06 Feb 2012
Week Two, Day Two
ITEN – The Town of RED Dust Teaser Trailer from Erik O'Neill on Vimeo.
The documentary investigates Kenyan runners and how against all odds a the small town of ITEN produces the best world class runners seen worldwide. This is a teaser trailer, I haven’t seen it, but it looks cool.
Post Thoughts to comments.
05 Feb 2012
ARE YOU INFLAMED?
Most people are aware of acute inflammation, as is something everyone deals with from time to time. However, I would say most people are unaware of chronic inflammation, why it occurs, and the dangers it presents.
Yes, our bodies can actually heal themselves. And the first responder, so to speak, is the inflammatory process. Pain, swelling, redness, and that radiating sense of warmth that we feel at the site of an injury or illness don’t manifest by accident or for kicks. That’s inflammation, and it’s essential to our very existence in a world of hurt.
Things happen pretty fast in an acute inflammatory response and involve several different players, including the vascular system (veins, arteries, capillaries and such), the immune system, and the cells local to the injury. First, something painful and unpleasant happens; choose one of the above injury options. Then, pattern recognition receptors (PRR) located at the injury site initiate the release of various inflammatory mediators, which in turn initiate vasodilation (or widening of the blood vessels). This allows increased blood flow to the injury site, which warms the site, turns it the familiar red, and carries plasma and leukocytes to the site of the injured tissue. The blood vessels become more permeable, thus allowing the plasma and leukocytes to flow through the vessel walls and into the injured tissue to do their work. Emigration of plasma into tissue also means fluid buildup, which means swelling. At the same time, the body releases an inflammatory mediator called bradykinin which increases pain sensitivity at the site and discourages usage of the injured area. These sensations – heat, redness, swelling, pain, and a loss of function – are annoying and familiar, but they are absolutely necessary for proper healing.
When inflammation becomes chronic and systemic, when it ceases to be an acute response, when it becomes a constant low-level feature of your physiology that’s always on and always engaged, the big problems arise. The inflammatory response is supposed to be short and to the point.
And because a big part of inflammation is breaking the tissue down, targeting damaged tissue and invading pathogens, before building it back up, the inflammatory response has the potential to damage the body. That’s why it’s normally a tightly regulated system, because we don’t want it getting out of hand and targeting healthy tissue. But if it’s on all the time, regulation becomes a lot harder.
All these inflammatory mediators and their effects are short-lived and require constant propagation to keep going. The only thing that keeps it flowing is sustained or subsequent injury to the site, so a little cut that heals in a couple days will need to get infected or reopened if the inflammatory cascade is going to continue. If that’s not the case, there’s got to be another stressor, or stressors, that are doing two things: inducing the inflammatory response and hanging around in the environment as a constant feature.
You let me know if anything sounds familiar to you.
- Toxic diets: High-sugar, high-processed carb, high-industrial fat, high-gluten, high-CAFO meat, low-food is a pretty accurate descriptor of the modern Western diet.
- Insufficient omega-3 intake: Omega-3 fats form the precursors for anti-inflammatory eicosanoids, which are an integral part of the inflammatory response. Poor omega-3 status means insufficient production of anti-inflammatory eicosanoids and a lopsided inflammatory response to normal stimuli.
- Excessive omega-6 intake: Omega-6 fats form the precursors for inflammatory eicosanoids, which are an integral part of the inflammatory response. High omega-6 status (especially when combined with poor omega-3 status) means excessive production of inflammatory eicosanoids and a lopsided inflammatory response to normal stimuli.
- Lack of sleep: Poor sleep is linked to elevated inflammatory markers. Poor sleep is a chronic problem in developed nations. Either we go to bed too late, wake up too early, or we use too many electronics late at night and disrupt the quality of what little sleep we get. Or all three at once.
- Lack of movement: People lead sedentary lives, by and large, and a lack of activity is strongly linked to systemic, low-grade inflammation. People don’t have to walk to get places, they take escalators and elevators, they sit for hours on end, and they don’t have time for regular exercise.
- Poor recovery: Other people move too much, with too little rest and recovery. When I ran 100+ miles a week, I certainly wasn’t sedentary, but I was chronically inflamed. Overtraining is a form of chronic inflammation.
- Chronic stress: Modern life is stressful. Bills, work, commuting, politics, exercise that you hate – it all adds up and it doesn’t seem to let up or go away. And if it becomes too much for you to handle (I know it’s too much for me at times), your body will have a physiological, inflammatory response to emotional stress.
- Lack of down time: When you’re always on the computer, always checking your email/Facebook/smartphone, you are always “on.” You may think you’re relaxing because your body is stationary, but you’re not relaxing.
- Lack of nature time: We spend too much time contained in cubicles, cars, trains, and cities, away from trees, leaves, and soft earth. In a way, nature is home for us. Going home certainly has its measured benefits.
- Poor gut health: The gut houses the bulk of the human immune system. When it’s unhealthy, so is your inflammatory regulation.
- Poor acute stressor/chronic stress ratio: We respond far better to acute stressors than repeated, sustained stress – even if the latter is of a lower intensity.
Further Reading:
Top 10 Natural Ways to Reduce Inflammation
Science Daily – Seeing is Believing: Visualizing Inflammation in Fat Tissue
