Alright and Welcome Back!

In the previous blog, I discussed that chronic inflammation is the keystone to poor health outcomes, especially COVID 19.

In the article, which can be found in the January 2021 issue of “The American Chiropractor”, Dr. Seaman discusses cytokines and the cytokine storm.

These are terms you may or may not be familiar with, but you should be and they should be at the forefront of any discussion about mitigating any potential impact related to the COVID virus.  If not, then shame on those who are supposed to be helping us safely navigate through this outbreak.

Cytokines are found in many different types of cells in our bodies, and especially in our white blood cells called leukocytes.

When cells are injured through a traumatic event, cytokines and other pro-inflammatory chemicals are released by the cells and are responsible for the swelling, redness, pain, and fever/heat that we perceive.

As mentioned in the previous blog, many other events can cause cytokines and pro-inflammatory chemicals to be released.

From Dr. Seaman’s article, refined sugars and grain flours, obesity, sleep loss, smoking, sun avoidance, mental/emotional stress, inflamm-aging, sedentary living, and chronic pain can all lead to the release of cytokines and pro-inflammatory chemicals.

People who are chronically exposed to the stressors listed above are chronically inflamed and suffer from a number of other chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, chronic joint pain and arthritis, depression, Alzheimer’s, and metabolic syndrome described in earlier blogs.

In fact, it was detailed in a paper by Dr. Jeffrey Bland that Metabolic Syndrome (the co-morbidities: obesity, elevated blood pressure, blood fats, diabetes) is the real pandemic within the pandemic as over 35 % of people in the US suffer from Metabolic Syndrome, and over 54% of those with this condition will die from one or more of the associated co-morbidities noted above- COVID virus or not.

So basically people who have hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other chronic illnesses develop these health issues because they live in a chronically, elevated cytokine state- they are chronically inflamed.

When a person reads about people who had poor outcomes or worse when exposed to the COVID virus, what we are not being told is that these unfortunate people are/were chronically inflamed and have/had elevated cytokines.

And here it is… if a person is chronically inflamed and has elevated cytokines, what happens if they are exposed to the COVID virus?

They could be fatally impacted by what is known as a Cytokine Storm. This will be discussed in the next blog.

If you recall your life over these past several months you’ll quickly see that all the closures, quarantines, uncertainties, stress, poor diets, lack of sleep… these are all the ingredients necessary to make a person nearly defenseless in the face of exposure to a virus that is less than .05% lethal. It’s something to think about when the next “authority” gets up there and tells you the score!

It’s time we told them the score.

In the meantime best wishes!

Dr. Dave