Stress creates inflammation in the body and subsequent weight gain as well as chronic illness.
What is inflammation?
Inflammation comes and goes in your body as part of the normal healing process. However, prolonged inflammation can be devastating. Many people are experiencing ongoing, low-level inflammation without even knowing it—and this is a crucial factor behind chronic disease.
This systemic or “silent” inflammation is the evil twin of oxidation, and where you find one, you nearly always find the other. But this type of inflammation doesn’t cause you any pain—it lives “under the radar,” quietly lingering for years and even decades, where it silently injures your heart, brain and immune system.
Left unchecked, systemic inflammation can lead to anything from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis to Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, the number of diseases linked to chronic inflammation is staggering:
Why?
Diet and lifestyle. Some of the largest contributors are smoking; a diet high in sugar, fried foods and trans fats; inadequate exercise; stress; and vitamin D deficiency. There are a couple of ways to measure how much inflammation is silently occurring in your body.
One blood test measures a substance called C-reactive protein (CRP), which might actually be a better predictor of your heart attack risk than lipids. Another test is called Sed Rate (or ESR for “erythrocyte sedimentation rate”), which is especially helpful in monitoring rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.
