While inflammation is critical to your body’s immune defenses, it can turn chronic and last for years. The problem is chronic inflammation progresses relatively silently and is the cause of most chronic diseases, seriously impacting your health long-term.
If you’re suffering from pain and inflammation, it can sometimes seem like it will never end. The good news is you can take control of your inflammation and body aches by working toward wellness with regular chiropractic treatments and lifestyle changes.
Read on to learn about inflammation and how to find the relief you need!
Overview of Inflammation
Your first step is to understand better inflammation and how it can impact overall health.
Inflammation is how your body responds to injuries, illness, or something that shouldn’t be in your body, like toxic chemicals or germs. This means inflammation is a normal and essential process that helps your body to heal.
Once an invader enters your body, the immune system sends out inflammatory cells as first responders to trap the foreign invaders and start to heal injured muscles and tissue.
Types of inflammation
There are different types of inflammation, including acute and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation is how your body responds to a sudden illness or injury, like an infection or a simple cut on your finger.
Acute inflammation is sudden and typically only lasts for hours or a few days, depending on the severity of your injury or infection. For example, if you have the flu and a sore throat, you’ll have a virus that causes pain and inflammation.
Chronic inflammation occurs when the inflammation continues, and your body keeps sending inflammatory cells long after the danger is over. This type of inflammation can last for months to years and has periods where it improves and worsens.
Causes of Inflammation
As noted, acute inflammation is caused by sudden inflection or illness. Remember that this infection can be anything from strep throat to a small cut.
Chronic inflammation is typically caused by autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), heart disease, and sometimes cancer. Other conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and heart disease can also result in chronic inflammation.
Symptoms of Inflammation
The symptoms of acute inflammation vary depending on the cause. However, you can usually expect sudden pain, redness, swelling, heat, and, in some cases, difficulty moving a joint.
Chronic inflammation symptoms typically include:
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- Fever
- Joint pain
- Muscle and joint stiffness
- Mouth sores
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Acid reflux
- Diarrhea
Chronic inflammation can also cause repeated infections, as it taxes the immune system.
Chiropractic Treatments for Inflammation
If you’ve been dealing with inflammation, making fundamental lifestyle changes and seeing a chiropractor can give you the body aches relief you’re looking for. It’s essential to treat chronic inflammation as it can put you at risk for developing conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Treating inflammation means understanding the root cause and taking steps to relieve the pain and discomfort.
Chiropractic treatments can improve your quality of life, leading to improved movement, pain relief, and decreased body aches. They also increase flexibility and strength.
This is because chiropractic care takes a holistic approach to your overall health and well-being, focusing on you as a whole person and not just looking at your symptoms.
What to Expect During Your Visit
During your first visit, your chiropractor will review your medical and surgical history and discuss your symptoms. You’ll then receive an overall physical assessment, and you may also need X-rays or other imaging tests to provide more information about your condition.
Your chiropractor will look for signs of inflammation like pain, swelling, redness, and heat.
Next, your chiropractor will recommend a custom treatment plan to address pain and inflammation. In most cases, this will involve spinal manipulation by a chiropractor using a sudden but controlled force on specific joints. This can reduce tension and inflammation and allow you to start moving normally again.
Other treatments can involve transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS). With TENS, a small unit delivers tiny electrical impulses via electrodes that stick to the skin. The electrical impulses stimulate the body to produce endorphins, which are natural pain relievers.
Other treatments like massage therapy and prescribed exercises at home, like a hip roll, can also effectively reduce inflammation.
Lifestyle Changes
One of the best parts about seeing a chiropractor is that they help you to make the critical lifestyle changes necessary to decrease inflammation over time.
First, your chiropractor will discuss your diet and exercise regime. It’s essential to remember that the foods you eat impact inflammation levels. Eating too many foods with refined carbohydrates, like white bread, fried foods, red meat, and processed meats, can raise inflammation levels. In addition, not getting regular daily exercise can also increase inflammation levels.
Your chiropractor will review your current diet and help you find one that works for you and your lifestyle. For example, decreasing carbs and refined sugars and following a ketogenic (keto) diet and chiropractic treatments can help you lose weight, improve mental clarity, and move more easily overall.
You can also make other changes, such as adjusting your sleep position, finding quality pillows and mattresses, and doing exercises at home that help keep you loose and flexible.
See a Chiropractor Today for Your Inflammation
Remember, you don’t have to let inflammation rule your life, and reading this guide is only the beginning.
Your next step is to schedule an appointment with the professionals at Horine Chiropractic. Dr. Russ Horine has provided quality chiropractic care to local families for over 30 years and is passionate about helping people improve their strength and health.
We treat a variety of conditions like back and neck pain, sciatica, herniated discs, chronic headaches, pain, numbness, and back pain during pregnancy.
We look forward to helping you decrease your pain and live a whole and happy life. Contact us today to schedule an appointment!