Blog #2: Chronic Inflammation (CI): It's what it's all about (Lay Version)

As a general rule, scientists avoid the word “all”. All implies no exceptions; all implies we’re certain; all implies things we couldn’t possibly prove in just one lifetime. I fully expect readers of this blog, both scientists and non-scientists, to object to me using the word all. Yet, I will. I have. Let this show just how confident I am, and how much I believe in this. Chronic Inflammation is the basis of all disease. Of course, I will go into more detail in my book, but this blog can be a good introduction for how I back up my claim.

So, what is Chronic Inflammation? When most of us think of Inflammation, we think of Acute Inflammation: the rapid, i.e. acute, response to outside substances getting inside our bodies. We’ve known about it since a forefather of medicine Celsus described it back in Ancient Rome: redness, heat/fever, pain, swelling and loss of tissue/organ function. Or in Latin, rubor, calor, dolor, tumor and functio laesa. We will come back to this in greater detail in Chapter 1 and 2. We will talk about all the cells and signals involved and cover just what “Acute Inflammation” really is. For now, though, remember that that is Acute Inflammation, and we want to learn about Chronic Inflammation.

We used to believe that Chronic Inflammation was just an extended Acute Inflammation. It turns out, whether we look at the cellular level or the whole-body level, the two processes are completely separate and behave completely differently. One may lead to the other; one may appear without the other; but they are utterly separate. In fact, in my book I suggest the use of a new name for Chronic Inflammation to make the separation clear. I suggested Pathomelitis; patho- meaning disease, -ome meaning the complete set of, and -itis meaning inflammation. (Fat chance of that will ever happen!) There are three main avenues of differences between Acute Inflammation and Chronic Inflammation:

1. The different ways they affect the body’s cells, tissues, and processes.

2. The different signals used; the different drugs that can be used against them; and the way those signals and drugs behave in the body

3. Most importantly, the different ways these processes affect the body clinically, both during the disease and after.

The clinical basis for my thesis, that Chronic Inflammation is the root cause of all disease, is in how widespread, and how destructive Chronic Inflammation is to the body’s processes. Acute inflammation stays local. If you get a paper cut on your finger and the skin either side of the cut is red and warm, you won’t feel it in your other hand. Chronic inflammation and its signals can cause damage locally too, like in psoriasis, but more importantly chronic inflammation can affect the entire body, like in rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus. Chronic Inflammation can even alter your blood vessel walls throughout your body in a disease process called, perivasculitis. The ability for Chronic Inflammation to affect the whole body and cause diverse and intense changes to how your body can function, is the first step that allows all future disease states to exist. Without Chronic Inflammation, they could not happen. So when you hear “inflammation” is associated with a disease, remember that it is Chronic Inflammation. I will get into more depth into how Chronic Inflammation affects your cells and tissues and the bioscience behind Chronic Inflammation in the section (2) “The Enemy Within Us.” But generally, most blogs will work case by case, explaining how Chronic Inflammation is the basis of infectious diseases, cancers, autoimmune diseases and, indeed, all categories of human diseases.