Inflammation: Do You Need To Put Out The Fire?
“It’s a chemical imbalance.” Chances are you’ve heard that phrase in trying to explain the syndromes of depression or anxiety. This statement is often attached to the pharmaceutical treatment for this imbalance, a pill that can increase serotonin, or perhaps dopamine or norepinephrine. It is an oversimplified statement that has lead countless people down the medication path, helpful for some, but not for most.
The Role of Inflammation
One of the exciting areas of study is the role of inflammation in psychiatric disease. The link between inflammation and depression is now well established and non-controversial. Inflammation produces chemicals called “cytokines” which serve as the mobile communicator of danger or safety to the rest of the immune cells in our body. When they communicate with the microglia (the immune cells of the brain), they can stimulate a response that moves the production of the amino acid tryptophan away from making serotonin and towards making anxiety provoking quinolinic acid. Researchers have learned that patients with high blood markers for inflammation are less likely to respond to antidepressants. These markers tend to go down when depression resolves.
Where Does Inflammation Come From?
So the obvious questions becomes, where does inflammation come from? There is a committee of contributors, but their seat of power is most frequently in the gut! The health of your gut, which is associated with diet, stress levels and sleep, is one of the primary determinants of slowing this inflammation. Other factors such as vitamin D levels, dental and periodontal health and infectious agents can also be associated.
Discovering and reducing any one person’s risk factors for inflammation involves more work than picking up a prescription, but can be infinitely more important! There are a multitude of ways to do the work towards healing. One way to start is with an elimination diet to see if you have any possible reactions to foods that may be causing an inflammatory response. While it takes some planning and preparing, it can be instrumental in getting off the “medication merry-go-round.”
While I focused mainly on depression here, there are strong links with inflammation and anxiety, ADHD, Bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia as well.
Anti-Inflammatory Practices
I’ll give you two action steps for today: one easy and one harder. The easy one is simply to go for a walk and get some exercise. There is nothing more anti-inflammatory than exercise.
If you’re feeling more ambitious, start a trial of eliminating gluten, maybe even dairy as well. You can find a guide here. While many don’t have any issues with these, they are the two most common inflammatory foods and a minimum 4-6 week trial away from these foods can be a start in piecing the clues together to find where the smoke is coming from!
