Inflammation – When can save life, when can take away the health.

Whenever we mention inflammation, it is thought of pain, but in a world belonging to microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses), the reaction of inflammation is the only way to survive. With this inflammation reaction, our body kills the organisms before they kill us. It also helps in the removal of damaged tissue, when we get hurt, thereby locating the damage and not allowing the invasion of microorganisms through damaged tissue. While the inflammatory reaction removes the damaged tissue, the same strong anti inflammatory reaction of the organism stops the inflammatory attack and restores the damaged tissue with a new cellular rejuvenation. The inflammatory reaction is very strong, accompanied always by pain, swelling, redness in order to localize the invasion or damage, so that the immune system can quickly release the body from the attackers, because if the inflammatory reaction fails in the idea of ​localizing the damage, comes to a serious attack on the whole organism and then the battle can be lost (bacterial sepsis e.g.).

The entire game developed at a very complex level, over millions of years of evolution and is essentially controlled by 2 opposite sides: about inflammation (inflammation, pain, swelling, redness) and represents a phase of attack, circulation and destruction of microorganisms and anti inflammation (recovery, cell proliferation), reunification. But this perfect defensive response to the organism is not only caused by microorganisms and direct tissue injury, but also by the food we enter that the body experiences either as food or as an unknown attacker to be removed. When we enter foods that our immune system does not recognize as foods (high caloric, processed carbohydrates, low-priced oils, transcated hydrogenated oils), it activates the inflammatory reaction, which this time is not accompanied by pain (silent inflammation), but equally damages all organs and tissues in the body to localize and remove it, but it is not able to do it. If that process lasts for a long time (one or more decades) then there is already visible damage to various organs, which manifests itself as different diseases. Today, it is widely considered that silent inflammation is responsible for many of the diseases of the heart and blood vessels, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.).

Once this inflammation and anti-inflammatory game has been discovered, medicine is focused on seeking drugs that will block silent inflammation. These are anti-inflammatory drugs that have so far been detected as aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, immune suppressors, COX-2 inhibitors that in long stasis carry other problems like immune suppression, osteoporosis, heart failure and even death. Why is this happening? Simply suppressing the inflammatory reaction of the body suppresses the anti-inflammatory reaction.

The health of our body is above all a balance, and at the molecular level, the equilibrium of the so-called eicosanoid molecules (for the discovery of their role in human health in 1982, the Nobel Prize was awarded to three researchers). These molecules can be divided into “bad” and “good” eicosanoids, although their role (equilibrium) is equally important. They are mainly produced from polyunsaturated essential fatty acids that we enter through food: DGLA (dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid), AA (arachidonic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid). DGLA and AA are Omega 6, and EPA is Omega 3 fatty acid found in fish oil. Good eicosanoids, those who favor cellular rejuvenation reaction come from DGLA, while “bad” is created in the body by AA, and EPA maintains the vulnerable balance between them. In essence anti-inflammatory drugs prevent inflammation of the body but at the same time block and DGLA to produce good eicosanoids and thereby prevents the cellular rejuvenation phase (the same effect also has delicately hydrogenated oils, which contain all processed products) .

The best, the cheapest and most natural way to block silent inflammation and promote the rejuvenation phase, without compromising the immune response to inflammation (which saves us from the invasion of microorganisms as we have said) is through food. For start, it is enough to remove huge amounts of low-fat carbohydrates, low-cost processed vegetable oils, and reduce calorie intake of food.