In fact, regular exercise is one among a small handful of lifestyle changes that correlates with improved health in virtually ALL of the scientific literature. So get moving already!
4. Relax -- Learn how to engage your vagus nerve by actively relaxing. This powerful nerve relaxes your whole body and lowers inflammation when you practice yoga or meditation, breathe deeply, or even take a hot bath.
5. Avoid Allergens -- If you have food allergies, find out what you're allergic to and get stop eating those foods--gluten and dairy are two common culprits.
6. Heal Your Gut -- Take probiotics to help your digestion and improve the balance of healthy bacteria in your gut, which reduces inflammation.
7. Supplement -- Take a multivitamin/multimineral supplement, fish oil, and vitamin D, all of which help reduce inflammation.
Taking this comprehensive approach to inflammation and balancing your immune system addresses one of the most important core systems of the body.
In the future, medicine may no longer have specialties like cardiology or neurology or gastroenterology, but new specialists like "inflammologists".
But by understanding these concepts and core systems that are the basis of healthy living now, you don't have to wait.
Now I'd like to hear from you ...
Have you had your C-reactive protein tested?
Do you think inflammation may be at the core of your health condition?
Why do you think so many doctors practice downstream medicine instead of catching problems early with upstream medicine?
Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.
Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd
David R. Hamilton, Ph.D.: 5 Beneficial Side Effects of Kindness
FMF is NOT catching. Symptoms vary depending upon just what gene a person has. Now over 170 genes that have been found to cause FMF.
 Episodes first appear during childhood or adolescence. Disease may be evident even in infancy. By age 20, as many as 90% of patients have had their first attack.
Â
Founder of the gene mutations presumably lived in Biblical times. The first gene found appears to have spread from the eastern Mediterranean, to Spain; then to north Africa with the Sephardic expulsion of 1492. It must also have spread to Turkey, Iraq, and Armenia. Another mutation and the C haplotype in Armenian, Ashkenazi, Iraqi Jewish and Middle Eastern Druze patients implies a second founder effect more than 2,000 years old. FMF is no longer uncommon in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. ANYONE with ancestry from these areas can have FMF. I personally had NO IDEA I had any of these family lines. I thought I was English, Irish, Scots, German plus a Native American grandmother. My dad's MTdna is from Italy. My mtDNA, is from the Syrian Plains that then traveled through what is now Armenia/Turkey/Greece before spreading over Europe and beyond.
Nancy
I'm a bit shy of going back to my doctor and asking for the C-reactive protein test... but I WILL!
I'm a 68 year old woman with lower gut pain, unexplained, for the last 3 years. Also, I thought I osteo-arthritis was taking me down, but during the brief glutin free period the achey feeling went away too. Maybe it was a placebo effect. We'll see. Whatever the official results of the celiac panel, I'm following a celiac disease diet from now on.
Joe Walkauskas BS, CPhT"
Thank you. Some of us did adhere to anti-inflammatory diets prior to diagnosis, but now require " toxic" medications to breathe.
In my case, an attempt at replacing medication with a natural cure resulted in respiratory failure; not the best endorsement for preventive medicine.
If one is generally healthy, an anti-inflammatory diet makes sense.
If someone has a severe medical condition, then perhaps visiting a physician is a better idea.
Suffocating with anti-inflammatory herbs in ones throat is probably not attractive.
Viable Health care reform for all is essential.
Public Option. Now.
I was the one who eventually stumbled across gluten as a possible trigger by doing my own research. After removing gluten from my diet I no longer suffer from any syndrome unless i become accidently exposed. It takes 3 days to 2 weeks for me to recover from being accidentally 'glutened'. I am so much healthier than I was even as a teenager that I am grateful for the burden of staying gluten free because of the physical freedom it affords me. My belly is flat again and I have tons of energy. I am truly relieved.
I don't take any medications and I usually feel fine. I have occasional trouble opening my hands and still some trouble from an emergency back surgery eight weeks ago, but nothing else.
Is the author saying that a high CR-P can be controlled with all these things or that I can control my RA with this? My mother has the same thing so I assumed it was a genetic inevitability when I got it.
http://www.womentowomen.com/inflammation/default.aspx
http://www.infowars.com/billions-of-people-expected-to-die-under-current-codex-alimentarius-guidelines/
But I developed perioral dermatitis 4 years ago, followed by temporary gingivitis and then some receding of gums. I suddenly developed general pruritis -- chronic all over itching with no apparent cause -- three years ago. I have had various digestive discomforts coming on for years but didn't become noticealble until the last two. So it is very possible something like this could be a problem.
But I'm not going to do anything because I am living in real poverty and have other things to deal with. Too bad things didn't pile up and start to look connected when I had a good pay and some coverage.
During this process I had to get in tune with feelings and reactions that were masked by the other symptoms. Here are some things I experienced along with connections I made:
High blood pressure - wheat and dairy.
Rashes - wheat and dairy.
Canker sores - Fresh acidic fruits like strawberry, kiwi, tomato, etc.
Sneezing and coughing - oatmeal.
"Itchy" mouth or ears - reacting to something from the last hour.
What do you do for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I use rice for all 3. A 50 lb. bag of rice is about $40. This will last one person 3 meals a day for about 3 months. You can do just about anything with rice that you can with wheat, bread, pasta, cereal, etc. It may take a little experimentation and creativity.
A good "3 cup" automatic rice cooker with a timer and keep warm function should run about $100. It makes rice as easy as sliced bread. If you mix up a batch every couple days, it'll pay for itself in a few months.
I had gotten used to being sick. I thought that all those conditions were normal. Put another way, if you were sick but you did not know it, would
I hope that's brown rice you're cooking. I find I can cook 1 1/2 cups brown rice in H2O very easily in a pan. I bring it to a boil, time it for about 10 min. Then turn the burner off, but leave it there (I have an electric range). Give it an hour, and the rice is well cooked, but not stuck to the pan. Clean up is easy.