The Inflammation Syndrome answers a big part of this important question. Chronic inflammation underscores and promotes virtually every disease, affecting millions of people, and yet inflammation is also a symptom rather than the fundamental cause of these diseases. When we dig deeper, we find that chronic inflammation is the consequence of an injury to the body combined with nutritional imbalances or deficiencies. To properly treat inflammatory diseases, it is essential to correct the underlying dietary problems.
We speak from experience. At the Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning International, physicians, nurses, and other staff members have focused on these objectives for more than 27 years. We use careful clinical and laboratory workups - what is now termed evidence-based medicine - to assess the health, nutritional reserves, and biochemical uniqueness of each patient. We have successfully treated people from around the country and around the world, many of whom were considered untreatable or incurable by conventional medicine.
Through these detailed individual workups, we have gained an understanding of chronic, or sustained, inflammation. More often than not, individuals with chronic inflammation, such as with arthritis and asthma, have low levels of anti-inflammatory antioxidants (such as vitamins E and C), omega-3 fatty acids, and many other important nutrients. Many patients also have previously undetected adverse food reactions, abnormal gut permeability, yeast overgrowth, and hormonal imbalances. All of these factors can impair normal functioning of the immune system, sustaining inflammation well beyond its biological usefulness.
The pharmaceutical perspective of inflammation focuses on relieving symptoms through over the-counter analgesics and far more powerful prescription drugs. Inflammation does not result from a deficiency of aspirin, cortisone, or Cox-2 inhibitors. Rather, as The Inflammation Syndrome so well documents, there is a desperate need to address the basic nutritional influences on chronic inflammation. After all, no drug can ever make up for a nutritional deficiency. Under these circumstances, it becomes paramount to feed a person's biochemistry with the best nutrition.
This is where measuring a patient's nutrient levels proves to be so helpful in confirming the underlying nutritional and biochemical causes of inflammation and motivating patients to action. It would be easy to lecture a patient on the anti-inflammatory effects of good nutrition, omega-3 fatty acids (fish oils), or vitamin E. But a far more powerful motivator is testing and demonstrating the patient's low levels.
By doing so, we have found time and again that such hard evidence is extremely persuasive. This meaningful individual information, combined with the ease of dietary improvements and supplementation, empowers patients with knowledge and motivates them toward self-healing. Patients develop the attitude, "I want my levels to be optimal," and then they work toward achieving them. Furthermore, from our medical perspective, laboratory testing enables us to later recheck nutrient values to confirm proper absorption and utilization.
Through testing, we have realized that no one can ever assume that a person's diet is adequate. For example, a cardiac surgeon would never simply hope his patient's potassium level is sufficient to prevent fatal arrhythmias during heart surgery; he ensures that it is. The same approach applies to the treatment of chronic inflammation. To achieve optimal levels of many nutrients, one must often consume levels of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients above those "officially" recommended for health. There is nothing wrong in doing so, especially when tests have shown patients to be low in these nutrients. At the very least, erring on the side of modest excess provides a margin of safety, a dose of nutritional insurance.
Jack Challem, the author of The Inflammation Syndrome, is a gifted health writer with a profound understanding of the role good nutrition plays in health. He has written a sound and practical book of benefit to anyone with chronic inflammation. As we read and discussed his book, we visualized Jack working in a huge lighthouse. The light being emitted is the cumulative scientific evidence so deftly organized and clearly presented here. The danger is the jagged rocks of chronic, sustained inflammation, which underlie almost every serious health issue facing modern society - and the reason for the lighthouse. All of us, readers, patients, and physicians alike, are piloting our own boats and, as a society, we are heading for the rocks. Will we see the light? Can we avoid the forces making us drift in the dark? To survive, we must rediscover the great Hippocratic ideal: Let food be thy medicine.
Ronald E. Hunninghake, M.D.
Medical Director
The Olive W. Garvey Center for Healing Arts
Wichita, Kansas
Hugh D. Riordan, M.D.
President
The Center for Human Improvement International, Inc.
Wichita, Kansas