What causes chronic inflammation? The real tricky question. And the heart of the matter.

I want my posts to be about my experiences rather than outposts of scientific research, so with that in mind, I will say that fasting has been seminal in my understanding of what causes the inflammation of psoriatic arthritis in my back and joints. However there are other possible things from my environment that may be implicated. Firstly, I am allergic/sensitive to dust mites. I am allergic/hypersensitive to all opiates. Certain pollens affect me. Within my family there are sensitivities to pollens and moulds. Any or all of these things could have an impact in elevated my base level of immune function. The food impact might just be a tipping point for the level of reaction to become obvious. Even the opiate thing may be a constant, though I am not ingesting any, as the body makes its own forms of opiates. I minimise exposures to things I know are a problem. I have floor boards with rugs instead of wall to wall carpets. I air my home regularly, even in winter. I have a Dyson vacuum cleaner. These things aside, there are environmental possible triggers, bacterial, viral and fungal, that abound. No wonder the search for causes is taking so long. If you consider that it may not be a single thing, but permutations and combinations of environmental factors, you can see how difficult the problem may be. wendyloish

Why is it so hard to work out cause and cure? Firstly, the evidence is in, that there is a genetic and an environmental factor. Arguments about the impact of nature versus nurture have been raging for so long in so many fields to do with human biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology. Where people are concerned, it is virtually impossible to do objective experiments to determine the impact of either nature or nurture. Ethics (and the law) prevents experimentation that could be detrimental. So we are left with no easy answer as to how much of a cause genetics is, and how much is due to the environment. There is a sliding scale of influence possible. And with the variability in both genetics and environment, who is to say that there is any one fixed ratio of the two. If you think about it, some people may be mostly influenced by genetics, while others are impacted mostly by adverse environmental factors. Hence a world where some suffer more, some start showing symptoms at different ages, the psoriasis itself produces different symptoms, and some people can get relief by simply adding an anti-inflammatory like blueberries to their diet. All that aside, the biochemistry of the human body is extremely complicated, with all of the parts meshing together, and one part malfunctioning having an impact throughout. Here are some questions What are the pathways by which the immune system turns itself on? How do the immune cells get turned off? Is there a trigger from the environment that turns on the immune system to attacking the body, and if so, what could it be. If there is a trigger, does it have to continue in the environment, or can it be a single event such as a viral attack? Is there possibly no trigger, but a genetic problem that simply makes its carrier susceptible to a variety of environmental factors? I am sure there are many more possible questions. But it makes you realise when you start to ask them, why it is that conventional medicine has opted for the traditional trial and error methods of treatment. These come to us from experience, from before the human genome project, from before our ability to crack the genetic code of a virus, or recognise, isolate and experiment on B cells or any of the other immune system specialist cells. Like research into cancer, research into auto-immune diseases, including psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, will take time and effort. And like with cancer, no simple cure-all will likely be forthcoming. What causes inflammation? it is a really tricky question. No-one yet has the answer, and possibly there may never be a simple one, or a simple cure. But treatments are advancing. And in the meantime the impact of the disease can be minimized, either by medications, and/or minimizing environmental impact where there is a continuous inflammation producing irritant. wendyloish