5 ms·

And this happens to who? Does it hurt? Why should I care? I know literally no-one that has ever complained about 'inflammation'. When I say explain what it mea

And this happens to who? Does it hurt? Why should I care? I know literally no-one that has ever complained about 'inflammation'. When I say explain what it means IRL, I mean please explain the impact.

dtawfik1 9y ago
Well, imagine inflammation in your circulatory system. So imagine that there's this partical in your blood stream that your immune system responds to. If you have too many inflammatory responses you could get a blockage. That blockage could lead to a heart attack. That's one example but these inflammatory responses are also linked to a bunch of diseases. I hope that is a helpful answer.
- dtawfik1 9y ago
  https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltmedicine/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-inflammation/ https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltmedicine/the-good-th...
  - dtawfik1 9y ago
    Here's an article the consequences of inflammation on the brain. http://www.dana.org/Publications/ReportOnProgress/Consequences_of_the_Inflamed_Brain/ http://www.dana.org/Publications/ReportOnProgress/Consequenc...
- throw132890123 9y ago
  Not really, you're now linking the 'inflammation' described in this article to heart attacks. Surely that'd be a bigger story? From the 'article' you linked to: > Obesity and its constant companion, type 2 diabetes, are at epidemic proportions in this country. One thing that connects them is inflammation. How is this not a most blatant case of 'correlation vs causation'? We know the causes of obesity AND type 2 diabetes. Surely inflammation, a cellular immune thing ... is just a correlating factor?
  - dtawfik1 9y ago
    https://www.uaf.edu/files/olli/OLLI_15_chol_4_red.pdf https://www.uaf.edu/files/olli/OLLI_15_chol_4_red.pdf Checkout slides 7 and 8. My simple understanding is that the sugar creates a particle that provokes an immune response. Cytokines attack the sugar-lipid particle that has been oxidized.
    - subcosmos 9y ago
      Glucose, in high concentration, reacts with proteins at arbitrary locations, effectively gluing them together. This is bad, so the immune system detects this (with a receptor called RAGE) and sends in reinforcements to eat the mess up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor)
  - subcosmos 9y ago
    There's compelling evidence that inflammation can cause insulin resistance and fat accumulation, and that insulin resistance and fat accumulation can further cause inflammation. We've found signaling pathways in the body that connect in both directions. So yeah, the causality is actually circular, which in the context of human health implies that a snowball effect is in fact occurring. Escaping this feedback loop is the hard part that we are still working on in the lab.
thephyber 9y ago
Not a medical professional, but... Athletes feel aches and pain from inflammation of their muscles. Old persons frequently have inflammation in their joints which causes pain and stiffness. Asthma sufferers have inflammation in their lungs. Anyone (except hemophiliacs) who receives a skin cut has inflammation at the site of the cut. It's an immune response and is a level of abstraction away from the actual observable symptoms, hence the general confusion about what it is.
- throw132890123 9y ago
  Right I've heard of those examples, but they have nothing to do with diet. So when people say 'eating sugar causes inflammation' what do they mean? How is THAT inflammation felt?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Right I've heard of those examples, but they have nothing to do with diet. They do, in fact; a pro-inflammatory diet makes the threshold at which symptoms are felt from any of those other source lower, because inflammation has a substantial systemic component. (It may produce unique symptoms of its own, too, but I think the main dietary concern with inflammation is systemic contribution to lowering thresholds to inflammatory symptoms when other triggers are present.)
  - subcosmos 9y ago
    Bad diet causes brain inflammation. You don't feel pain in this case, but you feel tired and hungry, because the part of the brain getting inflamed specifically regulates metabolism and appetite. We know there is inflammation there because the brains immune system goes apeshit, and we can see this under the microscope. Gliosis is the technical name.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
    From my own experience, when I eat too much food that contains high amounts of sugar, I start feeling like I’m getting a cold. I get a sore throat, feel much less energetic, like my body is fighting a disease, skin on my head starts itching and turns red, my nose starts shedding. The symptoms get worse when I keep eating high amounts of sugar. When I feel an onset, I avoid sugar to starve the inflammation. High amounts of sugar that trigger the symptoms means >100g in 24 h or >60g per day over several days. The effect also depends on the food, probably because of how it is digested. Sugary water (fruit juice, soda) is worse than solid meals. Some forms of sugar are worse than others, e.g. I can eat some chocolate in moderation but others (e.g. Milka) I get a soar throat within minutes of eating a single piece (<10g).
ChuckMcM 9y ago
It is the new "bad" thing and thus gets a lot of press lately but it is also probably true that you have hear many complaints, you just may not have associated them. A sore throat, is caused by inflammation of the mucus tissues in your throat, for example. A mosquito bite itches due to inflammation, it is the immune response to the mosquito's saliva that you feel as an itching sensation. The 'new' thing however is that this mechanism can occur pretty much in every cell of your body and some people have speculated it is the root of a number of ailments. Google 'inflammation' on scholar.google.com and you will find a number of papers discussing different ways that it can affect you.
- throw132890123 9y ago
  > Google 'inflammation' on scholar.google.com and you will find a number of papers discussing different ways that it can affect you. No thanks, I'm specifically asking for an explanation of how it affects me.
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    Mail me a blood sample. :-) More seriously, your question, as stated, can only be answered by your doctor and then probably only after taking various samples. What is worse is that inflammation is typically a response to something else, so it is at least a second order symptom rather than a primary cause. (for example your sore throat is from inflammation, but the inflammation is from a response to something the mucus membrane didn't like. Could be a cold, it could be the chlorine you drank.) Symptoms associated with inflammation are aches, pain, vomiting, diarrhea, fainting, swelling, and itching at least. If you have any of those symptoms, it is affecting you.
  - subcosmos 9y ago
    What YOU (sometimes) feel is pain, redness, and swelling. What your cells feel, are signals from your immune system (cops) to "freeze and stop doing shit". This message is delivered in the form of cytokines. What happens inside the cell, is metabolism slows, and recycling begins. Too much of this leads to atrophy. At the organ level, this causes various diseases of aging. Muscle wasting. Brain atrophy. Liver disease (alcoholic or dietary).

dtawfik1 9y ago

Well, imagine inflammation in your circulatory system. So imagine that there's this partical in your blood stream that your immune system responds to. If you have too many inflammatory responses you could get a blockage. That blockage could lead to a heart attack. That's one example but these inflammatory responses are also linked to a bunch of diseases. I hope that is a helpful answer.

dtawfik1 9y ago
https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltmedicine/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-inflammation/ https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltmedicine/the-good-th...
- dtawfik1 9y ago
  Here's an article the consequences of inflammation on the brain. http://www.dana.org/Publications/ReportOnProgress/Consequences_of_the_Inflamed_Brain/ http://www.dana.org/Publications/ReportOnProgress/Consequenc...
throw132890123 9y ago
Not really, you're now linking the 'inflammation' described in this article to heart attacks. Surely that'd be a bigger story? From the 'article' you linked to: > Obesity and its constant companion, type 2 diabetes, are at epidemic proportions in this country. One thing that connects them is inflammation. How is this not a most blatant case of 'correlation vs causation'? We know the causes of obesity AND type 2 diabetes. Surely inflammation, a cellular immune thing ... is just a correlating factor?
- dtawfik1 9y ago
  https://www.uaf.edu/files/olli/OLLI_15_chol_4_red.pdf https://www.uaf.edu/files/olli/OLLI_15_chol_4_red.pdf Checkout slides 7 and 8. My simple understanding is that the sugar creates a particle that provokes an immune response. Cytokines attack the sugar-lipid particle that has been oxidized.
  - subcosmos 9y ago
    Glucose, in high concentration, reacts with proteins at arbitrary locations, effectively gluing them together. This is bad, so the immune system detects this (with a receptor called RAGE) and sends in reinforcements to eat the mess up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor)
- subcosmos 9y ago
  There's compelling evidence that inflammation can cause insulin resistance and fat accumulation, and that insulin resistance and fat accumulation can further cause inflammation. We've found signaling pathways in the body that connect in both directions. So yeah, the causality is actually circular, which in the context of human health implies that a snowball effect is in fact occurring. Escaping this feedback loop is the hard part that we are still working on in the lab.

thephyber 9y ago

Not a medical professional, but... Athletes feel aches and pain from inflammation of their muscles. Old persons frequently have inflammation in their joints which causes pain and stiffness. Asthma sufferers have inflammation in their lungs. Anyone (except hemophiliacs) who receives a skin cut has inflammation at the site of the cut. It's an immune response and is a level of abstraction away from the actual observable symptoms, hence the general confusion about what it is.

throw132890123 9y ago
Right I've heard of those examples, but they have nothing to do with diet. So when people say 'eating sugar causes inflammation' what do they mean? How is THAT inflammation felt?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Right I've heard of those examples, but they have nothing to do with diet. They do, in fact; a pro-inflammatory diet makes the threshold at which symptoms are felt from any of those other source lower, because inflammation has a substantial systemic component. (It may produce unique symptoms of its own, too, but I think the main dietary concern with inflammation is systemic contribution to lowering thresholds to inflammatory symptoms when other triggers are present.)
- subcosmos 9y ago
  Bad diet causes brain inflammation. You don't feel pain in this case, but you feel tired and hungry, because the part of the brain getting inflamed specifically regulates metabolism and appetite. We know there is inflammation there because the brains immune system goes apeshit, and we can see this under the microscope. Gliosis is the technical name.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
  From my own experience, when I eat too much food that contains high amounts of sugar, I start feeling like I’m getting a cold. I get a sore throat, feel much less energetic, like my body is fighting a disease, skin on my head starts itching and turns red, my nose starts shedding. The symptoms get worse when I keep eating high amounts of sugar. When I feel an onset, I avoid sugar to starve the inflammation. High amounts of sugar that trigger the symptoms means >100g in 24 h or >60g per day over several days. The effect also depends on the food, probably because of how it is digested. Sugary water (fruit juice, soda) is worse than solid meals. Some forms of sugar are worse than others, e.g. I can eat some chocolate in moderation but others (e.g. Milka) I get a soar throat within minutes of eating a single piece (<10g).

ChuckMcM 9y ago

It is the new "bad" thing and thus gets a lot of press lately but it is also probably true that you have hear many complaints, you just may not have associated them. A sore throat, is caused by inflammation of the mucus tissues in your throat, for example. A mosquito bite itches due to inflammation, it is the immune response to the mosquito's saliva that you feel as an itching sensation. The 'new' thing however is that this mechanism can occur pretty much in every cell of your body and some people have speculated it is the root of a number of ailments. Google 'inflammation' on scholar.google.com and you will find a number of papers discussing different ways that it can affect you.

throw132890123 9y ago
> Google 'inflammation' on scholar.google.com and you will find a number of papers discussing different ways that it can affect you. No thanks, I'm specifically asking for an explanation of how it affects me.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  Mail me a blood sample. :-) More seriously, your question, as stated, can only be answered by your doctor and then probably only after taking various samples. What is worse is that inflammation is typically a response to something else, so it is at least a second order symptom rather than a primary cause. (for example your sore throat is from inflammation, but the inflammation is from a response to something the mucus membrane didn't like. Could be a cold, it could be the chlorine you drank.) Symptoms associated with inflammation are aches, pain, vomiting, diarrhea, fainting, swelling, and itching at least. If you have any of those symptoms, it is affecting you.
- subcosmos 9y ago
  What YOU (sometimes) feel is pain, redness, and swelling. What your cells feel, are signals from your immune system (cops) to "freeze and stop doing shit". This message is delivered in the form of cytokines. What happens inside the cell, is metabolism slows, and recycling begins. Too much of this leads to atrophy. At the organ level, this causes various diseases of aging. Muscle wasting. Brain atrophy. Liver disease (alcoholic or dietary).