When you get a cut on your finger, you can see the area become red and perhaps even swollen.
The area might feel warm to the touch and painful due to the extra fluid volume. This inflammation is a natural response to a disruption in the skin. It is the way the body attempts to heal itself, by bringing extra blood flow and fluid to protect the disruption in the skin. Temporary injuries are called short term inflammation as they last only a few days. They may or may not require treatment. Medication with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) may help discomfort but as always check with a healthcare professional to make sure the treatment does not interfere with your current medications or personal health.
If you have or have seen someone with arthritis, you see the same inflammation process within the body such as swelling, perhaps redness and warmth over the area of the affected joint. Pain is typically present with arthritis. This type of inflammation that occurs within the body is usually caused by a disease process. Longer lasting episodes of inflammation is called chronic inflammation. This can last months, years or a lifetime.
The body will respond to any injury as above. A disruption inside the body can induce the inflammation process. The disruption might not be visible from the outside of the body. You might not even know it is there. Inflammation can be widespread depending on the source of the problem. Some body diseases can start internal inflammation.
A small number of examples of diseases that cause chronic internal body inflammation are:
Chronic inflammation can be started by diseases but can also cause diseases. Diseases affect your body by increasing your risk of some autoimmune disorders much as those listed above. Also, chronic inflammation can increase stress, making decisions more difficult, affect your gut health, produce heart disease, asthma, COPD, periodontal disease, increase fat and insulin resistance and other auto immune disorders.
We all know an infection can lead to inflammation, but diseases can trigger an autoimmune response within the body. This is because even internally, the body will respond to a change such as infection or tissue damage. It is the same process as with the cut on the skin. Changes within the body due to disease, will result in the body’s normal process by sending fluid and white blood cells to the affected area. The blood vessels must enlarge to accommodate the extra fluid which results in inflammation. However, if the disease remains, so does the inflammation. Continual internal body inflammation becomes chronic.
Of interest to most reading this blog will be the issue of inflammation and spinal cord injury. At the time of illness or injury, the inflammation process takes over by cushioning to try to correct the area where the spinal cord is affected. This is a normal body response to injury. However, the extra fluid volume is going to a place in the spine which is contained in the rigid structure of the boney vertebrae. There is no extra room for the fluid. The body will not stop sending the fluid because of the natural response. Therefore, the pressure of the fluid will push on the soft spinal cord, diminishing the blood supply within the cord. The same process happens with a brain injury where fluid is rushed to the brain, but the hard skull container will not expand. Therefore, the soft brain will be squeezed to hold the extra fluid.
As time passes, the body continues to provide extra fluid to the damaged area of the spinal cord, brain or both as it attempts to correct any injury. This then becomes chronic inflammation. Medications such as diuretics and steroids might be used to reduce acute inflammation depending on the specifics of the acute neurological injury. Control of chronic inflammation is much more difficult as the body has now adapted to a new way of functioning.