5 Signs Your Inflammation Isn't As Under Control As You Think

Inflammation is at the root of most diseases, and many people aren't aware of the fact that the gut is the biggest potential source of inflammation in the body. Think of chronic inflammation as a smoldering fire that takes time to put out and your poor gut health as the lighter that sparks the flames of that inflammation. What starts in the gut can eventually affect nearly every organ in your body. But, like the silent embers of a low-burning flame, inflammation is not always obvious to the person it controls.

Sometimes the signs of chronic inflammation are completely obvious. Fatigue and pain are massive warning signs that something is wrong with your body and you need to heal. But the signs of chronic inflammation are not always so obvious, and sometimes inflammation can linger indolently for years before symptoms start to appear. In other words, once you experience the signs of inflammation, you have accumulated enough damage within your body to cause noticeable problems.

As a medical doctor who specializes in functional medicine and gut health, my approach to inflammation is all about getting to the root cause. My job is to connect the dots to help patients heal their guts and their bodies.

Looking at inflammatory markers from a functional laboratory perspective is one way to uncover the smoldering inflammation that might not be immediately obvious to you. But I also see everyday warning signs among my patients they may not connect with inflammation.

Inflammation can hold your fat cells hostage, putting the brakes on reaching your ideal weight even when everything else, including sleep, exercise, and diet, seems to be on point. Chronic, low-grade inflammation1 also increases your risk for obesity-related diseases, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. A vicious cycle ensues: High insulin makes you put on more body fat in your midsection. Body fat increases inflammation, which then forces your body to hold on to more fat.

I have patients who often feel blah. Sometimes they are achy or "a bit down," they struggle to find the energy to get them through their day, and when they get home they are rarely in the mood for sex with their significant others. Does this sound like you? Researchers have found an association between fatigue, pain, and depressive symptoms. "Inflammation could be a common link2 between fatigue, pain, and depression," researchers in one study concluded.

Managing inflammation demands that you manage stress. To many of my patients, stress is the elephant in the room no one talks about and people often fail to recognize. Being constantly on edge or otherwise in the "fight-or-flight" mode can fuel the inflammatory fires, which messes with your gut and brain axis. Why is this? It's because when you are stressed, your body produces more catecholamines (alarm signals), and they mess with everything from the balance of "good" and "bad" bugs in your gut microbiome to the "leakiness" of your intestinal lining. When your gut lining becomes leakier, it allows a harmful product of bacterial death in the gut—endotoxin—to enter the circulation and light up your immune system. Therefore, stress can exacerbate any and all of the symptoms of inflammation you may be experiencing in your body.

Between the rounds of antibiotics to "nip that cold in the bud," eating the wrong foods that feed those bad gut bugs, the toxins you are exposed to in your environment, and the resulting dysbiosis, over a period of days to months you develop other gut issues, such as leaky gut. This spells disaster for your immune system. About 70 percent of the immune system5 lies all along the gut lining, so gut problems can make us more susceptible to getting colds and other illnesses more often. Add to that the constant onslaught of foods you eat that you may be sensitive to (in other words, that you develop an immune reaction to) or are simply by their nature inflammatory, and your gut is the sight of a chronic, raging battle. When the immune system does not recognize partially digested protein molecules getting through this hyperpermeable gut, it attacks.

You might not even be aware of these food sensitivities because they don't react in the same way as allergies. Instead, they can manifest as seemingly gut-unrelated symptoms including hives, allergies, chronic sinus inflammation, headaches, mental fog, memory problems, and chronic migraines. When your immune system is overwhelmed by a battle along your gut lining, it cannot pay attention to other respiratory viruses and bacteria as effectively. To calm the immune system and fix inflammation, you have to heal the gut by finding out what's creating an imbalance and then healing it by avoiding the wrong foods and repairing the gut barrier.