Dr. Mark Hyman explains how hidden inflammation drives disease and why the C-reactive protein blood test matters. He covers what causes this inflammation and how diet and lifestyle can control it.
Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. What's the one blood test you haven't heard about that could save your life? Welcome to my third Ultra Wellness blog. The last two weeks we talked about the true origins of disease and how important environmental stressors are, such as diet, exercise, stress, toxins and trauma and how those set the stage for disease. Today we're going to cover a critical system, inflammation and immune balance. This is a core system in the body that underlies almost all disease. Okay, so what's this simple blood test that can save your life? It's called C-reactive protein and it's more important than cholesterol or blood pressure or any other test you could have to determine your risk of dying early and dying from heart disease, dementia and cancer. and it's about hidden inflammation. It's not the inflammation that you know about when you have a sore throat or a sprained ankle or a rash. It's deep hidden smoldering inflammation that you can't tell you have and the only way you know it is by getting a blood test. And it relates to every modern disease, not just asthma and arthritis and infections and autoimmune disease, things you know about, but things like dementia and heart attacks and cancer. and diabetes and obesity. These are all connected deeply to inflammation. And these are because we have a fire going out of control within our bodies. And we need to find the fire, we need to extinguish the fire, and we need to get our immune systems back in balance. And the problems with our current approach are backwards. We use anti-inflammatories like Advil and Aspirin and Aleve to control inflammation, but those lead to serious side effects. There's 100,000 people every year admitted to hospitals because of intestinal hemorrhaging from taking those drugs. 16,000 people die every year from simply taking that many people die from asthma or leukemia every year or AIDS. This is a serious problem and it's not the way we need to deal with inflammation. And even though doctors are studying this as a solution, it's not the solution. Even drugs like Lipitor we find are great anti-inflammatories. In fact, that may be more of a factor about how they lower your risk of heart disease than actually lowering cholesterol. So what's the right approach? How do we figure this out? We have to think about what's going on at the root. Not downstream medicine, not dealing with the symptoms, not dealing with problems after they occur, but understanding why things occur and getting to the root of the illness. This is only possible by practicing what's called upstream medicine. Walk upstream, find out what's going on, and you have to be able to think about these problems differently. So the new medicine is not about a refined diagnostic system, it's about a whole new way of thinking about problems and thinking about inflammation is at the root of this new way of thinking. So what are these triggers for inflammation? What are the things that cause inflammation? And how do we get rid of them? And once we do that, how do we then support our body's natural immune system? How do we get our balance back in our immune system? So let's talk for a minute about the causes. The causes are rampant in our environment. Our diet, we have a very poor diet. We call it a standard American diet and it's a diet full of sugar, trans fats, processed food and lack of exercise. All these promote inflammation. Stress, another big factor that causes inflammation. We know that stress is a big trigger for immune problems. Hidden allergens, things in our diet like gluten, dairy, we may not know we're eating. that are triggering allergic responses that create inflammation in our body. Hidden infections, even like bad gums and bad teeth lead to heart disease in many cases. Toxins in our environment like mercury and lead, pesticides, and lastly molds. All these promote inflammation. So it's not specific to a particular part of your body. It's all over. I had a gentleman come see me a few months ago. He was a plumber, 46 years old, nice guy, had a family, kids. barely able to work. He was suffering from a terrible autoimmune disease, fatigue, joint pain, sinus problems, just not very healthy at all. And after we treated him, we went to the root of his problem. We got to the toxins, the allergens, the infections that were at the root of his disease. We got rid of them. We got his system back in balance. And now I told him yesterday on the phone, he's feeling fantastic. He has no symptoms. I said, don't you have any symptoms? He says, no, no, I'm all better. I said, why, you're gonna put me out of business. I said, you know, this is really so gratifying because We now have the tools, we have the science, we have the information to solve these problems. You're not hearing about it, but I'm going to tell you about it during these next six weeks in my course on Ultra Wellness that you're going to hear about in my video blogs. So how do you treat inflammation? First, eat real food, not too much, and mostly plants. That's what Michael Pollan says, who's a professor at Berkeley. We need to go back to what our bodies are designed to do, which is eat real, whole, unprocessed food. that doesn't raise your blood sugar quickly, that has lots of plant chemicals in it, phytonutrients, and we don't overeat. We are in a society of overconsumptive undernutrition. We need to think about how to redesign our approach to eating to live in harmony with our genes. Next, we need to get an oil change. We need to get rid of the processed oils we eat, the refined oils, trans fats, and eat unrefined oils like omega-3 fats and olive oil. We need to exercise. Say no more, it's the most powerful anti-inflammatory out there. We need to learn how to activate the most important nerve in our body called the vagus nerve, which relaxes us and engages the stress response antidote, which is the relaxation response. And we need to treat food allergies or sensitivities that promote hidden inflammation. And lastly, we can take some things, supplements that may help. Various herbs, a multivitamin, even probiotics can help reduce inflammation, the healthy bacteria in your gut. So, the future of medicine is not going to be full of medical specialists. We're going to have people who are specialists in systems medicine, who in functional medicine understand the core systems. We're going to have inflammologists who understand how to get to the root of inflammation, how to treat it, how to help the immune system get back in balance. People who can think upstream about the real cause of disease and the real ways to help people restore health and balance. Next week I'm going to tell you about the one thing that makes your hormones go haywire and that causes obesity and heart disease, cancer and dementia. Stay tuned.
