The current state of health in our nation is on a bad path. Some of the statistics will literally make you sick (no pun intended). The US spends more money on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world,
$12474 in 2022, almost $4000 more than the next country on the list, unfortunately with all the spending we are not living longer when compared to other countries. Let me summarize that, we spend the most money and get poor results.
How does that even happen?
I’m not sure it can be answered in this article, but I do have some ideas to improve your health. If you have read this article going way back, you may remember me referencing the Magnificent 7 which is eat right, drink right, think right, talk right, move right, sleep right and poop right. If you are doing all these things “right”, your ability to maintain optimal health should be greatly improved. Dr. Robert Rakowski is the person who came up with the Magnificent 7 and it really cuts to the chase when thinking about how to improve or maintain our health.
What happens when we don’t utilize these tenants?
One thing for sure is the title of this article, inflammation, a driver to disease and chronic illness.
Inflammation is something most of us are familiar with, unfortunately, it can have some of the same characteristics as high blood pressure. You may be wondering how that comparison is possible. Blood pressure is known as the “silent killer”, due to the fact it often has no symptoms. as a person may not know that it is affecting their body adversely until it is too late. However, in severe cases, it causes headaches, shortness of breath, and nosebleeds. Unfortunately, when BP remains elevated for too long, it starts to wreak havoc on certain organ systems like the eyes and kidneys.
We don’t really think of inflammation in the sense that it is silent but when it first presents itself, in its infancy, it isn’t something that hits you over the head like a hammer.
We have different types of inflammation,
one kind is the natural immune response
that occurs when we have an injury, or infection. We need this type of inflammation as it is necessary for survival. This type of response is usually a big response that is quite evident. Think of a sprained ankle and what that process looks like. After the sprain, we get immediate inflammation at the site, which is a natural casting mechanism, immobilizing the ankle so that we can’t do further damage to the site. Over time, the ankle heals, and the inflammation dissipates, and the tissue returns to normal. This is a normal and needed inflammatory response.
Another form of inflammation is chronic inflammation that is a low level, under the surface, like a smoldering fire.
The first type of inflammation is a five-alarm fire, while this is more like the coals left over from a campfire, the bad part is that if it isn’t addressed, it will smolder on for a long period of time. This type of inflammation does not serve a purpose and if it is left unchecked, it can degrade tissue over time. The best example of this is rheumatoid arthritis and what it does to our joints.
I was just working with a 28-year-old patient who had a ton of inflammation and one issue that I am pretty passionate about, degenerative disk disease or DDD, because I too have that going on in my body. DDD is the crumbling of your disks in the lower back, kind of like a crumbling foundation of your house, not a good thing.
My plight with DDD started around 2000 when my good friend Dr Mike Wolf told me I had the back of a 65yo when I was only 35 at the time, thanks Dr Wolf. Over time, I started to develop some numbness in my left foot, which eventually led me to having an MRI of my back in 2011and seeing a neurosurgeon who told me he would gladly do surgery on me but one of the side effects could be numbness. That surgery never happened.
This was a point where I met the fork in the road. Do I keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, the definition of insanity, or do I make some changes to better my situation? I am a bit stubborn in certain areas of my life and this was going to be one of those areas, so I started to get busy working on ways to decrease inflammation and to stabilize my low back.
Some of the things I started and continue to do, eating clean food, when possible, organic fruits and vegetables which can be a challenge in western ND, non-seed oils for cooking, clean proteins with organic beef from Odermann Cattle Company, fish and chicken. I try to exercise 3-4 times per week. We do our best to limit toxin exposure. My wife and I have been gluten free for 13 or more years and that has been super helpful for lowering inflammation especially in my knees. If I happen to get into some gluten, my knees will act up about 2 days after and then it takes a couple of day for them to tame down.
I take many supplements
including Curcumin, Omega 3 fish oil, ProResolving Mediators or PRMs, joint complex with collagen, and D3 + K2 and one prescription called low dose naltrexone.
Seven years after my initial MRI, I wanted to have a repeat MRI because my foot still has some numbness however no pain. I specifically asked the neurosurgeon how the new MRI compared with the previous one and he said there was no change from the two MRI’s and to keep doing what I was doing because it was working. The fruits of my labors paid off and continue to do so.
If this sounds remotely like what you might going through or maybe yours started with a knee replacement, and then another, and then a shoulder, I challenge you to stop the inflammation. Replacing body parts should be the last resort, changing lifestyle is a solution to stopping the inflammatory progression that might be going through your body. If the inflammation is not stopped, it will continue to smolder under the surface damaging your tissue. You have the ability and now a road map to change. There is no better time than now to get busy and make the necessary changes to turn your situation around because, if nobody has given you tools before, you now have a roadmap.
Call or stop by the pharmacy if you want to schedule a consult to help navigate your journey to attacking inflammation. Please visit my website at
www.irsfeldpharmacy.com
to view this and other health-related articles in the blog section.
Until next time, be vigilant about your health!!
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