When someone comes in to see me with pain, but has no recent history of trauma, I am immediately suspicious of elevated systemic Inflammation and Infection.
Working as a doctor, I meet a lot of people who don’t feel well. That’s why they are in my office. Often people come in with muscle & joint problems; pain in their neck, shoulder, back, or hips. Sometimes they have a specific injury from a car accident or fall, but often there is no obvious reason for their pain; they just “woke up with it”, or they have been “putting up with it” for a long time and it’s slowly getting worse.
The fact is, we are all big bags of walking microbial soup! Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells. Co-inhabiting our bodies are more trillions of microbes including bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasites (yes, parasites!), mycoplasma, spirochetes, and fungi/yeast. While some of these microbes are friendly, many are not.
What Are Some of the Chronic Concerns Caused by Inflammation and Infection?
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Atherosclerosis – Cardio-Vascular disease
- Auto-Immune Disease
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Chronic infections
- Chronic Lyme’s
- Chronic skin conditions (eczema, rosacea, acne, warts…)
- Chronic Urinary Tract Infections
- Diabetes
- Fibromyalgia
- Gastro-Intestinal disease
- Neurological disease
- Pelvic Inflammatory disease
Where are These Microbes?
- Lurking in your mouth, causing periodontal disease and tooth decay
- Prowling in your stomach and GUT causing GERD, gastritis, ulcers, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and inflammatory disease
- Hiding in your brain causing brain fog, anxiety/depression, Alzheimer’s, ADD, etc
- Circulating in your blood, causing atherosclerosis & heart disease
- Hiding in your immune cells causing dysregulation and immune compromise
- Clinging to your lungs, sucking your life-force away, & causing chronic cough
- Swimming in your bladder causing chronic Urinary Tract Infections
- Hanging out in your bones and joints causing arthritis
Get the picture?
Furthermore, microbes evolve much, much faster than humans and many have evolved “cloaking” mechanisms rendering them invisible to your immune system. They are called “stealth pathogens”. Imagine that you are asleep in bed and here a window break. You jump up and discover that the front door is open and you can hear footsteps., but you can’t see anybody! Imagine how hyper-vigilant you would become! When this scenario happens in your body, eventually your immune system becomes so hyper-vigilant that it begins to attack itself,..that’s you! This is “auto-immune disease”.
A very common example of an auto-immune disease is Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis caused by the stealth pathogen Mycobacterium avium ssp paratuberculosis (MAP). MAP is found in cows, goats, sheep, dogs, pigs, and primates. MAP prevalence in USA dairy heards is 68-91% and is found in virtually all dairy products, pasteurized or not. It also lives in water, water pipes, and water bottles and is impervious to chlorine. Bottom line: we are all exposed.
There is no avoiding them. Microbes are in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breath, and crawling all over everything we are in contact with. We are all going to die eventually. It’s something every life form has in common.
Burning questions include:
How long are we going to live?
How much will we suffer before we die?
Good luck finding the answers.
Personally, I want to be happy, healthy,..dead! I do not want to be someone who is painfully clawing their way towards the finish line at the compost heap. It has been said that “all chronic disease has infection at it’s root”. The knowledge I have acquired from being a primary care physician, studying health and disease for 34 years, as well as living in a human body for 62 years, informs me; that is a true statement.
How do we fight back and hold off the microbial hoards (Inflammation and Infection) to live the longest, healthiest life possible?
There is no simple answer. No quick fix that I know of. Frankly, humans have developed a very unhealthy relationship with microbes via anti-biotics, other drugs, and our food chain. We have created super-bugs that are increasingly anti-biotic resistant and stealthy.
Most of us are well aware of the flesh-eating MRSA bacteria by now, which is killing 50 people a day in the USA alone. Add that to 82 deaths per day from anti-biotic resistant Clostridium!
Did you know that over 440,000 cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis are diagnosed annually (150,000 deaths) in 64 countries?
Unwelcome fact: Anti-biotic resistance had already emerged for every antibiotic known by 1999. Microbes learn much faster than humans. As a traditional health care practitioner, I look for tools to use towards optimizing health; detoxification, energy pathway stabilization (low-carb & Keto), exercise, mindfulness, micro-biome enhancement (candida protocols), and immune system up-regulation to reduce inflammation and infection utilizing whole food medicines and powerful herbal combinations.
WOW! I get really excited about this stuff. While herbs have been on the planet and have been used by herbal healers for eons, accessing quality herbal formulas in today’s world is challenging. Due to lack of quality control, herbs on the shelves in the USA tend to lack potency and reliability. I am grateful to have access to a great product line out of Australia called Medi-Herb.
Immune Modulation is the Name of the Game
You can’t keep trying to kill the hoards of microbes causing inflammation and infection with anti-biotics. They will out-smart you and become resistant to anti-biotics. They may also learn to hide and drive your immune system crazy while draining you of energy.
Immune modulation is a process involving diet, lifestyle, and the use of whole food supplements and herbals to support organs and body systems, including the immune system.
To Your Health!
Dr. Deborah Penner
