Inflammation

I get asked a lot about arthritis and inflammation and how to alleviate the aches. While I've talked about this before, I want to be sure that you understand the good aspects as well as the bad aspects of inflammation.

The inflammatory process is a natural self-protective response in the body. If you take you finger and scrape the nail over the back of your other hand, you will see in about 20-30 seconds a red streak appear. This is an example of the natural inflammatory response that is protective. When we are injured, the immune system launches the inflammatory response. Several things happen. First there is an increase in blood supply to the injured area. With that response comes the white blood cells who are the army to help clean up the debris in the injured area. This can also cause the area to swell if cells have been damaged.

The problem arises when the inflammatory response continues long after it is needed. More tomorrow on this problem.