Inflammation: Causes, Treatment, and Impacts on Your Health

Inflammation, the body’s response to harmful substances, causes symptoms like redness, swelling, and pain. Chronic cases may lead to diseases like asthma and heart disease.

What Are the Different Forms of Inflammation?

In general, the goal of inflammation is to get the body back to its normal state before injury or infection. Inflammation can be acute, subacute, or chronic.

Acute Inflammation

Acute inflammation is an immediate inflammatory response that’s controlled and short-term, lasting just a few days.

It usually occurs due to tissue damage from injury, infection, or exposure to harmful substances or chemicals.

General signs and symptoms of acute inflammation include:

• Redness
• Swelling
• Pain
• Heat
• Loss of function (like not being able to properly move an inflamed joint)

Subacute Inflammation

Subacute inflammation is the period between acute and chronic inflammation. It can last for 2–6 weeks.

If acute inflammation does not go away after six weeks, it will lead to a chronic form of inflammation.

Chronic Inflammation

Chronic inflammation is a slow-developing, long-term inflammation that can last for several months to years.

In this type of inflammation, the inflammatory process can even begin when there is no injury. It also does not end.

The reason why inflammation continues is not always known or clear. However, chronic inflammation may be due to:

• Infections that do not go away
• Abnormal immune responses to normal bodily tissues
• Recurrent acute inflammation
• Exposure to chemicals that cannot be eliminated from the body

Chronic inflammation symptoms differ from those of acute inflammation. Common signs include:

Why Does Your Body Get Inflamed?

Inflammation is the body’s response to harmful substances.

Many types of substances can cause inflammation. The most common types are:

• Infection due to germs such as bacteria, viruses, or fungi
• Injuries like a cut, scrape, or wound
• Damage to the body from a foreign object, like a splinter or thorn in your finger
• Effects of toxic compounds, chemicals, or radiation

When your body encounters harmful substances, immune system cells release chemicals called inflammatory mediators. These include two key hormones: bradykinin and histamine.

These hormones are released and cause small blood vessels to widen. The widening of blood vessels allows for more blood to get to the affected tissue. This is why inflamed areas are red and hot to the touch.

The increased blood flow to the area allows for more inflammatory mediators to get to the affected tissue and start the healing process.

The hormones also trigger the nerves to send pain signals to the brain. If the inflammation is painful, you are more likely to physically protect the affected area from more damage.

Bradykinin and histamine help immune cells signal more cells to the affected area. This influx of cells causes swelling as more fluids enter the area. Swelling decreases when the fluid exits.

How Does It Affect Your Well-Being?

Although inflammation is a normal bodily response, it is not always helpful.

In certain cases, the immune system attacks and destroys healthy cells or tissues by mistake. This type of inflammation is harmful and can result in chronic inflammatory disease.

Inflammatory diseases can last for years or a lifetime. Chronic inflammation is linked to several conditions, including:

Over time, chronic inflammation can damage DNA and increase a person’s risk of cancer. A person with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has an increased risk of colon cancer.

What Are Your Treatment Options?

Acute inflammation is often a normal part of the healing process and usually does not require treatment. For chronic inflammation, a doctor may recommend treatment based on your condition and medical history.

Medications to treat inflammation include:

• Metformin, a drug to manage type 2 diabetes
• Statins, drugs that lower cholesterol
• Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) like Aleve (naproxen), Advil or Motrin (ibuprofen), and aspirin
• Glucocorticoids, a group of steroid hormones used in many inflammatory and autoimmune diseases
• Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), such as biologics or Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors

Inflammation itself is not a specific condition. Chronic inflammation can be a sign of many conditions.

Along with your symptoms and other parts of your medical history, a doctor will use lab tests to help diagnose a health condition and start proper treatment.

Tips for Preventing Inflammation

There are a variety of environmental factors that play a role in chronic inflammation.

Doing the following can limit your inflammation triggers and decrease inflammation:

• Limit exposure to toxic chemicals.
• Quit smoking and drinking alcohol.
• Decrease stress.
• Create a sleep routine to limit disruptive sleep patterns.
• Engage in exercise or physical activity that you enjoy based on discussions with a doctor.

Other ways to decrease inflammation are related to nutrition, such as:

• Limit inflammatory foods, such as sodas, refined carbohydrates, or fructose corn syrup.
• Decrease intake of processed or packaged foods that contain trans fats such as processed seed and vegetable oils.
• Eat more anti-inflammatory foods (e.g., blueberries, apples, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower).
• Eat foods rich in fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, and micronutrients like magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin E, zinc, and selenium.

---

Originally published at https://www.health.com.