Inflammation: How it Causes Disease [Video]

Video: Inflammation: How it causes Disease

Dr. Vicki Peterson discusses inflammation, emphasizing its role in healing when short-lived but noting the dangers of chronic inflammation, which can lead to diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune conditions. She shares a personal story of helping her father improve his health and highlights a case of an employee who overcame chronic pain and other issues through dietary changes. Peterson stresses the importance of a healthy diet, exercise, and proper sleep to manage inflammation. She mentions that anti-inflammatory foods and proper adrenal gland function are crucial for maintaining health.

Transcript of the video

Hello, Dr. Vicki Peterson here. I wanted to speak with you today about inflammation. Why is inflammation something that naturally happens in the body? You really want inflammation to occur when it doesn’t last long. For example, if you cut yourself and notice it gets red around the cut, you don’t have to do much to an average cut—it just heals and you don’t worry about it. That redness is inflammation. Think of the word “inflammation,” which has “flame” in the middle. It’s redness, hotness, and fire.

That should happen, but then it should stop. Use an analogy: you’re in the woods and you’ve lit a fire for yourself. It’s good for a short period; it keeps you warm or cooks your dinner. But you make sure to put it out before you sleep and before you leave the campsite. Why? So you don’t start a forest fire. Inflammation in the body is similar. It happens acutely, does its job, and then stops. It’s good—it kills bacteria, destroys cancer cells, deals with something toxic. The fire flares up, does its work, and then subsides. It stops, and that’s what you want.

Our problem in this country is chronic inflammation. The inflammation goes on and on, and what that causes, we now understand, is disease. If you look at a continuum between optimal health and disease, the middle area would be greater and greater inflammation. If you go on PubMed and type in “inflammation,” you’d get hundreds of thousands of scientific research articles. If you type in “inflammation” and “liver,” you’d get tens of thousands of articles. The research community understands that inflammation is a big bad guy.

That’s all very well and good, but what are we doing about it? One of the biggest things we need to do is prevent worsening obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune disease—the big killers in our country, which come from inflammation. The exciting thing is we can do something about it.

A personal story: my dad passed away at 91, but when he was in his 60s, he was told he needed to do something because he was on the verge of having a heart attack. He listened to some of my advice. Again, in his 70s, he was told his kidneys were not doing well and he might need dialysis. We totally brought him back from that. His kidneys did very well until the end of his life. We changed a lot in his diet and lifestyle. I remember telling him he had enough steak to last a lifetime as I reduced his red meat intake.

Recently, one of my employees, a woman in her mid-50s, told me how great she felt. She had chronic pain—back pain, neck pain, joint pain—that she hadn’t been able to resolve. She was chronically constipated and needed coffee for energy. She wasn’t overweight by the scale but had a higher fat percentage. She had several issues—energy level, needing coffee, aches, pains, digestive complaints. She’s been on our program for a while and is doing fabulously, making great dietary changes. She said, “I haven’t even done my exercises the way I’m supposed to, and I don’t have any pain. My pain is gone, I’m sleeping great, no constipation, and I’ve lost weight.”

These changes are remarkable. Did she have a disease? No, not yet. Was she heading that way? Definitely. We brought her back from the brink. Whether it was diabetes or heart disease doesn’t matter. The fact is, we brought her back from the brink because the inflammation was normal to turn on but not normal to stay on.

What are some common reasons for inflammation to stay on? What we put in our mouths is a big one. Food sensitivities like gluten and dairy, food allergies, or just eating the standard American diet, which is loaded with chemicals, pesticides, GMOs, and nonfood items. These do nothing for our health but persist and continue inflammation. Bad fats like Omega-6s in pre-packaged foods, fast food, chemicals, preservatives, toxins, and drugs contribute to inflammation. A sedentary lifestyle is a big one you can do something about.

There’s actually a part of your body that makes anti-inflammatories—your adrenal glands. They’re your stress glands and make natural anti-inflammatories. Keeping them happy is key, and you can do that by maintaining stable blood sugar, eating a good diet, exercising, and getting good sleep. Your adrenal glands can buffer you in an anti-inflammatory sense.

Dietarily, organic fruits and vegetables, dark green leafy vegetables, and berries high in antioxidants are naturally anti-inflammatory. Getting your Omega-3 and Omega-9 fatty acids from sources like olive oil, fish oil, chia seeds, and flax seeds is important.

Inflammation can reach a point where you can see it on a blood test with markers like C-reactive protein and ferritin. You can feel it when you’re not inflamed—you feel younger, happier, and healthier. Inflammation affects hormones, brain acuity, and mental clarity.

This is a big topic, and these videos are supposed to be short, but I wanted to introduce it. We might do follow-ups to get deeper into it. I hope this information was helpful. Please let me know, and until next time, I wish you very good health.

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