It is all about inflammation. We hurt, our body hurts. Times are stressful, work is hard and getting harder with increased productivity, co-workers getting fired, increased pressure, no job or looking for job/work, not resting enough, rush, rush, rush. Bills and worry about money; when will I, when can I retire, how will I make it. How will I be able to continue to just function, I hurt so. And all of this body hurt can too quickly become mind and heart and soul hurting. Daily pain is so very destructive and can make a body give up. Can cause depression, emotional giving up.
The inflammation causes immune cellular release (our immune system is called in to help quell the inflammation) and this actually makes the burning and pain worse. And makes us feel terrible. More than half of why we feel so terrible with a cold/flu/virus is because the immune system throws out funky molecules which cause us to feel bad. The same process happens with chronic inflammation. With chronic inflammation, our immune system is always actively engaged, thus always releasing, spitting out pain, and fatigue causing molecules.
The immune process is costly. It keeps us alive, but often at a very dear price: dreadful pain. And when the immune process is continually turned on, with chronic inflammation, it is dreadful, daily pain. Oh, it’s so very much a vicious cycle.
Inflammation causes our immune system to be hyper-vigilant, to fight, and release those substances which make us hurt more, burn more; make us feel weak, and sick, and not want to get up out of our chairs. So we sit. We become less active. We buy the Snuggly to allow us to sit more in warmth, and stay. Often for hours. Often watching TV, and eating.
And guess what we’re eating? Yes, but of course. We’re eating the very thing which causes the inflammation in the first place. Oh my Goddess Divine! No! I’m eating the thing which is causing the inflammation which is causing my fatigue, my burning, my pain, my need for pills, and my not wanting to do much of anything, ‘cept sit, and watch, and eat. Sex is not even considered, and the fatigue makes true effort at communication with my partner, spouse, love of my life, a chore. It means being present, and oh I so do not wish to be present. Cause present hurts. Real physical pain. Not to mention the pain of worry about money, bills, job, no job, rejection, rejection, lots of worry. And the pills don’t help, at least not for long enough. There’s always that place of wearing off before the next one/two/three kick in. So the watching, and eating is a wonderful way to not be present. To not be conscious; of my body, of my worries. If I am a Margaret, I use my out of body time to watch, eat, and to create. She would always create, always create art, in its deepest sense. Layered with meaning, as my new friend loves to say (thus notice when it is so layered). So you may be a Margaret type, and create your passions as you sit, and watch, and eat, and create. And tune out your pain of inflammation.
Know that this inflammation, this pain caused by inflammation leads to the sitting, not moving, not moving much at all, the pills, and watching, and eating and lo! outgrowing our clothes, our chairs, our lives. We outgrow our lives; our lives get shortened. The more we do not like to rise from sitting, the more we have arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gastro-intestinal disorders, all pain, pain; and the most dreaded, cancer. Oh, and more Alzheimer’s too. If we don’t die from a “lifestyle disease” exacerbated by, caused by inflammation, we may not have our mind. We have learned in the last twenty or so years that inflammation is the true, the primary culprit in all of the diseases which make us hurt, make our families hurt, give us pain, give us pills, more pills, then even more pills, and not want to move, thus sit, and watch, and eat. And need more pills.
Now wouldn’t one think that we’d try to eliminate this inflammation, and its etiology (its cause) in the same way we eliminated polio and smallpox. We saw illness, pain, suffering, and we found out how to release it from our world. (Goddess please, allow us to have the collective will to eliminate the other scourges which plague the developing world.)
One would think. Wouldn’t one. A rational, reasonable one would think so. Would think that we’d figure out how to eliminate it/release it from our world. For the common good, for compassion for those who suffer tremendously from its ill effects. For better quality of life, for less costly medical care, for saving money, for saving lives, for saving lives.
Sigh. Big sigh. We do know what causes this plague of inflammation (thus what causes the plague of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, gastro-intestinal ills, Alzheimer’s, and the most dreaded, cancer). But we have not as yet the collective will to truly create change. And it will take the same collective will, public effort, tremendous effort to effect a decrease in inflammation as it took to create a decrease in tobacco smoke in the public environment. It took, what, easily fifty years to create a world where smoking a cigarette in a public, enclosed environment is seen for what it is: deadly.
Inflammation’s cause is in the food we have created in the past sixty years, the non-food substances (Thank You Michael Pollan) which are our food. Have become more and more our food in the past sixty years; because this non-food, or highly refined food, or too salty food, or too sweet/sugary food, and certainly much much too fatty food has become our staple. This food because of it’s too much refinement, salt, sugary, fatty manner is what is the cause of our inflammation. Yes. No kidding. The research is in. Has been for at least the past twenty years.
What causes inflammation is common knowledge (common for the people in the medical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry). In fact the pharmaceutical industry has worked lo these many years to bring us pills which can quell our fire; help turn down the heat, the pain of our inflammation. Advil, Aleve, Motrin, ibuprofen, cox-2 inhibitors (Celebrex), Aspirin, Tylenol, oh so many pill ways to get rid of our pain, caused by our inflammation, caused by what we eat. The food which we’ve made cheaply; made filling; easy to get; easy to find; this everywhere food. It lures; it calls. It tells us we can feed and have FUN, and a SNACK, and more FUN, and HAPPY, and TAKE A BREAK from our oh so very stressful lives. We can feed and have a secret pleasure. Feed our secret pleasure. And cheaply. What FUN.
These folks know that the large amount of omega 6 fats used to make this cheap, fun, filling, highly refined, oh so very easy to find food, combined with the excess salt, sugar, the saturated fats, the trans fats, all this, in the food we eat, regularly, routinely, most every day or more; this cheap, ubiquitous food, so convenient, so engineered for company profit, company profit, is exactly what causes our inflammation.
Yep, it’s this very food, this everywhere food, this ever-lasting/long lived, highly engineered food which causes our inflammation, our pain, our disease, our pill taking, wall street’s portfolios to grow, entire industries to flourish, employ people, pay professionals lots of money to prescribe more pills, cause no one pays them to tell the truth. No one pays the doctor to tell people to not eat the regularly consumed cheap, highly refined, too fatty, salty, sugary food which causes our ills. They get paid to tell us to take our pills. Take our pills. And the doctor is not even trained to talk about food. Where would she begin? Eat more fruit and vegetables. Yes, we all know eat more fruit and vegetables. Ha! Exactly how’s that done? When the fruit and vegetables are not cheap, and Oh My Goddess, this way to eat is so expensive, and not convenient. Not at all convenient. And people don’t want the truth about their food.
I want to eat what I want. No one’s gonna tell me what I can eat. It’s my choice. It’s my right. And I sure as heck like that it’s cheap, and easy to find, convenient. I like that. And it tastes good. They’ve got the right combination of refinement/fat/salt/sugar, artificial flavors to keep me coming back. Engineered to keep me wanting more. Wanting more.
But I don’t want this pain of inflammation. I’m tired and hurting and growing old before my time, and fat. I can’t move like I used to.
But I certainly don’t want the pain of that healthy food that must be cooked, isn’t easy, is hard to find, and I’ve got to learn to cook it, then clean up, and Oh My Goddess, shop for it. And watch it rot in the fridge cause as well meaning as I was, I never ate it.
What’s a girl to do?