Awhile back I wrote,
Over the last few years, in researching my own health problems, one of the themes that seemed to me to be a likely common underlying factor is Inflammation. The medical community has made some steps in the direction of recognizing inflammation as a risk factor in some previously unrecognized areas such as heart disease, but overall my gut feeling is that there is much more to learn.
http://2relight.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/sharing-some-remediessharing-as-remedy/
I recently picked up the January ‘08 issue of The Wellness Letter, from the University of California, Berkeley. The lead story is entitled “Is Inflammation the root of all disease?
Acute inflammation is characterized by the redness, heat swelling, and pain that is the immune systems 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.
The reason you hear so much about this kind of inflammation (systemic) is that it may underlie a kind of u”unified field” explanation of disease. That is, some researchers now believe that low-grade inflammation is associated with everything from heart disease to Alzheimer’s and arthritis, and may even be the cause of most chronic diseases.
I recently stopped drinking my turmeric-cherry juice-psyllium tonic for several weeks and began feeling a twinge of pain in one of my knuckles. After starting to drink it again once a day the condition disappeared after about a week, and I am back to drinking it 3-4 times a week. This level seems to keep my joints in good shape.
Why the psyllium, you may ask? Toxins in the body may be at least part of the reason for low-grade inflammation. Psyllium absorbs toxins in the intestines and keeps them moving out on a “regular” basis.
Tags: Arthritis, Inflammation
