What is the difference between systemic vs local inflammation?
Inflammation does not just happen when you bump your knee or head against something. Inflammation can creep around systemically and in the process cause a lot of issues with your bodily functions.
I have noticed that my clients don’t seem to fully internalize systemic vs local inflammation. I want to dive into this topic to help you see why it’s important to reduce systemic inflammation, also known as chronic inflammation.
Systemic vs local inflammation appears differently.
Let me first define local (topical) inflammatory response, which is much easier to understand. During a harmful event or stimulus with a short duration, an acute local inflammation develops within minutes or hours. Your innate immune system comes to the rescue.
Let’s say you walk on ice, slip and fall on your arm. A big bruise might develop shortly after. The response mechanism happens automatically to protect and heal you quickly. The same mechanism is activated when you scratch or cut yourself. Instantly your body responds to take care of any infectious invaders, causing local inflammation.
During topical inflammation you experience swelling, heat, pain, redness or loss of function. White blood cells come to the rescue and clear out any damaged tissue that is no longer useful. These immune cells are triggered by inflammatory mediators such as interleukins and chemokines, both proteins. The final process is tissue repair leading to complete regeneration, or scarring.
However, if your innate immune system fails to eliminate OR is exposed to prolonged causative agents, it leads to chronic inflammation where the adaptive immune system comes to play.
Systemic inflammation occurs when the immune system is constantly defending the body.
The same inflammation response happens to the inside of your body if there is something that is damaging your tissue. When your adaptive immune system is not able to reduce the invasion, an increase of fibroblast and small blood vessels is observed. You do not want extra fibrosis and blood vessels where they don’t belong.
This final stage can lead to chronic inflammatory systemic diseases like:
Rheumatoid arthritis
Stroke
Chronic respiratory diseases
Heart disorder
Cancer
Obesity
Diabetes
Alzheimer’s
Where does chronic inflammation take place?
Chronic inflammation can happen everywhere. In your organs, tissues, blood vessel cells, brain, skin, intestines, joints. Therefore, you don’t need to look puffy in order to have inflammation. This can be happening in invisible ways deep within your body. It usually is accompanied by some sort of symptom, but can go unnoticed for quite some time.
How do you know if you have inflammation?
It can be detected by specific blood markers in your lab work as well as by symptomology.
There are many underlying drivers of inflammation, but these are the worst offenders:
Excessive PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) intake
Oxidized lipoproteins
Iron overload
Heavy Metal and Free Radical overload
Bacterial Overgrowth in the gut (endotoxin)
Estrogen Dominance
Elevated stress hormones
Industrial chemicals
Pair this with a metabolism that is suppressed, WHICH is a body that is conserving energy, and we've got recipe for disaster. Conserving energy often means that detoxification of hormones like estrogen, iron, heavy metals and more, gets put on the back burner. Overtime, this means accumulating this junk in the tissues and fat cells. And then long down the road after you have successfully suppressed (via high cortisol) or ignored (by numbing out pain) numerous symptoms, you fall apart or get diagnosed.
Along the way you may have started a metabolically suppressive diet like Keto, Carnivore, Vegan, Fasting, Cleanses, or Paleo. Those may actually make you feel good, but TEMPORARILY only. These diets make you run on stress hormones, particularly elevated cortisol, and this feels good for a while. Cortisol is immensely anti-inflammatory because if you get hurt while trying to survive, you must keep going at all cost (even at the cost of your own future). This, I believe, is why carnivore and keto, and even restrictive diets like AIP can help suppress symptoms so dramatically at first. But, symptom suppression is not the same as getting to the root cause. And symptoms can come crashing back worse than before. When we are under stress, the body can eat its own tissues to make sugar. And during all of this one gland in particular takes a huge hit: the Thymus. The Thymus gland is technically a part of our lymph system, but the Thymus plays a large role in regulating the immune system. That is so because the immune system, digestive system and lymph system are so closely interconnected.
Did your food allergies get worse after time spent following a keto or carnivore diet? Or did you do long term restriction only to have more food allergies than you started with? Thank stress hormones. They kept you feeling better while underneath things got worse. The root was not being addressed. You wanted to keep going with no changes in your lifestyle, which is just not the way out.
This is also why when folks go pro-metabolic, they can have a period where they can feel more tired, more inflamed, and digestion can feel worse. Because as the stress hormones come down, the actual state of the body is revealed and it’s not always a “fun feeling”.
As we start to move estrogen and other junk out of our tissues, it doesn't always feel good, and can be quite uncomfortable.
How to regulate systemic inflammation?
The best way to regulate inflammation long term is to create an environment where our cells, including the cells of our digestive and immune systems, can thrive and respond appropriately.
This is achieved by supporting your body and its stressors from all angles.
Start eating regular meals, every 4 hours. No grazing, no snacking.
Start eating bioavailable nutrient dense foods that you enjoy.
Change patterns of over-exercising or under-exercising
Address endotoxins and infections
Follow your circadian rhythm for sleep, movement and meal planning
Reduce mental and emotional stressors with self care practices
Reload on minerals and nutrients
Take a few anti-inflammatory supplements such a Vitamin A, D, K, E, Niacinamide, and Aspirin (to name a few)
Get some lab work done with me: blood work, DUTCH hormone and hair mineral tests.
Reduce drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and other substances.
Get your thyroid checked!
Note: this list does not include to stop eating meat or sugar, but be aware that fish Omegas actually cause inflammation and are not essential. These things are band aids not
true cellular healing.
Resources
https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/systemic-inflammation-and-the-cns/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2538595/