Inflammation: Friend or Enemy?

When threatened, the tissues of your body respond with inflammation in order to maintain stability and permit healing. Bio-chemicals in your white blood cells increase the blood flow to the area of injury or infection causing redness, warmth, and swelling. That’s why you have a fever when sick, why your finger swells if you don’t remove a splinter promptly, or why your eyes get red and itchy when the air isn’t clean.

This is a normal process … but, and it’s a big but, when inflammation is chronic, existing all of the time, the natural inflammatory response starts to damage healthy cells, tissues, and organs.  The consequences are wide-reaching, including DNA damage, and cell death.  Chronic inflammation is implicated in the development of many diseases, including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, dementia, cognitive decline, obesity, as well as eye diseases and conditions.

Oxidative Stress and Inflammation

When the body is exposed to intrusion of toxins, foreign materials, pollutants, UV radiation, or a host of other infiltrators, various components of the cell oxidize. Oxidation causes stress and this phenomenon is called oxidative stress. Oxidative stress also occurs in response to emotional or physical trauma.¹

The body’s natural response to oxidative stress is to activate the immune system, resulting in inflammation. So, the roles of inflammation and oxidative stress are intertwined. Oxidative stress and inflammation can induce each other; sometimes oxidative stress causes inflammation; sometimes inflammation causes oxidative stress.² The body protects against excessive oxidative stress caused by free radicals (pro-oxidants), by means of antioxidants.