Inflammation, An Overlooked Cause of Heart Disease

In the last decade more and more physicians are noting the causative effect inflammation has in causing heart disease.  Time magazine called inflammation "The Secret Killer".  This post shows how you can help avoid the chronic inflammatory response in your body and may possibly save your life.

Inflammation is a natural body response to injury, allergy or pathogen.  Your body produces fibrin in response to an injury and when the emergency is over your body produces plasmin to remove the fibrin.  This removal is important as fibrin can combine with cholesterol and produce artery clogging plaque.  Protease enzymes such as plasmin remove fibrin.  Unfortunately, protease enzyme production diminishes with age so a protease enzyme supplement may help prevent plaque which can cause heart attacks.

Chronic inflammation is when the inflammatory response does not get turned off after an injury or infection.  This is a sure sign of trouble, yet many people today are afflicted with chronic inflammation. 

Your diet (and digestion) are important in avoiding chronic inflammation.  Omega 6 fatty acids promote inflammation while omega 3 fatty acids work to reduce it.  Unfortunately, our modern diet gives us a low omega 6/omega 3 ratio.  If you eat a lot of sweets and refined sugars, as many of us do, you are at risk.

Here is how you can eat to avoid chronic inflammation:  Avoid trans-fats and hydrogenated oils, sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup), and refined carbohydrates.  Do eat lots of fruits and vegetables.  Grass fed lean beef is best if you like meat.  Eating wild fish, flax seed, cooking with grape-seed oil, putting olive oil on salads all help.  You may wish to consider an omega-3 supplement.

Here is a link where you can read more on how you can control inflammation.

Here is a link An excellent article that shows you why stress, drugs (the legal kind) and the typical American diet is so destructive