Inflammation…Zeroing In
November 9th, 2006 by The Doc
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, meaning it arises from our immune system’s inappropriate attempt to reject our own tissues. This, in turn, flips on the inflammation switch. There are several dozen known (or likely) autoimmune illnesses—lupus, sarcoidosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Grave’s disease, certain types of anemia, myasthenia gravis, and even some cases of diabetes are all examples. As time goes by, more conditions will certainly be classified as autoimmune, since it seems our modern world is placing a huge burden on our already overworked immune systems. The prevalence of chronic, degenerative diseases (including autoimmune diseases) and cancers is rising faster than any statistical wizard can easily attribute to an aging population. Clearly, something besides “baby booming” is at fault. Children are being diagnosed with cancer more commonly than in the past, and cancer is a leading cause of death in our pediatric population. Without a doubt, we are living in an increasingly toxic milieu, and our immune defenses are taking a beating. In an ideal world, we would get to the root of this problem, dig it out, and burn it on the slash pile of history.
Unfortunately, our global economy relies on a certain degree of carte blanche for the all-important producers of life’s conveniences, and even the most optimistic of souls realizes that—if we ceased poisoning our planet today—we would still be dealing with the residue of past carelessness for generations to come. And, ironically, it isn’t just the pollutants from industrialization that threaten us. In an effort to live longer, “healthier” lives, we have inadvertently created dangerous, hardy organisms that can literally bathe unscathed in the best antibiotics we have.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Western medicine’s approach to autoimmune diseases is to suppress the overactive immune response or to block the action of various chemicals produced as a part of that response. But we obviously need an intact immune system to deal with real threats in our world—bacteria, fungi, parasites, viruses, and so forth. Without defenses against these potential invaders, we would all soon be nothing more than culture media for the microbes that surround us. Our immune system allows us to live in harmony with an environment that is teeming with other organisms—some of them not too friendly to our existence. It is only when our immune system fails us that we become ill. In the case of an autoimmune disease, then, wouldn’t it be better if we could balance a hyperactive immune system and somehow tone it down to a normal level—without hammering it flat?
Ayurvedic and Chinese physicians understand the importance of balance; attaining equilibrium is a mainstay of their approach to healing. In the West, we tend to use “silver bullets” that we aim at what we believe to be the heart of a problem (it’s that minimalist attitude again). Even as patients, we expect to be handed the “quick fix.” None of us wants to wait until tomorrow to feel better, let alone for a few weeks or months. Yet, in order to attain optimal health, we need to acquire the virtue of patience. Drugs and biomedical manipulations may address the immediacy of our situation, but more often than not they compound the problem in the long run. Lifestyle changes, herbs, nutritional supplements, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions take time…but they are well worth the wait.