A Tale of Inflammation by Dr. Ted Czepiel, Springfield Mass

It used to be if you wanted to know anything or research a topic, you needed to go to the library or have access to a set of encyclopedias, imagine.

Now, it’s Mr Google or Siri for instant gratification of knowledge and answers.

My concern is that anyone can submit their insights, points of view, thoughts and it doesn’t necessarily have to be backed up by peer reviewed studies or by established sincere authorities. This by the way includes the article that you are about to read. This is going to be a TALE of INFLAMMATION.

Now, why would I state it like that?

If you look back upon past medical therapies, remedies, it might give you pause about what was considered “the best medicine had to offer and accepted as such”.

Let’s take for example, Trepanning, a common practice used for headache cures, by drilling a hole in your skull.

How about “bloodletting”, a common practice used for years?

It is rumored that our 1st president, George Washington had met his end through this practice…. drained too much blood out of his system.

Or how about the use of “cocaine” for depression?

How about a very well-known company still in business today, Bayor?

They had a children’s cough syrup for kids, main ingredient, heroin. Arsenic was used for fevers and headaches. Phen-Phen, a popular weight loss medication used in the 1990’s was essentially just “Speed”. They estimated that so many uses were being used for Cocaine that by 1902, in the US, we had over 200,000 addicts. Electric shock therapies, lobotomies ……. the list goes on and on.

The point being, what about all the accepted therapies being used today as the “medical best” Will we look back at 100 years from now and think present day cancer therapies still have value?

Let’s see, presently we try to poison it out with “chemo”, burn it out with “radiation “or just plain cut it out. What about all the present-day usage of antibiotics, vaccines, immunizations? Will they still have merit 100 years from now?

While researching and writing this article, I ran across a famous Bertrand Russell quote:

The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are so confident and the intelligent are so full of doubt.”

Russell was describing what psychologists would decades later label the DUNNING- KRUGER EFFECT. The Dunning-Kruger Effect shows that the less knowledgeable people are, the more they tend to overestimate their knowledge and abilities. Similarly, the more knowledgeable somebody is, the more they tend to doubt themselves.

Now, I don’t want to get too far off topic…. it’s so easily done, going off on tangents. Remember, this a “Tale”, kind of written in story book fashion. To get back on task…. inflammation. It is usually being agreed by most experts that this process is playing a major role in health issues of the day.

At least more so now than in the past, but again the question remains. Are we approaching it in a way that works with the “functional, physiological approach that best serves the “healing” process or are we just using band aid approaches to temporally relieve pain and discomfort, even possibly creating more damage and side effects that was not intended? We will dive further into this as the story unfolds.

It is a basic scientific understanding, that there are literally trillions of biochemical reactions taking place in your body each “second” of your life. Hard to comprehend, isn’t it, but if we realize the we have approximately 10 trillion cells and 10 times as many microbes in our body…it’s not unreasonable that they are pretty busy running and organizing every aspect of our biological functions. Imagine, apoptosis (cell death) mitosis (new cells), digestion, hormones, brain chemicals, breathing, immune systems, etc.

Our hearts beat approximately 100,000 beats a day……incredible. There must be a-higher power involved. We’ll call it “innate intelligence” for the sake of this article.

So, I for one would have a difficult time saying that I am intelligent enough to dictate a specific therapy or cure without the aid of supporting that ‘innate intelligence”.

Inflammation is part of the body’s defense mechanism. It is the process by which the immune system recognizes and removes harmful stimuli and begin the healing process. There are generally two types of inflammation: acute and chronic inflammation.

Tissue damage due to trauma, microbial invasion, or noxious compounds all induce acute inflammation. It starts rapidly, becomes severe in a short time and symptoms may last for a few days for example, cellulitis, or acute pneumonia. Subacute inflammation is the period between acute and chronic inflammation and may last 2 to 6 weeks.

Chronic inflammation is referred to as a slow inflammation lasting for prolonged periods several months to years. Generally, the extent and effects of chronic inflammation vary with cause of the injury and the ABILITY of the body to repair and overcome the damage.

Chronic inflammation if not attended properly is the one “that someday down the line”, during a routine medical exam or after a complaint to see your Doc…….you will be told that you have a PATHOLOGY . Ta Da…….Mr Jones, sorry to inform you, but you have heart disease, arthritis, cancer, etc. Again, realize that it could take 20 years for this process to take place. What we chose to do in those 20 years can be the difference between health and death.

We will explore what traditional, modern medicine advocates for pain and discomfort……the “band aid approach “ and the devastating consequences that can occur. We will also explore what the body truly needs for chronic inflammation to heal naturally.

This would be a good time to take a GOOGLE break. Look up CancerTruth.net………. The history of the AMA. 

It will help lay the background of how we have been programmed to deal with our current health issues. Again, taking substances to help alleviate pain and discomfort, short term, sounds good, but as we will see, it is not what the body needs to heal.

Remember at the beginning of this article.

We stated there were trillions of biochemical reactions each second of your life. Cellular repair would be part of all of this, but why is it some people go on to heal and others go on to develop serious chronic health conditions that can be life threatening. Just to name a few, cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, obesity, asthma, any of the forms of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. 

People would argue, but we are living longer. Maybe we are just “dying ‘ slower. Modern medicine has become very adept in keeping us alive, but are we healthy, or are they just prolonging a slow process and moderating pathology as we age. Sounds cynical, but as this article unfolds, maybe it will come to make sense as a side bar. 

Years ago I read an article that stated, the 3 most important issues that coincided that affected our life spans were:

Spend a few minutes and just ponder those 3 very important changes. Makes sense that we would live longer because of those improvements. Oh, oh. I just read back the last couple of paragraphs. Getting sidetracked, but like I said at the beginning……. this is a ‘Tale” written in story book fashion.

So, OK, Chronic inflammation. We now have a sense of what it is and left unattended, what it could do.

Let’s look 1st at what’s being offered in our new modern “cathedrals” that seem to be competing in each town, the pharmacy. As you walk down the aisles you see signs for a remedy for every condition know to man. Since we are mainly focusing on inflammation, lets stay on task. Big signs, literally a whole aisle devoted to alleviate pain and inflammation. Let’s look at some of these offered and because there is no need for prescription, use as much as you want to ease discomfort.

If you remember, back earlier in this article, I asked you to Google some information on the origins of the AMA. The significance here was that very powerful people that controlled the petroleum business and others that felt if we could take “natural substances” and synthesize them, we could not only get quicker “symptomatic” relief, but make a ton of money and if we could start a organization that could only prescribe these new medications, we could have an monopoly. Watch how J D Rockefeller took over the medical school system. 

One of the first medicines that fit this criterion was “aspirin” White Willow Bark contained Salicin, which was a chemical similar to aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). In the 1800’s Salicin was made into a medication, chemically altered, but quickly effective.

Note….to this day, white willow still appears to bring pain relief, albeit, more slowly, but the effects would last longer, but most importantly……NO SIDE EFFECTS.

So now the door is open……. QUICK, pain / discomfort relief, but what price?

Aspirin, Acetaminophen, NSAIDS, Cox -2 inhibitors………all with side effects and some very serious.

NSAIDS……. can contribute to acute kidney injury (AKI ) due to the reduced renal plasma flow caused by a decrease in prostaglandins, which regulate vasodilation at the glomerular level. It is estimated that a significant percentage of people after long term usage now are using dialysis due to kidney injury. Other side effects include, GI hemorrhage, “leaky gut”, slow bone healing, enhance Leukotrienes. 

Popular name brands……. Advil, Motrin, Aleve…..the FDA repeated a previous warning about these common pain relievers.

In a study produced by Science Daily, 2005, they concluded that NSAID use cause nearly 103,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths each year.

Research aspirin poisoning or any other of the common pain relievers on the market………draw your own conclusions.

Again, this usually happens with long term usage, or abuse of usage.

So, what are we trying to do? Basically, we are feeding people poisons trying to correct reactions of STARVATION.

WHAT………?

We will now explore what “Functional Medicine Practitioners” understand about “chronic inflammation”, and their approach to heal the body.

The 4 categories listed above all deserve extensive explanations and much have been written and elaborated by many authors supporting their roles in inflammation. I will attempt to summarize the different processes and add a few twists from great teachers I’ve had in my life that seemed to understand the “laws of nature” which by any account have to called on to support healing.

I don’t believe that a “diabolical” scientist could make up what we’ve done over the past many years to destroy our health based on the assault placed on our digestive system / microbiome. Antibiotics, immunizations, PROCESSED FOODS, GMO’s, steroids, demineralization of our soils. If we will point to a bottom line here, we will spend time talking about “Leaky Gut”. Much would be needed to explain about digestion. 

It starts with our mastication of food, enzymes secreted in our mouths, then to the stomach where HCL, gastrin, secretin further break down foods, change Ph’s. Proteins are fractured into amino acids, minerals are made ready for absorption, intrinsic factors for b12 absorption. 

The complexities are amazing, but the body was designed to do this simply. Why now do we have so many people with stomach issues. What once was called indigestion or heartburn was easily remedied with an occasional use of “tums or rolaids” Now, heartburn has turned into a disease diagnosis…… Acid Reflux Disease, Barrett’s Syndrome. As a result, designer medications” have been discovered to shut down our stomach secretions by 95 %. 

This can’t be right. 

There is a huge price to be paid by doing this. 1st off, stomach acids kill off ingested bacteria so they can’t reach our small intestine. SIBO….” small intestine bacterial overgrowth’ is a huge issue for many people. As food leaves the stomach in a semi-digestive form by peristalsis (muscle contractions), not by a proper Ph, it enters the small intestine for further digestive processes. This is where the “fun” really begins. When foods leave the stomach in an “undigested” form and enters the small intestine…….it will create inflammation, and this will in turn become a “Leaky Gut” situation.

LEAKY GUT or gastro-intestinal permeability. Simply put, molecules of substances that leak into the blood stream from the small intestine that should not be able to cross that barrier. Major consequences of this are food reactions / food allergies. The immune system recognizes them as foreign and initiates a process of eliminating them. In other words, allergic reactions. 

It’s a Western civilization crisis. 

Everyone has a food reaction and allergy / food sensitivity tests are confirming this. PEANUT anyone? Bottom line………. small intestine INFLAMMATION is the root cause and must be corrected. Elimination diets are OK to begin with, but again a “band aid “approach. There are specific protocols that are very effective.

OK, so now, the journey continues and food that is improperly digested finally makes it to the large intestine.

The large intestine is a very sensitive ecology made up of bacterial, fungus, yeast, virus…………mostly bacteria. Depending on the person, that could mean anywhere from 2 - 6 pounds of bacteria of an estimated 50 -100 species comprising of almost 70 % of your immune system. So many of what people experience today………. IBS, colitis, ileitis, Crohn’s disease has all their roots in inflammation. It is sad that traditional therapies offered today don’t offer much help and people are left with the saying, “We’ll try to manage it “.

Again, functional medicine has a different approach and can offer many benefits of improvement, if not full recovery of the issue. Of course, this takes commitment from the patient, but results can be had.

So, this has been a very “brief” synopsis of the working of the GI track. The purpose of this writing is to bring awareness to those of us who have no clue of how “inflammation” plays a role in our general overall feeling health and wellness. Bringing back “ecological balance” to the gut influences every aspect of our health.

Here’s a tidbit. 

People are familiar with popular anti-depression medications SSRI’s. In other words, SEROTONIN. Do you realize that 90 % of your serotonin is made in your gut and only 1 % actually is in your brain as a neurotransmitter? Do you think that by improving gut health, you can alleviate certain mood disorders? 

It’s being done every day.

Necrosis, capillary venous return. What?

In 1931 a scientist by the name of Otto Warburg was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the discovery that cancer cells ferment and normal cells respirate. He had a student at the time, Manfred von Ardenne that spent the next 40 years of his life proving Warburg’s theories. He developed the OXYGEN MULTISTEP THERAPY. Today it is called EWOT (Exercise with Oxygen Therapy & Turbo Oxygen). 

The premise was that since cancer cells were anaerobic (w/o oxygen) and normal cells were aerobic ( w/ oxygen ) that the two could not coincide in the same environment. With all his clinical experiments, he made observations. His focus was cancer, but with 40 years of doing clinical’s to prove his theories, an amazing discovery became evident. Anything that had an inflammatory base, all improved. 

This is the short story of it. Red blood cells carry 97 % of your normal oxygen, but if you applied the theory of “Mass Action”, in other words force oxygen into the plasma, you could gain another 3 % of oxygen, this in turn would force its way into inflammation of tissue and create a healing process.

This is the simple version. Read his 400-page book for full explanation.

Now, what else can we learn from this. The body likes to be slightly alkaline to promote a more oxygen rich environment. Most of our diets in the western world are very acid producing. Main offender……. SUGAR. People on average consume 150 lbs. plus each year. Add red meat, grains, and starches, you provide a perfect terrain for inflammation and fermentation of cells.

Creating a healthy blood supply by proper diet and exercise can do wonders for maintaining good health. We will further address this in next few paragraphs.

Nerves are the electrical wiring system for the promotion of healthy tissue. Any interference can create damaged or inflammatory tissue. Nerves are very nutritionally needy and any shortages of specific nutrients can cause disruption.

Physical interference to a nerve root can cause inflammatory issues. Ask any chiropractor / or practitioner that deals in this area.

This is a topic that would take many chapters to fully explain the connection of inflammation and nutrient deficiencies, but I‘m going to concede that if you have made it this far reading this article, you are way above the average intelligence and will fully appreciate the value of the next paragraphs of how “nutrient density” is essential for a healthy body, especially when it comes to the fires of “inflammation”.

Our soils are depleted. Modern agricultural farming techniques have depleted mineralization and protein density. Additives, chemicals, GMO’s, companies that care more about quantity, not quality. It is estimated that an orange eaten 80 years ago, would require 8 oranges to get the same nutrient values today. In the early 1900’s, it was estimated that 87 % of the population was involved in farming and agriculture, now it’s less then 2%. 

Big $$$$.

One of the biggest travesties that has occurred because of dietary changes in the past 100 years and has added immensely to our inflammation issues are the processing and ratio imbalances of our FATS.

If you have made it this far reading this article, you are going to receive the crux / intent of what can be done right now to start the path of being PROACTIVE, as opposed to being REACTIVE.

The imbalance that now exists between anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory fats are at ridiculous ratios. Fats were “demonized” years ago with faulty studies (Ancel Keyes in the “7 Country Studies) and truth be told, the sugar industries had their hand in the deal to exonerate sugar and blame fats for heart disease and other associated health maladies. The bottom line, inflammatory fats (high levels of Omega 6 fats in the forms of vegetable oils, mainly soy based oils and hydrogenated fats used for spoilage retardation) ….”crackers don’t stay that fresh” on a shelve without a little help. It is estimated that “soybean oil “constitutes 20 % of all calories consumed in average American diet.

What once was a ratio of almost equal balance of 1:1 of Omega 3 fats to Omega 6 fats is now into 20:1 Omega’s 6’s to 3’s. This is devastating to your body creating SO MUCH inflammation, that it will only be a matter of time before it expresses into a serious pathology in the body and making you feel awful along the way.

At this moment we can offer you a starting point. How? By testing your levels of Omega 3 fats with very inexpensive simple take home tests. We have done 100’s of these tests and the results are astounding. We also offer a very simple CRP….C Reactive Protein test that will give you / us a barometer of just how much systemic inflammation that your body is now expressing.

I CANNOT emphasize the IMPORTANCE of this starting point.

Understand, this form of testing “will not” be routinely checked during your normal physical. Why, because previously stated earlier…..there is NO safe long term “anti-inflammatory” medication on the market today.

Time for a little ‘Comic Relief”. For years natural, functional health practitioners have advocated the use and balance of Essential Fatty Acids. It was always laughed and frowned upon by traditional medicine as a joke / hoax. Use our prescriptions for “REAL” relief. 

Recently, you will be noticing adds on TV for 3-4 prescriptive Omega 3’s……. EPANOVA, LOVAZA, OMTRYG, VACEPA………. mind you ……by prescription. Seriously, you can’t make it up.

We will be bringing you many, many videos: applications of further understanding about inflammation, Omega 3’s, but AGAIN, I can’t EMPHASIZE enough, GET TESTED, be PROACTIVE. It could save you a lot of misery down the road.

Please feel free to contact us , we look forward to it.

Also, whatever “imbalance’s” are found, we have tried and true remedies with what we consider as the most healthy supplemental nutrients nature has to offer.

GET TESTED !!!!!

Dr. Ted Czepiel, Springfield Mass docteddyz07@gmail.com