By Kenneth Proefrock, NMD

Inflammation is an absolutely necessary part of the healing process, when you interfere with one aspect of this process, it sets off a chain of events that ultimately alters the body's ability to heal itself completely from whatever insult caused the inflammation in the first place. The longer that the process is interfered with, the less stable the system becomes in its ability to deal with new inflammatory events. This means that the system becomes less able to defend itself from infection, the tissues that replace the damaged tissues have less integrity, so they are more easily damaged by lesser insults later on, and, talk about an ironic twist, the system ultimately has to contend with life threatening situations because of the presence of these agents, most often prescribed for non-life threatening conditions. This inflammatory rebound is something that I have seen in my clinical practice more and more over the past 5-6 years, as these agents have become more prevalent in the prescriptive arsenal. The recall of Vioxx was specifically because long-term usage causes a dramatic increase in the inflammation of the cardiovascular system, leading to stark increases in the risk for strokes and heart attacks.

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, statistically, it accounts for 40% of the deaths in any single year. As more and more is known about the reasons why people contract these disorders, inflammation is proving itself to be a central player in the process. It is ironic that an agent that does a decent job of reducing inflammation in one area of the body would increase inflammation in another area.

It is unfortunate that the trade off is anything but even, people don't die from chronic pain, they do die from heart disease.

The future is not so bleak if we allow ourselves to learn from the mistakes of the past. I won't say that it is only a matter of time before Celebrex and Bextra are taken off the market. I would say that as the public acquires a better understanding of the risks involved in this type of intervention, the more intelligent members of society will be looking for better alternatives. The more that we understand about the nuts and bolts workings of the human body, the more we realize that interfering with natural processes is eventually going to come back and bite us. We are coming to a place in some parts of medicine where we realize that the prefix “anti” in front of any word is begging for trouble. Anti-inflammatories can cause rebound inflammation, anti-depressants can cause suicide, anti-histamines cause a person to develop more histamine the next time it contacts an allergen, antacids cause rebound increases in acid production, the list is as long as we want to make it. You can't fool Mother Nature was the catch phrase for a popular product in the 1970's, and there is an essential truth in this. Doesn't it make logical sense that if you believe that a creator makes the human body perfect; that you shouldn't interfere with your innate ability to deal with the world around you? If you believe that the human body is the product of millions of years of progressive evolution; that you shouldn't interfere with the natural processes that we have developed that have ensured our survival over the millennia?

I propose that the answer lies in supporting the bodies' innate wisdom. Understanding the fundamental principles of inflammation gives us several points at which we can intervene in the process and help the body resolve the inflammation more quickly and more completely. By helping inflammation to resolve more quickly and by supporting the intent of the body with that inflammation we can better prevent the damaging effects that the inflammatory response causes in the system. There are several ways that we can do this, several very simple and inexpensive ways, some of which have been around for several thousand years. It took ten years to discover that Vioxx caused the problems that led to its recall; consider that the interventions that I am about to propose have been around for 300-400 times as long as Vioxx, and if they didn't work, or if they proved in any way harmful, people would have stopped using these interventions long ago.