The Six Main Causes of Inflammation

The Inflammation and Cardiovascular Link

Cardiovascular disease is entrenched in our society as the #1 killer of Americans today.  Heart disease kills an estimated 800,000 people every year. Heart disease can take on many forms such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, and then finally stroke and heart attack.  Now, this is an epidemic that is inescapable merely because of the environment we live in.  We are bombarded with sugar, fast food restaurants, poor diets, sedentary lifestyles, and bad habits such as smoking which has all shortened our lifespans significantly.  The short life that we DO have may not be one of good quality.  Contrary to the popular expression, “What does not kill us makes us stronger”  is actually the opposite – What does not kill us makes us weaker and sicker.

If most of us are going to die from a heart attack, we first need to understand how we eventually get there step by step.  How does it all start?  A heart attack occurs from a sudden blockage of blood flow through the coronary arteries which feed the heart.  Initially, there is a narrowing of the coronary arteries which stems from plaque formation and this decreases the contractile strength of the heart and also decreases exercise tolerance.  However, when a blood clot lodges in this already narrowed coronary artery, a heart attack inevitably happens resulting in either heart damage or death. So obviously plaque formation exponentially increases your risk of having a heart attack. So what causes plaque formation so we can prevent it?  Well, the one-word answer is INFLAMMATION.

What causes inflammation?

Well, everything causes inflammation:  Breathing, walking, exercise.  There will always be a very small amount of inflammation from our everyday activities, and that’s okay.  Our bodies can handle mild temporary inflammation.  And our bodies need inflammation as part of the healing process.  However, after a certain threshold, continuous chronic inflammation can cause a lot of damage.  Actually, inflammation is the beginning of virtually all diseases.  There are a few reasons why some of our routine activities may be the cause of chronic inflammation.  Today, I’m going to give you the six main reasons for chronic inflammation, and later in another article, I will show you how to reverse the damage that has already been done.

The Ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Omega-6 fats are pro-inflammatory while Omega-3 fats are anti-inflammatory.  Now ideally, the balance you want between the two is a 1:1 ratio, but apparently the American diet has the ratio at about 18:1, which would cause an inflammatory state that is roughly 18 times more than normal.  How this actually happens is by the development of Arachadonic acid.  All you need to know that arachidonic acid is the end result that leads to inflammation in the body.  It’s not necessarily bad.  We need inflammation to start the healing process, but too much ongoing inflammation is not a good thing.  I’m not going to bog you down with the details of the biochemical pathway but omega-6 fats convert into arachidonic acid, while omega-3 fats do not – that’s why supplementing with omega-3 fats are stressed so much.  Omega-3 fats convert to a compound called Eicosapentaenoic acid which is anti-inflammatory.  If you decrease the amount of omega-6 fats and increase the amount of omega-3 fats in your diet, you significantly reduce the amount of inflammation in your body.

We get a majority of our omega-6 fats from polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) like corn oil, canola oil, safflower oil, and soybean oil.  We can get our omega-3 fats from fish oil, flaxseed oils, and chia seeds.  Instead of cooking with PUFAs, which are unstable and can easily get rancid with heat, cooking with saturated fats like coconut oil, palm oil, butter, animal fat, and lard are more stable.  Even olive oil, which consists of mostly monounsaturated fats and some polyunsaturated fats is okay.  It’s almost a must for you to take omega-3 fats daily, or suffer the consequences.

Oxidized Oils

Not only should you be aware of the amount of omega-6 fats you’re consuming, you should also know which oils are stable.  Oils can easily become oxidized or rancid when exposed to heat, light, oxygen, or acidity.  Some oils are more resistance than others.  The higher the temperatures the more oxidized or rancid oils become.  Don’t get me wrong, you need oils for your brain and cell membranes, but once they’re oxidized they can cause oxidation of your cholesterol and produce free radicals.   It’s the free radicals that cause blood vessel damage.  When you have blood vessel damage, you have inflammation of the of the vessel lining.  Remember you had your “good cholesterol” and “bad cholesterol”?  Well very recently, cholesterol has been vindicated from the terrible foods to eat.  So, HDL and LDL are actually good per se.  It’s only when the LDLs become oxidized that they cause a problem.  There are two types of LDLs:  large particle and small particle LDLs.  It’s the small dense particle sized LDLs that are oxidized and seep into inflamed blood vessels.  The large particle LDLs encases these inflamed areas in a plaque to compartmentalize the damage.  With on-going inflammation, you have continued plaque formation and narrowing of the arteries leading peripheral vascular disease and coronary artery disease.

Sugar

Another cause of inflammation is sugar.  When I say SUGAR, I mean simple and complex sugars, all carbohydrates, wheat, sucrose, sucralose, and let’s not forget about high fructose syrup.  Many years ago, sugar used to be a condiment.  Now it takes up more than half the American diet.  There isn’t even a minimum daily requirement of sugar.  It’s the one macronutrient that you DON’T need to live.

Sugar can cause inflammation in two ways:

  Sugar and sugar-containing foods have a high glycemic index. This means consumption will cause a huge spike in blood sugar, leading to a huge spike in insulin. It’s the INSULIN that causes the production of arachidonic acid, which again leads to an inflammatory state.

  Also, spikes in insulin cause an increase in fat stores.  Fat cells secrete inflammatory cytokines leading into an inflammatory state.  The more the fats cells you have, the more the inflammation.

Now, under this sugar umbrella, you also have High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which is a different kind of monster.  This is like sugar on steroids.  Research studies have linked HFCS to a condition called metabolic syndrome which presents with high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity.  This greatly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and ultimately can result in a heart attack.  HFCS made its inception 40 years ago showing up in soft drinks replacing regular cane sugar.  Back then people were drinking 2 soft drinks a week, whereas today normal consumption is 2 soft drinks a day.  We’re not even talking about those who drink 1-2 liters of soda a day, or those who completely replace water with soda.  Now, HFCS is everywhere.  You can find it ketchup, baby formula, and even bread.  The name as gotten such a bad rap that they even try to disguise it, but it’s the same stuff:

  corn syrup

  crystalline fructose

  fruit fructose

  maize syrup

  glucose syrup

  tapioca syrup

  dahlia syrup

  or any syrup for that matter – just stay away from it

Stress

Stress can also lead to inflammation by causing hypertension.   Our fight-or-flight response is triggered by stress.  Cortisol and adrenalin are secreted to help the body adapt to stressful situations.  This is helpful for the short term but can cause significant damage in the long term.  Hypertension is an increase of blood pressure within the blood vessels.  This can be caused by too much fluid in the vascular system, hardening of the arteries, or in the case of stress, increased contractility of the heart.  This leads to shear forces and micro tears against the vessel walls throughout the cardiovascular system and ultimately widespread inflammation.  Anytime you have a cut or wound, inflammation is the beginning of the healing process.  Platelets are components in the blood that sense these micro tears and attach to the walls to form clots within the tears.  Cholesterol is another component that is used to patch up the damaged blood vessels by plaque formation.  If the cholesterol is oxidized, it only exacerbates the problem.

So what happens if you have on-going hypertension causing continuous vessel damage leading to chronic inflammation?  Atherosclerosis.  This is the build up of cholesterol plaques on the vessel walls in an attempt to repair the damage from hypertension.  It also restricts the artery’s ability to dilate leading to worsening hypertension.  The plaques can grow so much that it can cause obstruction to blood flow and leading to poor circulation throughout the body.  This is called peripheral vascular disease.  Poor circulation means less blood going to your:

  Brain Cerebrovascular Disease Stroke

  Eyes Retinovascular Disease Blindness

  Heart Coronary Artery Disease Heart Attack

  Heart Ischemic Heart Failure Heart Attack

  Kidneys Renovascular Disease Kidney Failure Dialysis

  Bowel Ischemic Colitis Gangrenous Bowel Bowel Resection

  Genitals Erectile Dysfunction

  Legs Claudication Leg Amputation

These are all names of the same problem, just describing their location.  When the blood stops flowing to these organs ultimately you end up with a heart attack, stroke, renal failure (leading to dialysis), leg amputation, and gangrenous bowel.  In later videos, I will show you how to monitor your stress levels by following a specific value and I’ll show you how to manage those stress levels in a methodical way.

Lack of Flossing

Studies a few years ago linked the lack of flossing with whole body inflammation and subsequent cardiovascular disease.  What happens is when you don’t floss, you start to have plaque build up.  The microbes within the plaque can cause gingival inflammation which leads to gingivitis.  Long-standing gingivitis leads to periodontal disease.  Periodontal disease has been linked to systemic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and pneumonia.   If you floss daily, you prevent all of that.  You prevent the build of biofilm and dental plaque and thus prevent inflammation.

Smoking

Smoking, as we all know, is hazardous to our health in many ways.  We’ve known this for the last 50 years.  It affects virtually every organ in the body.  It causes oral and lung cancer, emphysema, birth defects, Buerger’s disease, atherosclerosis, and the list goes on.  For the purpose of this article, we’re more concerned with the cardiovascular effects of smoking.  The toxins in cigarettes cause inflammation of the vessel walls and lead to atherosclerosis.  In extreme cases such as Buerger’s disease, vessels can be blocked with blood clots as well as plaque deposits.  If smoking continues in this situation, multiple limb amputation is likely.

So there you go…six of the most common causes of inflammation.  In subsequent articles, we will talk about how to prevent inflammation and more importantly how to undo the damage of inflammation.