The Holistic Kitchen

Point of clarification:  Acute inflammation is a natural and necessary part of our immune system to repair tissue and aid healing.

Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, can be considered a nasty beast that confuses your immune response and is definitely harmful to your health!

Where does it come from?

• CHRONIC  CELLULAR STRESS – from toxins,  from a decreased sensitivity to insulin, known as insulin resistance,  yeast overgrowth (candida),  a stagnant colon and/or irregular elimination (yes, I’m talking bowel movements) are among the many sources of chronic cellular stress that lead to chronic inflammation.
• STRESS AS WE KNOW IT– chronic lack of sleep, high stress job, endless worry  and especially persistent anger or depression, all can trigger an overproduction of hormones that stimulate inflammatory response.

Combine this circulating surplus with a trigger of many possible sorts, such as an injury, a virus or cellular damage from oxidation (free radicals) and you have a condition of cellular chaos in which normal checks and balances that are supposed to control activity are turned on their ear. The result is invariably disease of some nature and quite often, cancer. In the case of disease such as cancer, the mechanism that is supposed to “shut off” a healthy inflammatory healing response, simply doesn’t and the result is a chronic ongoing surplus of inflammation.   Add to this , the fact that the chronic inflammation blocks cell death, allowing cancer cells to merrily flourish. So in very simple terms, cancer cells stimulate their own growth from chronic inflammation and are protected from death by it, as well.  To make matters even worse, neighboring immune cells, become confused by this and don’t respond to the fire whistle – they don’t even try to fight the tumor.

The good news:  this process does have a weakness and it can be exploited with readily available whole foods