Aches, Pain, Stiffness, Why?

by Glen Depke, Traditional Naturopath You may know of someone that suffers from one of more of these challenges.

• Do you find regular joint pain a part of your daily life?
• Are regular body aches beginning to annoy you regularly?
• Is your body stiff when you wake in the morning or after sitting for some time?

If any of these are a challenge for you, it is likely that you are suffering from chronic inflammation. If this is your challenge, I do not have to tell you how this affects your daily life, your mood, your health and your happiness. The unfortunate reality is that most with chronic inflammation live with daily aches, pain or stiffness. For those that do not recognize this expression, look at this question. Did you also know that chronic inflammation is a key component at the core of basically every chronic illness? With this said, I don’t want you to get the impression that inflammation itself is the problem. The true problem are the triggers for this inflammation and the ongoing feed back loops that continue this chronic inflammatory state. We can first look at the triggers.

• Mental/emotional stress
• Gluten and other cross reactive food intolerance
• Infection
• Obesity
• Chemotherapy
• Addiction

The primary triggers that we see with clients on a regular basis are the first three that are in bold, stress, food intolerance and infection. Obviously a major aspect of eliminating your inflammation is tied directly into reducing or eliminating your triggers, but that’s not all. Once chronic inflammation has been your “friend” for a longer period, you can potentially develop one or more of the following feed back loops that continue this inflammation. These feed back loops are listed below. 

• Understand that chronic inflammation will often inhibit phase I and phase II liver detoxification pathways. This occurs due to the fact that the NF-kB state can create a suppression of cytochrome P450. This suppression leads to a compound hepatic biotransformation, thus activating hepatic end products. It helps to understand that biotransformation is the process of rendering fat-soluble compounds to water soluble compounds so they can be excreted via the urine, feces and sweat. Hormones, toxins and drugs undergo hepatic transformation by phase I and phase II pathways in the liver and are eventually eliminated by a phase III pathway. A significant key though to this biotransformation, phase I, phase II and phase III pathways is the initial release of cytochrome P450. As noted above, chronic inflammation suppresses this cytochrome P450 thus inhibiting the entire liver clearance pathways. When this occurs, further inflammation is initiated and round and round you go. Simply put, the chronic inflammatory state leads to a multiple challenges within the liver, thus leading to more inflammation.  
• Chronic inflammation can also cause and increase in fat cell production. This increase in fat cells leads to insulin surges which in turn leads to insulin resistance. And guess what this leads to? If you said more inflammation you are right on.
•  Another challenge created by chronic inflammation is the creation of leaky gut. Leaky gut occurs when the tight junctures, or openings, in your small intestines that allow your macro-nutrients, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and and co-enzymes, actually become enlarged. When this occurs, whole food substances will be allowed through these tight junctures and lead initially to an autoimmune reaction. As this autoimmune reaction continues this can lead to a true TH-17 response AKA, tissue destruction and your guessed it, more inflammation.
• Last but not least, when you are living with chronic inflammation, your body may respond by raising cytokine production. Cytokines are proteins secreted by immune cells that act on other cells to coordinate appropriate immune responses. When these cytokines are responding to chronic inflammation, this often leads to autoimmune disease and more inflammation.

So based on what I am saying, it may sound hopeless and I hear you. Thankfully though, it is not hopeless. I know this personally, because I lived with chronic inflammation for decades before I finally overcame this issue. My inflammation was due to an initial injury followed by years of consuming intolerant foods and life’s stressors. Here’s my story for your education. During this video, I mention the “More Than Just Weight Loss” program. During the six week span of this program, my knee pain was actually eliminated because for the first time in decades, I was able to eliminate my chronic inflammatory state. This too can be you. Follow the link below to get more information on your potential of walking away from aches, pain and stiffness. More Than Just Weight Loss