Inflammation
Inflammation is your body's protective response to irritation, injury, or infection. It's characterized by redness, heat, pain, swelling, and loss of function. When tissues in your body are injured, your immune system triggers an inflammatory response. This serves several important purposes:
- It delivers more blood to the affected area, bringing extra nutrients and oxygen to help repair damaged tissues. The increased blood flow causes the redness and heat.
- It allows leakage of plasma and leukocytes (white blood cells) into surrounding tissues. This causes swelling, which physically blocks further damage and loses function of the area.
- It stimulates nerves, causing pain that makes you instinctively immobilize the area to prevent further injury while it heals.
- White blood cells release chemicals to fight pathogens and help remove debris from dead or damaged cells. This initiates the healing process.
Inflammation occurs in two major forms:
- Acute inflammation begins rapidly and quickly becomes severe. Its main signs are redness, heat, swelling, pain, and loss of function. An example is a cut on your finger. Acute inflammation normally resolves over days or weeks once tissues have healed.
- Chronic inflammation is long-term and less severe but can persist for months or years. It's associated with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. The main signs are mild pain, narrowing of blood vessels, thickening of affected tissues, and abnormal organ function.
Inflammation is usually beneficial in spurring healing. But excessive or persistent inflammation can lead to tissue damage and disease. Chronic inflammation is now linked to conditions like heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.
Controlling inflammation is key for limiting these diseases. Anti-inflammatory treatments like NSAIDs, corticosteroids, DMARDs, and biologics can help reduce swelling and dampen the overactive immune response. Lifestyle changes like losing weight, exercising, avoiding smoking, and eating anti-inflammatory foods are also important for controlling inflammation.
I hope this gives you a helpful overview of what inflammation is! Let me know if you have any other questions.