Systemic inflammation

So I started investigating.

Welcome to the Inflammation Investigator, the podcast that uncovers the inflammation lurking underneath your ailments.

Because autoimmune and chronic conditions should not be viewed as death knells when they are actually alarm bells.

I'm a traditional naturopath and founder of the Inflammation Academy.

And in two episodes every week, we dig into what conventional medicine might be missing.

If you're living with chronic or unexplained symptoms, this investigation is for you.

That is, in a nutshell, my own parasite inflammation connection.

Be sure to tune into the next episode when we talk about testing for parasites and is it effective? See you then.

So first, walk us through the difference between acute inflammation.

That's generally what keeps us alive, right? And chronic inflammation, which kind of kills us slowly.

So where does the switch flip and why does the body fail to shut that off?

Right.

So the cell takes those amino acids and they make glutathione.

intracellularly because that's the only way you can get it inside the cell close to the mitochondria to capture those free radicals when they're generated by the mitochondria it's all a statistical game it's it is a probability

yeah so when we talk about you know people just writing off their symptoms as you know just getting older it sounds like it's really chronic inflammation sort of announcing itself right like hey here we are

sure is and in in engineering there's a an overall equation in minus out equals accumulation so the rate of generation minus the rate at which you can get you you can make it go away equals the accumulation well it's the accumulation of these free radicals is what causes disease so i have two parts in the left side of that equation i can either reduce the generation rate or I can increase the takeout rate.

So, you know, when I look at these animal models, I'm like, okay, well, why aren't you asking yourself, how's that happening in the human body? Well, if you're sitting there with a lot of waste in your, GI tract that has endotoxin, your body is dealing with a lot of those inflammatory compounds.

Right, and we know chronic inflammation is a big issue with Parkinson's, both in the brain and in the gut.

But not just the whole body, honestly.

Yeah.

I had some high coronary calcium scores, some other cardiac issues that just didn't make sense for my under 40 age at the time.

And I decided based on the systemic inflammation that's going on that Even though I was well controlled on this phototherapy, I had a lot of discussions with my doctors about biologics.

And I certainly not saying this is the best course for everyone, but I really wanted to pursue some treatments that might address that inflammation that's going on throughout the body because it was a concern of mine.

So I definitely second the idea that it's a discussion that needs to happen, whether there's more action taken on it or not.

It's to listen, to ask your body what it's trying to tell you, because true wisdom really does begin with listening.

And that's exactly what we explore in episode 26, The Big Picture, Cancer as Chronic Inflammation with Dr. Tom O'Brien.

How a symptom like inflammation isn't an enemy to be silenced, but a signal towards something deeper that the body is working hard to resolve.

Now I've given you five ideas, but ideas alone are not enough.

And these clocks have totally revolutionized our ability to measure that exact divergence between your chronological age and your biological wear and tear.

And the primary driver of that biological rust is chronic inflammation.

Exactly.

Now, we need to draw a hard line here between the types of inflammation because not all of it is bad.

I like to think of acute inflammation like a fire alarm that goes off when you burn toast in the kitchen.

It alerts you, you address the smoke, it turns off, and you're safe.

But chronic inflammation, this inflammaging we're talking about, is an entirely different beast.

It's basically a faulty fire alarm that blares 24-7.

And so if you're chronically exposed to this particle, You then end up having the characteristic, you know, low grade chronic inflammation that we found to be a major contributor to the degradation.

Blood brain barrier, you know, and so, you know, systemic inflammation that was you know, indirectly activating, you know, immune responses in the brain, causing problems in the brain and systemically and metabolically.

And so, yeah, that's kind of what I focus on.

Instead of a specific microbe, I was looking more at the type of microbe, the gram-negative bacteria and the lipopolysaccharide.

You've also studied some nutritional interventions like prebiotic fibers.

I really want to dive into this with you.

How much can changing what we eat actually can change systemic inflammation?

Well, you know, in the context of Alzheimer's disease, right, so this is a condition, neurodegeneration.