Vitamins & Supplements: Is Inflammation the Root of All Disease?

If you think about it most disease starts with inflammation of some kind.

Acute inflammation is characterized by the redness, heat, swelling, and pain that is the immune system’s normal response to infection or injury. Immune cells congregate at the site so that they can overwhelm and dispose of infectious organisms or debris from injury. Thus healing takes place. But there’s another kind of inflammation—low-grade, chronic, and "systemic." It’s been getting a lot of attention lately.

Why it may be dangerous

The reason you hear so much about this kind of inflammation is that it may underlie a kind of "unified field" explanation of disease. That is, some researchers now believe that low-grade inflammation is associated with everything from heart disease and diabetes to Alzheimer’s and arthritis, and may even be the cause of most chronic diseases. This is not an entirely new theory. Inflammation was implicated in cancer many years ago.

There is an easy way to test for inflammation, since it can prompt the liver to produce a protein in the blood known as C-reactive protein (CRP). Elevated levels of CRP often accompany or signal an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. This may help explain why many people who get heart attacks have normal blood cholesterol levels and no other identifiable risk factors. Scientists have been searching for the missing pieces of this puzzle, and inflammation might be one of them. It might even be the most important piece.

We do know a lot about heart disease and its risk factors. High levels of LDL ("bad") cholesterol and low levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol are well-known risk factors, along with smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, family history, and being sedentary.

How to "tamp down" inflammation

The same steps that help prevent cardiovascular disease may reduce chronic inflammation:

• Eat a moderate amount of fish. The omega-3 fats in fish can reduce inflammation. The American Heart Association encourages people with heart disease to consume 1 gram of omega-3s a day from fish or supplements. Omega-3s may also help reduce the inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis. Be sure to add Shaklee OmegaGuard to your supplement regimen.
• Don’t smoke; avoid inhaling other people’s smoke.
• Talk to your doctor about low-dose aspirin to help prevent heart attack and stroke.
• Control your blood pressure with diet, exercise, and medication (if needed). This will reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke. It may also lower your CRP level.
• If you are overweight, weight loss should also reduce inflammation and the risk of chronic disease. Obese people tend to have high CRP. Check out our Safe Natural Weight Loss System
• It isn’t certain that aerobic exercise reduces inflammation, but it might. Physically fit people tend to have lower CRP.

Discover what C-Reactive Protein (CRP) levels were in long time users of Shaklee Supplements



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