This is the third article in the series on the contribution of chronic inflammation to many of the chronic lifestyle diseases affecting so many of us.
The reason for presenting this information is that if we can bring about reduction of chronic inflammation we have the possibility of preventing or reversing much illness, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementias and even cancer.
Thankfully this information is not the rantings of alternative medicine proponents, but is now being propounded by researchers in mainstream medicine.
Lifestyle medicine is as much a speciality of medicine as internal medicine, paediatrics, orthopaedics, endocrinology, and cardiology. There is an enormous body of research both in the past as well as ongoing showing that these devastating diseases can be prevented and even reversed.
ALSO READ : Turning the Tide: Chronic inflammation increases with age
This article is part of our current series from the information found in this referenced review article by Dr David Furman and colleagues, from the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing. This institute has been around since 1985, and has an annual budget of $37million.
Over the last few thousand years, life expectancy has increased, particularly since the industrial revolution, because of various factors.
These include “social stability, reduced physical trauma, access to modern medical technology; and improved public health measures, such as sanitation, quarantine policies and vaccination – significantly decreasing infant mortality rates” and reducing infectious disease mortality.
However the industrial revolution has also brought a host of negatives – particularly in terms of diet and exercise. These factors undermine the way our bodies were designed to function physiologically. The first intervention in this series to discuss will be exercise.
Exercise
Industrialisation has resulted in a significant decrease in physical activity. Worldwide 30% of the population is considered physically inactive.
But in the US, the number is around 50% who do not meet the minimum international recommendations for regular physical activity – 30 minutes per day of moderate physical activity 5 times per week, or 150 minutes per week.
An interesting fact is that skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ (other endocrine organs include the thyroid, ovaries, pancreas and pituitary gland).
It produces and releases cytokines and other small proteins, called myokines, into the bloodstream. These are released particularly during muscle contraction and can have the effect of systemically reducing inflammation.
Thus low levels of physical activity are associated with higher levels of CRP (C-reactive protein) and pro-inflammatory cytokines (chemicals which modulate inflammation responses).
These can promote such conditions as insulin resistance, high cholesterol, endothelial dysfunction leading to damage to the smooth lining of blood vessels, high blood pressure and loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia).
These changes affect the incidence of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, liver disease, osteoporosis, various types of cancer, depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in people who are chronically inactive.
In fact it has been found from large studies involving almost 1,7 million participants that exercise can reduce cardiovascular mortality and incidence of type 2 diabetes by around 25% over 12 years.
The types of cancers reduced by high levels of leisure-time physical activity were oesophageal, liver, lung, kidney, stomach and endometrial uterine cancers and myeloid leukaemia. They also had a 40% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to inactive counterparts.
Exercise has been associated with less obesity, especially fat around internal organs (visceral fat), which is a significant trigger of inflammation.
This type of fat produces a lot of hormones as well as a source of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines responsible for causing chronic inflammation.
They can also cause insulin resistance within the fat cells themselves as well as affecting the ability of the pancreas to function effectively to control blood sugars.
It has been realised that this process of chronic systemic inflammation can begin even in childhood where obesity occurs. “The childhood obesity epidemic might thus be playing a key role in promoting inflammation and age-related disease risk worldwide.”
We all know that marketing and the food industry conspire to make us and particularly our children addicted to junk foods – highly refined and fat, sugar and salt-laden food-like chemical substances.
It is bad enough when our own health is impacted, but it is sad when through our lack of leadership we consign our children to lifelong disease and ill-health.
Parents have a huge responsibility to create a healthy eating environment at home.
Some people may say I am being melodramatic, but there is a pandemic of obesity and diabetes type 2. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has become an epidemic in the USA, and of course heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer are more and more prevalent.
Next week, we will discuss again the influence of the microbiome in reducing chronic inflammation, as well as the role of diet in restoring normality.
Stay safe, and up your guard on Covid-19.
Our risks of contracting this disease are increasing as more people are infected.
One new recommendation is to increase natural ventilation in the work place or even at home.
Closed spaces where people are in close proximity are an ideal environment for spread of the disease – e.g. taxis and post offices crowded with people not wearing face masks responsibly, or fiddling constantly with their face masks then touching environmental surfaces or their eyes, noses and mouths.
Dave Glass
Dr David Glass graduated from UCT in 1975. He spent the next 12 years working at a mission hospital in Lesotho, where much of his work involved health education and interventions to improve health, aside from the normal busy clinical work of an under-resourced mission hospital.
He returned to UCT in 1990 to specialise in obstetrics/gynaecology and then moved to the South Coast where he had the privilege of, amongst other things, ushering 7000 babies into the world. He no longer delivers babies but is still very clinically active in gynaecology.
An old passion, preventive health care, has now replaced the obstetrics side of his work. He is eager to share insights he has gathered over the years on how to prevent and reverse so many of the modern scourges of lifestyle – obesity, diabetes, ischaemic heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, common cancers, etc.
He is a family man, with a supportive wife, and two grown children, and four beautiful grandchildren. His hobbies include walking, cycling, vegetable gardening, bird-watching, travelling and writing. He is active in community health outreach and deeply involved in church activities. He enjoys teaching and sharing information.
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