Chronic Nerve Inflammation

There are two types of inflammation: acute and chronic. People are most familiar with acute inflammation. This is the redness, warmth, swelling, and pain around tissues and joints that occurs in response to an injury, like when you cut yourself. When the body is injured, your immune system releases white blood cells to surround and protect the area.

Chronic Inflammation: Acute inflammation is how your body fights infections and helps speed up the healing process. In this way, inflammation is good because it protects the body.  This process works the same if you have a virus like a cold or the flu.

​

In contrast, when inflammation gets turned up too high and lingers for a long time, and the immune system continues to pump out white blood cells and chemical messengers that prolong the process, that’s known as chronic inflammation.  From the body’s perspective, it’s under consistent attack, so the immune system keeps fighting indefinitely.

​

When this happens, white blood cells may end up attacking nearby healthy tissues and organs. For example, if you are overweight and have more visceral fat cells — the deep type of fat that surrounds your organs — the immune system may see those cells as a threat and attack them with white blood cells. The longer you are overweight, the longer your body can remain in a state of inflammation.