The best tips for fighting chronic inflammation – a nutritious diet is a good start

Inflammation sounds far from pleasant, but it’s completely normal, and in fact, an essential part of the body’s attempt to heal itself. When you are injured, sick, or develop an infection, for instance, an inflammatory response is triggered and your immune system kicks in to try to repair the affected tissues or protect your body from foreign substances such as bacteria and fungi.

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During this important natural process, you may experience specific symptoms such as pain, warmth, redness, swelling and loss of function (for example, movement, hearing or smell). Without this complex biological response, wounds and damage to the body would not heal.

While acute inflammation is short-term, with symptoms subsiding after a few days, the same cannot be said for chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation occurs when your immune system just can’t seem to “shut off”, putting your body on “high alert” and creating a prolonged inflammatory response.

According to Sara Jefferson, a naturopath at Dr Susan Jamieson Integrative Medical Practice in Hong Kong’s Central district, inflammation becomes a problem when there are too many stimuli, such as in some infections where the body is overwhelmed with bacteria.

In some cases, such as with autoimmune diseases, the protective immune process goes awry and begins to attack healthy tissue, causing damage, and this can lead to more inflammation.

Chronic, systemic inflammation is a worry because it is also thought to contribute to the development or progression of certain long-term conditions, such diabetes and cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, rheumatoid arthritis and allergies.