Inflammation… has become, shall we say, a buzz word. We hear this word so often in discussions of nearly every type of health issue. But what is it really? What does it mean? How does it start? How do we stop it? The biggest and most important question of all is… How does inflammation affect a person’s health?
Think of what happens if you get an annoying little sliver in your finger. Until you get that thing out, it is likely that you will see the skin around the sliver become red and inflamed as it tries to push the offending foreign object out of the body. But what happens if you leave the sliver? Infection will set in and the inflammation cycle will continue until you eventually get the object out!
Inflammation is a natural attempt by the body to heal itself, and in the short term or an acute situation is actually ok. It is also a signal from the body that some underlying issue needs to be addressed. Over time, as inflammation becomes chronic and the foreign “object” remains as an inhabitant in the body, this cyclical inflammatory process becomes a serious problem.
What are these possible foreign “objects” you ask? The source of inflammation can vary from person to person and it can include such things as injury, bacteria, virus, poor diet, environmental toxins, pharmaceutical medications, over-supplementation, vaccines and stress!
So … is inflammation the root of all evil? The short answer is yes but the complete answer is that the real problem is leaving unattended the underlying issue which is contributing to the inflammation. Chronic inflammation ultimately weakens the immune system. When the immune system becomes weakened the disease process begins. So, to sum it up in a catch phrase…”inflammation is the precursor to disease.”
We can all follow anti-inflammatory diets but if we don’t address the cause of the inflammation we can’t really get better. If you don’t get the sliver out, your finger will never heal.
So how can we “see” inflammation?
Thermography is the only assessment tool that can visualize inflammation. Where it is, where it is coming from and where it is heading. In a nutshell, this tool creates a high definition digital map of your body that illustrates temperature patterns — patterns that are consistent with inflammation.
Humans tend to wait until symptoms get sufficiently bad to pay attention – or until their body is really screaming for help. At that point, Prevention is no longer an option – leaving only Reactive medicine to address the situation, and leaving the patient to endure invasive testing, drugs with side effects, treatments and surgeries that greatly reduce quality of life.
On the Prevention and proactive side, trained practitioners can support your body’s ability to heal itself through various modalities. Seeing inflammation and the potential cause of the inflammation early allows the practitioner and the patient to design a proactive treatment plan to mitigate the process of inflammation and to work towards removing the sliver. In particular, a thermography report provides clear indications of follow-up questions that will allow the practitioner to make a more information contribution to the decision on the type of treatment plan.
Healthier is Smarter!
Sharon Edwards – BA, R(Hom), DNM, RNCP, CTT
