How can I measure inflammation to see if I am at risk?
Inflammaging is a condition that refers to the chronic, low-grade inflammation that contributes to the aging process and the development of various diseases. While inflammation is a necessary physiological process that helps heal acute injuries, chronic inflammation can be detrimental. It breaks down muscle, bone, brain, joints, and collagen in the skin, leading to diseases.
Inflammaging is the condition that is the mechanism that causes humans to age, and to become ill. Inflammation is a necessary physiologic process that is helpful to heal acute injuries, but when it is chronic (affects the body all the time) it breaks down muscle, bone, brain, joints, collagen in the skin and results in diseases such as dementia, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, all autoimmune diseases, joint damage necessitating replacement, osteoporosis, diabetes and heart disease leading to pain, disability and an early death.
There are several causes of chronic inflammation and most of them are not factors that an individual can alter:
- Aging
- Injury
- Viral illnesses
- Physical Stress
- Psychological stress
- Air contamination
- Toxins in our water and food
However, there are many factors that a person can alter to change their trajectory heading to disease and disability. You may be saying wait, how do we measure inflammation to see if I am at risk? The easiest way is to have a blood test called a Highly Sensitive CRP. If it is below1.0, you are safe and don’t have chronic inflammation at this time.
If your result is 1-3 you have smoldering inflammation that over time will destroy your healthy tissue and cause your heart to collect atherosclerosis, and your brain to form neural plaque that is the beginning of Alzheimer’s Dementia.
If your test result is over 3 you already have a serious problem that may reveal a disease process already in progress: autoimmune diseases, heart disease, vascular damage, diabetes and kidney disease, cancer and many other diseases of aging.
What can you do yourself to avoid or treat this inflammation problem? There are a few obvious lifestyle changes you can make and supplements you can take.
Your Plan to Reduce Inflammaging:
- Daily exercise for one hour every day
- Stop smoking
- Stop drinking more than the equivalent of 1 oz of alcohol a day.
- Drink filtered water.
- Drink 2 cups of coffee every day—not more or less
- Take a multivitamin with methyl B12 and methyl folate.
- Take Vitamin D 5,000 miu/day
- Take Curcumin 800 mg 1-3 times a day. Our Dim product also has Curcumin in it.
- Take Magnesium 400-800 mg/day.
- Everyone needs SporeBiotics (Mega Sporebiotics) to repair your gut with healthy bacteria…you also must eat some type of raw veggies every day to feed the good bacteria that keep you healthy, and not inflamed.
Other preventive treatments will require a physician to order tests, meds and treatments.
- As soon as your Testosterone decreases (when you are symptomatic) replace testosterone with non-oral pellet therapy. Testosterone lowers inflammation!
- As soon as you are in menopause replace your Estradiol with bioidentical pellets.
- Lose weight and achieve your ideal body fat level of < 26% for women and <19% for men. Your doctor will help you with the new medications we have that help you achieve your goal. Fat causes inflammation all by itself so if you do everything else and are obese you will not cure your inflammation.
- Treat your insulin resistance/ or diabetes with Metformin ER or GLP-1 meds to keep your blood sugar normal, and lose weight
- Treat any thyroid or hormone deficiencies which cause increasing inflammation.
- If you have a joint that needs to be replaced, don’t wait…the longer you are walking around on an inflamed knee, the worse the damage that will be done by inflammation. Get it fixed!
- If you have had cancer or have it now, cancer is spread in people with inflammation. Clean up your lifestyle and diet right away.
Now let’s talk about other Alternate therapies that can improve your immune system and decrease inflammation.
My favorite is Red light therapy: You can sit in a redlight spa, or put a red-light mask on, or one on your head to help your hair grow or sit in front of a redlight daily before bed. Red light stimulates your mitochondria to make energy in your cells, which makes your metabolism works more normally. It repairs cells and improves the surveillance that your immune system does to kill cancer cells on a daily basis.
Weekly Massage is stimulating to your immune system, improves the ability of your lymph system to get rid of toxins, and relaxes muscles and the body in general which is a way to decrease stress.
Get a good night’s sleep! Sleep is critical for cellular repair and containing inflammation. Whatever you have to do to get a restful 7-8 hours is what you should do…listen to Brain Waves is an app that puts you to sleep, to deep and restful sleep.
Meditation and Yoga helps release stress and decreases inflammation. Exercise that is not extreme decreases stress and inflammation. Extreme exercise can make stress worse in increase inflammation. These are just a few of the methods of lowering inflammation that can cause us to age and get diseases that we could have prevented. I think prayer is important… it is a good way to stay grounded and let your stress be transferred to God so you can get some rest!
In future healthcasts I will be providing you with the best foods to eat to prevent inflammaging, and you can take control of your health through the foods you choose.
