This Article is From Jun 27, 2019

Inflammation: What Are The Risks Of High Inflammation In The Body?

Inflammation is nothing but the beginning of a healing process in the body. But if inflammation continues for too long, it can harm your body in more ways than one. Read here to know everything about how inflammation affects your body.

Inflammation: What Are The Risks Of High Inflammation In The Body?

High Inflammation can affect the functioning of vital organs, even leading to organ failure

Highlights

  • Extreme inflammation can lead to DNA damage causing cancer
  • Pain and irritation always follows in case of high inflammation
  • Developing rheumatoid arthritis is a real possibility with inflammation

If your body is plagued by something irritating, harmful or damaging, the body's response mechanism acts up. The immune system performs certain bio-chemical processes to start the healing on its own. Inflammation is the start of the healing process wherein the body tries to remove harmful stimuli to begin with. This is often seen during big injuries, wounds and much more. There is an obvious positive to inflammation, that your body is healing itself. But when inflammation lasts longer than it should, it can also cause some obvious harm. Inflammation is important for the healing of most damages, but here's what would happen in case of high inflammation in the body.

Also read: Want To Deal With Obesity, Inflammation? Drink Green Tea!

Here's how inflammation affects your body

1. Cancer and other conditions: Chronic inflammation is known to cause several conditions and cancer is one of them. As the chemicals are released to immunise the problem, over time excessive inflammation can lead to DNA damage causing cancer. For eg. inflammatory diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease increase the risk of developing colon cancer.

2. Rheumatoid arthritis and tissue damage: You may be susceptible to developing rheumatoid arthritis in case of excessive inflammation in your body. In the long run, you run the risk of your body's immune system's response damaging your own tissue instead of tackling the foreign agents like germs and viruses. This increases the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. This process can be defined as inflammatory arthritis as well.

Also read: Have A Look At Top 5 Foods That Help Fight Inflammation

3. Excessive irritation: When the response is underway, quite often the released chemicals will affect the existing healthy tissues. The blood flow to the infected area then gets increased. There may be a leak into the tissues which often causes swelling which can become incredibly irritating.

4. Fatigue: Its extremely common to experience fatigue upon inflammation. The part of your body that is undergoing repair will be out of order for a certain time frame. Simultaneously, there is high blood flow into the repair, causing your heart to pump blood just that little bit faster. So, you become prone to fatigue and tiredness.

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Excessive inflammation can make you feel tired
Photo Credit: iStock

5. Pain: Its quite obvious that inflammation will be followed by pain. In the process of repair, the fluid leak in the tissues leads to swelling. This is a protective process as it tries to protect the injury from further damage. But, the swelling can stimulate the nerves, and this would often cause pain.

Also read: Here's How A Hot Bath Can Help Improve Inflammation: Diet Tips For Curbing Inflammation In The Body

6. Affects vital organs: Inflammation in different parts of the human body will affect you differently.For example, excessive inflammation in the heart and lung areas can cause breathlessness and fluid retention. Inflammation in the kidneys causes hypertension and kidney failure. Therefore, inflammation temporarily hampers the functioning of vital organs in certain cases, and in excessive amounts can even lead to organ failure.

Disclaimer: This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.

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