Imagine your body as a lush forest with waterfalls, rivers and green vegetation. (If you have been or seen pictures of the Amazon jungle, you know what I am talking about.)
Now imagine there is a small fire somewhere in this forest. The fire endangers inhabiting wild life, its smoke is spoiling the air quality. So the amazingly trained and committed troops of your body (your immune system) come to put it out. And once again, all is well in the forest.
But now imagine there are many forest fires, in different places. The fires are scattered throughout your body, which makes it harder for the troops to track them down and extinguish all at once.
These metaphorical fires are instances of “inflammation.” And a poor processed diet, certain food groups, environmental pollution, medications, illness, sleep, stress, and chemicals in products we use are like fuel for those fires in your body.
Inflammation can take the form of a bloated stomach and a splitting headache, allergies and diabetes, high blood pressure and low metabolism. And the list goes on and on. For me, the signs of inflammation were chronic bloating, constipation, low energy and imbalanced hormones. For others, it’s headaches, weight gain, aches and pains.
In the immediate, these fires rob you of energy and prevent weight loss. But ever more critical is what they do to your future. Over and above discomfort, inflammation also causes more terminal and chronic disorders, often leading to lifelong problems like heart disease, Cancer, arthritis, and more.
The idea that inflammation causes most of the diseases and health problems we deal with has been talked about in the medical literature; cardiologists speak of heart and blood vessel inflammation and allergists discuss lung, nose and sinus inflammation. But its treatment is fragmented.
Modern healthcare tends to inflammation in silos — on a case-by-case basis. The focus is on how to put out each fire with medications and surgery, instead of on how to prevent the innumerable fires from igniting in the first place. Inflammation is widely recognized as the central root cause of most modern day illnesses, but almost no one is addressing inflammation as the total body problem that it is.
And that is the aim of this site. Resolving the root cause of our many ailments: inflammation. Sharing highly effective actions you can take to calm inflammation — to stop these fires before they even start, so that you can think, move and live better.
Let’s focus on prevention of the fires — for what good is this lush, beautiful forest, if we don’t take care of it?