Proven Strategies for How to Reduce Inflammation & What Causes It

If you feel wiped out, tired from aches and pains that seem to come from nowhere, and taking frequent trips to the bathroom, these could be symptoms of chronic inflammation, which, if left untreated, can raise your risk of other diseases. So, what is inflammation, what causes inflammation to occur in the first place, and what are some strategies for how to reduce inflammation?

What is Inflammation?

When your body encounters an offending agent or suffers from an injury, it sends out inflammatory cells. These cells attack bacteria or heal damaged tissue. In some cases, the body mistakenly perceives its own cells or tissues as harmful. This reaction can lead to autoimmune diseases. If your body often sends out inflammatory cells when you are not sick or injured, you may have chronic inflammation.

Types and Symptoms of Inflammation

There are two kinds of inflammation with different symptoms accompanying them: acute and chronic.

Acute Inflammation

Injuries or illness can involve acute, or short-term, inflammation, such as sudden body damage like cutting your finger. To heal the cut, your body sends inflammatory cells to the injury and the cells start the healing process. Some symptoms of acute inflammation include:

• Pain, either consistent or when the affected area is touched
• Redness around the affected area, which occurs due to an increase in the blood supply to the capillaries in the area
• Swelling of the affected area
• Heat, increased blood flow may leave the affected area warm to the touch

These symptoms usually do not last more than a few days.

Chronic Inflammation

For those who suffer with chronic inflammation, the body continues sending inflammatory cells even when there is no outside danger. Generally, the extent and effects of chronic inflammation vary depending on the cause of the injury and the ability of the body to repair and overcome the damage. Symptoms of chronic inflammation include:

• Abdominal pain
• Chest pain
• Stiffness or joint pain
• Fever
• Skin rashes
• Fatigue

How to Reduce Inflammation

Learning how to reduce inflammation in the body fast will be different for everyone. Most times, it’s recommended to take an anti-inflammatory pill such as an ibuprofen, advil or an aspirin, and those medications, while in the short term can suppress inflammation, with extended use, it can cause leaky gut and allow us to get exposed to particles, proteins, and organisms that can get into our intestine and into our bloodstream that shouldn’t be there.

A bigger issue than that is that it actually masks the problem that’s going on. So if you’re having a reason for generating that inflammation, which could come from a chronic infection, it could come from issues like gut imbalances, bacterial imbalances, toxicity, or even certain foods you may be sensitive to. Those are the kind of things that can build up in our bodies over time that if it leads to inflammation, especially chronic inflammation, it can have us feeling drained. There are many things to try if you’re struggling to find how to reduce inflammation.

Exercising to Reduce Inflammation

Daily exercise is one healthy habit that can help reduce inflammation. With the right kind of exercise, it can help reduce stress and suppress chronic inflammation. This can be any number of things, such as yoga, biking or just taking a walk.

Lowering Stress Levels

Stress and anxiety can wreak havoc on us in many different ways, including increasing our risk of inflammation. Finding daily practices that help you cope with stress, such as running, meditating, or practicing yoga can aid in destressing. Therapy can be another great option to help relieve chronic stress, since it may help you pinpoint the source of your stress and deal with issues in a more healthy manner.

Getting Quality Sleep

When you don’t get the sleep you need, your body may suffer in many ways, including more inflammation. 7-9 hours every night is a good goal to aim for, both quality and quantity are important. Having a nighttime routine that involves putting screens away well before you lie down, and sleeping in a cool, dark, and quiet room are good foundations to get quality sleep.

Improving Your Diet

We all require a diet full of variety, and a colorful diet of whole foods is the best way to ensure you’re getting a variety of nutrients that can help support your immune system. This covers many foods including:

• Broccoli and leafy greens
• Apples
• Blueberries and blackberries
• Nuts 
• Onions
• Lemons
• Fish

Refined carbohydrates, red meats, and fried foods raise inflammation in your body, so it’s best to eat these things in moderation or replace them entirely with anti-inflammatory foods.

Still Suffering From Pain and Inflammation?

If you’re starting to develop these chronic issues and you’ve tried these tips and they still haven’t helped, we have to wonder why rather than just going to the medicine cabinet and masking it day after day, year after year, that can be dangerous for your overall health.

So it makes you wonder, what is a better route for figuring out how to reduce inflammation? 

Speaking chiropractically, with the brain pathway, the communication coming down the brain through the spine, all that pathway needs to be open and clear and aligned for all those nerves to function properly. On the other side of that, if it’s not aligned, if you don’t have proper curvatures, then you can start to develop stretching, irritation and injury to the spinal cord or the nerves, and that can shut things down and cause a chronically increased fight or flight mode in our body. 

Beyond that proper alignment, if we’re having other issues that are not related to alignment, such as unexplainable pain, unexplainable swelling, unexplainable inflammation, or aches, we have to wonder, what are we reacting to? Looking at those triggers, looking at those causes is essential to finding the way to fix it. Finding a practitioner to go over these issues and start at the root cause is essential, and this is what we do in our office. We make sure that we review your thorough health history, look at your lifestyle, and look at those fundamentals to make sure we’ve got that right as we work with the spine, your nutrition, movement and exercise.

When your immune system is attacking your own cells on a chronic basis gradually, over time this can lead to destruction of your own tissues. If the symptoms discussed here sound like you, then I encourage you to sign up for my upcoming webinar, Autoimmunity Finding Solutions That Last. Sign up to attend my free webinar today, it just might change your life.

At Whole Body Health, we do not treat symptoms or suppress body functions. We are different from mainstream medicine. Medications compete with the body’s innate ability to control itself. Our approach focuses on being the detective to find what your body is missing, provide that and remove what it doesn’t need so you can heal naturally!

Don’t wait to get motivated, to take better care of yourself, to develop symptoms or to realize your life is precious. You have the power to make a choice and decide how you want to take care of yourself and your family. You can make a positive impact on your help. Make your health a priority today.

If you’ve got more questions on how to reduce inflammation, reach out to us, we’re here to help. If you’re interested and, in the Vienna, VA area, you can schedule an appointment with Dr. David Gustitus by filling out our new patient intake form. You can also call us at (571) 378-0108 or reach out to us via email. We’re located at 8391 Old Courthouse Road, #350, Vienna, VA 22182.