Common Sense on Inflammation

So, imagine me for a moment as a 32 year old.  I eat a highly inflammatory diet, and train hard in martial arts, 'cardio', and some bastardized body building/strength training routine.  I have a significant knee injury - missing pieces of meniscus, osteoarthritis, and a rebuilt ACL.  I hurt - almost every day.  I take anti-inflammatories - almost every day, often several times a day.  Are these things connected?  


Data point two - I'm many years older (I'm 46).  I lift large weights, run sprint intervals, jump up and down off of boxes, drop from a pullup bar, and walk around a multi story building all day.   I almost never take anti-inflammatories.  What changed?


What I eat is what changed.  By balancing one's diet, one reduces chronic inflammation to a natural, normal level.  It's a level that supports healing, but does not create a constant state of over-inflammation that makes one sick and in pain.  The article below is a nice depiction of how much inflammation you need.


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-10/foas-ssd100410.php 

"Zhou and colleagues found that the presence of inflammatory cells (macrophages) in acute muscle injury produce a high level of a growth factor called insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) which significantly increases the rate of muscle regeneration. The research report shows that muscle inflammatory cells produce the highest levels of IGF-1, which improves muscle injury repair. To reach this conclusion, the researchers studied two groups of mice. The first group of mice was genetically altered so they could not mount inflammatory responses to acute injury. The second group of mice was normal. Each group experienced muscle injury induced by barium chloride. The muscle injury in the first group of mice did not heal, but in the second group, their bodies repaired the injury. Further analysis showed that macrophages within injured muscles in the second group of mice produced a high level of IGF-1, leading to significantly improved muscle repair."


"For wounds to heal we need controlled inflammation, not too much, and not too little," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "It's been known for a long time that excess anti-inflammatory medication, such as cortisone, slows wound healing. This study goes a long way to telling us why: insulin-like growth factor and other materials released by inflammatory cells helps wound to heal."