Everyone wants to do what they can to avoid cancer. Did you know that having too much inflammation in your body is a strong risk factor? Inflammation can cause wear and tear to all areas of your body. It can damage the genetic material in your cells and inside your mitochondria. This can interfere with proper cell function, potentially causing cancer.

Recent research has shown that inflammation is an underlying factor in the pathology of just about every chronic disease.

What is inflammation?

 

Inflammation is the way our body responds to injury. We can usually tell a part of our body is inflamed when it is red, hot, swollen and we can’t move it properly. Think of a stubbed toe or a sprained ankle. Inflammation is present in all ‘itis’ conditions, such as arthritis, hepatitis, bursitis, and many others. However, inflammation can also occur inside our body in a much more subtle way, where we don’t even know it is happening. Fatigue and pain are classic indicators that there’s too much inflammation in your body.

Type 2 diabetes causes inflammation

 

Elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin, fatty liver and obesity all contribute to raised inflammation. People with these conditions are at higher risk of cancer, especially breast, kidney, uterine, thyroid, ovarian, gastrointestinal cancers and multiple myeloma. This is because they have chronic low grade inflammation in their body for years.

Researchers recently wanted to test whether the blood markers of inflammation IL-6 (interleukin 6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) can predict the development of obesity related cancers in patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

A blood test can determine who is most at risk

Among 6466 studied patients, 327 developed obesity related cancers over a median period of 8.8 years. The scientists discovered that each standard deviation increase in IL-6 levels increased the risk for obesity related cancers by 19 percent.

The researchers did not find a strong association between TNF-α or hsCRP and obesity related cancers. Therefore a blood test for interleukin 6 may be a useful test for type 2 diabetics to assess levels of inflammation and cancer risk.

Potential causes of inflammation

Elevated blood sugar. This can occur in type 1 or type 2 diabetics as well as non diabetics if they eat a lot of carbohydrate and experience a glucose spike. Regularly consuming sugar, grains and high glycemic foods will flood your bloodstream with glucose. Sugar is sticky and it can bind to proteins in your body and damage them.

Infections. Any type of bacterial, viral, fungal or parasitic infection raises inflammation, because your immune cells produce massive quantities of inflammatory chemicals as they try to fight the infection. This is particularly a problem in chronic, long term infections.

Food allergy, intolerance and sensitivity. Whenever you consume a food you are sensitive to, your body behaves as though you swallowed a harmful virus or bacteria. As your immune system tries to cope with this scenario, it produces a host of inflammatory chemicals. This can become a significant problem if you unknowingly eat this food(s) every day.

Stress. Unfortunately the hormones your body produces while you are stressed cause inflammatory damage, free radical damage and a great deal of wear and tear to your body.  Magnesium helps to counter some of this damage and can reduce levels of inflammatory chemicals in the blood.

Lack of sleep. Good solid sleep is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory remedies there is, and it’s free and feels great. Unfortunately most people know this but try as they might, they can’t get good sleep consistently. Insomnia or just poor quality sleep is endemic in modern society. Magnesium can help improve sleep quality and duration.

Injuries. Accidents and surgery are a major physical stress on the body, and these processes all generate a great volume of inflammatory chemicals. These inflammatory chemicals are very useful in acute conditions and are necessary for the recovery process. Unfortunately many patients are left with chronic pain, swelling and immobility because the inflammatory process has continued for too long. Serrapeptase is excellent for these people because it is a protein digesting enzyme and helps to clear out protein deposits that are not serving a useful purpose in your body. It has anti-inflammatory, anti-oedemic (reduces fluid retention) and fibrinolytic activity (helps to break down blood clots). It can help to clear mucus, fluid, debris and immune complexes from your body.

Reference

The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.