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Chapter 1: What is inflammation and why is it important?
It's been linked to like arthritis and diabetes, depression. With chronic inflammation, it's your immune system still responding but not switching off. How is obesity linked to cancer? People think that layer of fat just sits there doing nothing. It is producing the .
Then everyone gets very fearful of sugar and doesn't have a piece of chocolate cake at their birthday and I think that's sad.
All of those pro-inflammatory cells are thinking, hey ho, mummy's out of the house. Let's get to work.
With medication like ibuprofen, is that safe to take on a regular basis?
They are designed to help with pain caused by inflammation. We now say not to take it within the first days.
A very warm welcome to No Appointment Necessary. My name is Cherry Healy.
And you are looking very fabulous.
People who are listening and not watching, I'm basically in my summer date night outfit.
I am Dr. Amir Khan. I am not glammed up. And I am a GP from humble Bradford. And I come down here to hang out with Cherry once a week and do this podcast.
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Chapter 2: How does chronic inflammation affect our health?
Yeah. It's not always bad. So like anything, it is good in small, correct doses. So if we were to injure ourselves or whatever, we need some inflammation for healing. So what essentially inflammation is, is blood rushing to an area, the immune system responding to something and putting about a process that heals and repairs or does damage control to that area.
So if we sprained our ankle, for example, blood rushes to our ankle, our immune system creates that cushioning fluid around the ankle so it can heal and the immune system gets to work on repairing whatever's damaged. That is inflammation. That is a good thing. We need it for life. We need it just to live and carry on.
It's like a natural, normal, physical, bodily response.
Yes, that's right. The problem occurs with chronic inflammation, where the injury or illness or insult that's happened to our body has resolved, but our immune system is still carrying on this inflammatory process.
Why does it carry it on when it should stop?
For many, many, many reasons. So when it comes to inflammation, a key player in our body is something called cytokines. Now, these are proteins within our body that signal to your immune system that it needs to switch on or off. There are pro-inflammatory cytokines that say, right, immune system, come on, let's start this inflammatory process. We need to heal this up.
Or there are non-inflammatory cytokines which go, OK, that's enough healing. Thank you very much. Goodbye, immune system from here. Now, what can happen with things like stress, certain diets that we're eating, poor sleep, lack of exercise, obesity? All of these things can positively reinforce these pro-inflammatory cytokines.
So they keep telling your body, actually, continue this inflammatory process.
So we've got two messages. We've got messenger saying, it's almost a bit like Alice in Wonderland when she takes a bite and something gets bigger and when a bite and something gets worse. Yeah. We've got some messages that say, go, go, go. We need inflammation to heal. Go, go, go. Yeah. And then we've got another set of messages that say, okay, now it's time to stop. Yes.
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Chapter 3: What role do stress and lifestyle play in inflammation?
That's that middle bit there. And that's almost like its own organ. And think about that, really, because I think people think that layer of fat just sits there doing nothing. It is very active. That's what I think.
It's just a layer of fat. Why is it causing so many problems?
No, it's not just sitting there. It is producing these pro-inflammatory cytokines, but it's also producing hormones as well. If you have extra lesser fat, you produce more oestrogen as well because that's what comes from those fat cells. Insulin is affected by it as well. All of these things are pro-inflammatory. As that fats...
sends out messages and hormones saying, right, more inflammation, more inflammation, more inflammation, more cells divide, increased risk of mutation. And that is how obesity can lead to cancers like breast cancer, like bowel cancer. All of these things are linked.
How does sugar...
create inflammation and does that affect your risk of getting cancer so diet is is important and sugar is a part of of of that and we're talking about refined sugar here or added sugar when it comes to diet you'll see online like this is a anti-inflammatory diet or this is an inflammatory diet and And I think that's a little bit simplistic.
There are certain foods that we know can increase your risk of inflammation. Refined sugar is one of them. Alcohol is their ultra processed food. Through a number of mechanisms, they can link to obesity. So high sugar levels in ultra processed foods is linked to weight gain. But also insulin is a key player here as well.
So when you're eating refined sugar or ultra processed food that has a lot of sugar in, it pushes your insulin levels up. Insulin, again, in good levels, manages blood sugars. Over time is a pro-inflammatory hormone and causes inflammation. And that is all part of the process of insulin resistance. And, you know, trying to manage insulin levels is really hard, but it's really important.
um so sugar plays into that sugar produce makes you produce more insulin the more insulin you make in your blood yes your sugar levels might come down but over time your body gets used to that level of insulin and it stops working as well and all it does instead of bringing your sugar levels down that insulin stimulates you to produce these pro-inflammatory cytokines and then they cause all that inflammation and cell division it's all linked well
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Chapter 4: How does obesity contribute to inflammation and related diseases?
It's not in your head. It is very, very real. And I think us and them accepting that is part of the process. And then... A lot of the management is not through pain relief because with long term pain relief, you can become tolerant and addicted to it. And you can also get lots of side effects of taking tablets long term. The effects wear off. It's not useful.
So we often refer these people to either chronic pain clinics or living with pain clinics. And they try and retrain their brain in kind of a cognitive behavioral way and thinking about it.
in trying to dial down that that response that they're having and it's about thinking about it in a different way working on the days that where it's not so bad what can they manage understanding there'll be days where it's really bad and they can't do anything and that's also okay not pushing themselves too hard which might stimulate the pain to come back so there's lots of kind of
Of mental support that these people need, but also understanding it is a big part of it.
Is chronic pain always linked to inflammation?
Often these chronic pains are linked to a type of stress, whether it's physical or a trauma of some sort that's happened that's triggered your immune system and caused it.
Like even an emotional trauma?
Oh, very much so. And emotional trauma, domestic violence is a big one. You know, that's why I get so angry with perpetrators of domestic violence, because they don't understand the long-term effects that they have on these poor people, generally women.
So it might not be that they physically abused these women, these people, but even if it's emotional coercion, the real physical damage is huge. Does inflammation cause depression?
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