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Brain on Fire — How Inflammation Damages Mental Health
From depression to dementia. How to reduce inflammation naturally
Inflammation is often visible and painful. Red, angry swellings make their presence felt. Yet sometimes inflammation is invisible and painless; you would never know it was there. When inflammation flares in the brain, it does so silently.
What is inflammation?
Inflammation is not always detrimental to health — it is a normal immune response to injury or infection and means that the healing process has begun. The body repairs itself or prepares to fight off an intruder. Sometimes, however, things go wrong. The inflammatory process goes on for longer than necessary, or is activated when it is not required.
The response may be either acute or chronic. Acute inflammation is healthy and short-term. It is usually localized and triggered by a wound or an infection. When it begins, inflammatory substances called cytokines are released by the affected tissue to alert and prime the immune system.
The body produces many types of cytokines, including the interleukins IL-1, IL-6, IL-12, IL-18. In the brain, the cytokine TNF-α is also produced.
