The bodies natural response to an injury is to produce inflammation. I would assume thats the bodies response from milleniums of evolution so it serves a purpose in the healing of the injury? But the general consensus is once injured we do everything we can to reduce inflammation. I don’t understand and am obviously missing info / intepreting info wrong. ELI5
Or am I on the right track and this is why RICE isn’t recommended as much any more and heat is?
In: Biology
Inflammation is there to make it harder for bacteria to survive and reproduce.
You know how you can run to the store grab some cold drinks when it’s scorching outside, but when you get to sit outside for more than an hour it becomes very uncomfortable? It’s basically the same thing, your body makes itself harder to thrive in.
When you ‘treat’ inflammation you’re suppressing body’s natural reaction. You’re treating the result of the problem not the problem itself, which might be a bacterial infection. It’s for personal comfort more than anything.
That being said, most anti-inflammatory medicine comes with anti-bacterial mix, so you have something to make yourself feel a bit better, and something to support your body in dealing with the problem.
The short version is that basically everything about our immune and trauma responses is a gamble, our body goes all out and hopes it fixes the problem before it kills us. This system works often enough that it’s been selected for evolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Inflammation does help us heal, but it’s also among the most extreme of our body’s responses, and thus has a high chance of causing damage, especially if it lasts for too long. That’s why it’s important to keep it in check.
Inflammation is your body essentially nuking the area with oxidative, chemical, and biological warfare. It just creates a huge mess of heat, burning, cells, and death. In the larger organism, this is easy to survive. As a microbe, not so much.
Inflammation evolved as a rapid response to external threats: venom, parasites, viruses, bacteria. It is highly effective in countering these.
In our modern world, these threats are significantly less and are easily treated. Not to mention the bodily stress / calorie deficit / other harm is much easier to simply weather in our comfy modern lives. So, if you can avoid inflammation and treat another way, it’s certainly better for your body.
As an aside, allergy and autoimmune inflammation is a uniquely modern abnormality caused by these cells being bored/unchallenged (more complex than this but is essentially what it boils down to)
“our body’s natural response” assumes that our body was designed perfectly. It was not. Evolution is not survival of the fittest, it’s more like – survival of the one that can live long enough to procreate. So the inflammation is ok for some dangers we have faced but we now have better ways to treat injury/illness.
I don’t have an answer but a related query – please redirect if this is the wrong place to post – but I figure there may be some folks here who can offer insight.
I have had chronic inflammation in my ear canals for about 10 years – flagged as dermatitis by one dermatologist but she told me she had never seen presentation of my symptoms in isolation and so could not actually ‘diagnose’ me.
Symptoms are redness, itching, excessive production of wax and scaly skin. I often irritate it at night while asleep which results in weeping sores.
I’ve seen every specialist under the sun, both in pathological /Western medicine and eastern /holistic circles – naturopaths, ayurvedic doctors etc. I’ve tried all sorts of corticosteroids (address symptoms for brief periods but do not resolve), medicated ointments and creams, oils such as olive, herbal oils as well such as neem etc.
I’ve addressed things in my diet like dairy and gluten (both of which I avoid for gut reasons but which have not altered my ears nb: history of IBS, currently managed). I’ve also tried increasing things like magnesium and sulfur, and installing a water filtration system at our house (Australia) to reduce hardness. I drink alcohol in moderation and reduce exposure to irritants and toxins in my environment and ingestion-wise.
All to no avail. I am concerned about the long term inflammation in my body. I have done a lot of reading and feel that at the foundation this is probably a mind-body issue.
I am not soliciting a diagnosis but wonder if anyone has experience with a similar condition or can talk to possible root causes and treatments?
Think of inflammation as like the microscopic equivalent of “fight or flight”. It’s great for surviving a real emergency, but it’s not a sustainable state and chronic fight or flight stress is bad for you if you’re not in actual danger.
Inflammation deals with infections and emergencies, but it’s a toxic response that’s not great for your body.
Yes, RICE is bullshit and has been debunked. Inflammation is good, fevers are good, immune responses are generally good
Inflammation describes a process (activation of immune system broadly speaking) that is entirely normal and fine, but if it happens too much or too intensely then it can sometimes be a problem.
Pop culture has completely demonized inflammation as only a bad thing, but without it, you’d never heal from anything. It’s not as simple as ALL Inflammation is bad.
Further to the answers you’ve got – I think a core misunderstanding is that you think our bodies’ responses are great. They are good, but they’ve evolved for a very different past (eg for passing on chromosomes, not making our lives better) and aren’t perfect or even close.
So, for example, your body will try to get rid of infections by giving you diarrhea. But that diarrhea can kill you too. It’s a simple and extreme response to a complex problem, and medicine is often better.
People sometime have the idea about fevers. Fevers can kill you too, and the idea that anti-fever medicine makes our immune systems weaker is not accurate. Our bodies and immune systems can harm while trying to help.
Inflammation isn’t always bad. Orthodontists (as in all of them that are up to date) don’t recommend anti inflammatory drugs for pain during braces.
My son just broke his arm. Orthopedics (again, all up to date ones) told him to not take any anti-inflammatory drugs.
Our understanding of inflammation has changed.
NSAIDS are still very helpful for many things.
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