If you have chronic inflammation, your immune system goes into overdrive and attacks healthy cells. This condition is linked to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and depression. Here are seven ways to assess your risk. Systemic Inflammation is becoming more common and is due to constant stress on the body.
1. Your Hair Loss And Shedding Won't Stop or Slow Down
If you notice your hair loss has gotten worse over the last few years and you still notice loss in the shower and during the day you may be dealing with a combination of genetic loss and internal inflammation. If inflammation isn't lowered your hair loss will continue no matter what preventative measures or products that you're using.
2. You Regularly Sleep Less Than Six Hours a Night
Sleep is the body’s preferred time to recover from the cell oxidative stress that leads to inflammation. “Getting less than six hours a night is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for developing heart disease and cancer,” says Dr. Kerry Kuehl, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Oregon Health and Science University.
3. You Wake Up Stressed
Everyone has a hectic day or two. The red flag goes up if you’re rolling out of bed already feeling tense from constant stress at work or home. This level of anxiety depletes a large amount of the hormone cortisol, leaving little left to help regulate your immune system and keep inflammation down. “Stress is the big one — it affects the body profoundly,” says UCLA gastroenterologist Kirsten Tillisch.
4. You Have Gut Issues
Constant digestive distress and acid reflux are signals that your gut is inflamed, which can cause a laundry list of problems beyond the gut walls — constant fatigue, brain fog, low energy, irritability.
5. You Can’t Get Fitter
If you’ve been pushing hard in the gym but seeing fewer results and feeling more fatigued, you may be experiencing the cellular exhaustion of over training, which promotes chronic inflammation. You want to do short bursts of intense exercise instead of long, tough workouts. Doing intervals creates muscles and bones better able to fight chronic inflammatory diseases like sarcopenia (muscle wasting) and osteoporosis (bone thinning). Do a 20-minute cardio interval routine — go all out for a minute, then recover for a minute, and repeat — twice a week.
6. You Put on Five Pounds
Even going up a few pounds causes enlarged fat cells to secrete inflammatory adipokines throughout your body. What’s more, that fat likely went to your gut, and belly fat generates its own class of inflammatory cytokines. That’s why one of the biggest steps you can take to tamp inflammation is to keep the scale steady.
7. Still Unsure? Get Tested
For a hard number on your inflammation level, ask your doctor for a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein test (hs-CRP) to measure inflammatory cells in your blood. It’s in the $17 to $71 range. For a Hair Loss Analysis book a consultation.
