Inflammation has been associated with a lot of negative commentary in our world and everyone see them as completely negative but that's not true because inflammation is good to a reasonable extent as without it wounds would not heal, and waste from cells will continue to gather in the body as a result of not been cleaned up or recycled thereby reducing our immune ability causing us to become opened to infections from microorganisms.
Even when I say inflammation is good, chronic inflammation is bad and with chronic inflammation, the inflammation happen regularly. When there is too much inflammation, it degrades tissues leading to organ destruction and possibly failure and this is as a result of injury to cells overtime. In a cell, there are signal molecules known as Damage Associated Molecular Patterns (DAMPs) such as ATP, Uric acid, Histamine and heat shock proteins that often shown up after an inflammatory process has occurred. Cell damage can happen when the cell is exposed to physical trauma, toxin, or infection.
When these signal molecules are released, they bind to immune cells, nerve endings, and blood vessels, triggering an inflammatory response. Signal molecules then bind to neutrophils in the body causing them to begin work on the inflammation and the inflamed area. In doing so, they clean up the area and attack the microbes in the area. Signal molecule like histamine attracts macrophages which helps to engulf bacteria and reduce inflammation by releasing interleukin-10, and arginase-1 which rebuild tissue structure in damage tissues.
In a normal scenario, cells are damaged and signal molecules are released, these molecules alert the immune response to do their job of cleaning and part of the job is inflammation, the inflammation triggers tissue repair after which inflammation and stopped and the circle continues like that but when the inflammation doesn't stopped, it becomes a big problem as cells continue to get damaged.
We know that repair of tissues is what inflammation does but when it continues without stopping, cells and tissues begin to get damaged and these damaged cells are replaced by collagenous scar tissue and scar tissues are not good as they make organs less functional. When scar tissues are present in organs that expand such as the lungs, it prevents the elastic ability of the organ since the protein elastin which is responsible for such act would have been replaced by scar tissues.
Chronic inflammation which lead to chronic injury in the body is usually caused by lifestyle and autoimmune diseases. You might be forced to ask me how lifestyle can lead to chronic inflammation which tend leads to chronic injury? To answer this, let's look at excessive consumption of alcohol which is also known as ethanol which is mildly toxic which means it can be consumed. When consumed, it is converted to acetaldehyde in the liver which is then converted into acetic acid.
Acetic acid doesn't create any harm in the body but acetaldehyde is extremely toxic to the body as it can enter into cells and DNA in the nucleus damaging the structure of the DNA which causes the cell to become damaged and to release a signal protein (TNF-alpha) which attracts neutrophils which attacks the cells that are damaged, causing inflammation. Since the liver is where the breaking down of alcohol happens, the liver is more affected causing injury to the liver which is replaced by scar tissues which can then lead to the death or cirrhosis of the liver.
While lifestyle can cause chronic inflammation, autoimmune diseases is a major factor for chronic inflammation. With autoimmune disease, the immune cells begin to target itself treating itself as foreign and this is because the immune system misinterpret proteins in the body as antigens instead of the cells in the body. The attack on the cell and tissues of the body can lead to degrading and destruction of the tissues which is as a result of chronic inflammation. Such is rheumatoid arthritis when immune cells attacks bones and cartilage of joints thereby degrading them until the joint isn't functional. other autoimmune diseases are Type-1 diabetes, Celiac disease, Multiple Sclerosis, hashimotos diseases and so on.
When you hear inflammation next time, I expect that you will see it from angles, the good and the bad because with the body, too much of everything good is bad and that is just the same with inflammation which helps with healing.
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Reference
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https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/inflammation
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/inflammation
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493173/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534820/
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/chronic-inflammation
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/248423