The Secret Killer: Cells on Fire

The cat's out of the bag. Let's share secrets about the "secret killer" of health, issue an inspiring message to reduce the aging process and allow the body to live in more optimal health.

We live and die at the cellular level. Time magazine's February 2004 cover proclaimed, "The Secret Killer – The surprising link between INFLAMMATION and HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, ALZHEIMER'S and other diseases."

Inflammation is the body's acute, natural response to damaged tissues. Normally reserved for external environment injuries (sprains, pathogens, toxins), the 21st Century challenge is that the immune system is inflaming cell membranes (chronic inflammation) as a result of acquired toxins from the environment and food supply. Coupled with this systemic hyper-inflammatory activity, intracellular free-radical processes also excite the inflammation response from the inside out. This double whammy challenges health like never before.

Cells On Fire

Cellular inflammation is the primary cause of what modern medicine is now labeling "mitochondrial diseases" – the new shibboleth for all chronic-degenerative, autoimmune diseases. Free-radical inflammation damage to the mitochondrial membranes and DNA is the bugbear behind all the health-destroying diseases, despite their different names and diatheses.

The mitochondria are the cellular organelles that make ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), the chemical energy of life that funds every thought, heartbeat and cellular activity of the human experience. "Energy is everything!" Like tiny nuclear reactors, the mitochondria use free radicals to make energy; and the body's primary antioxidant nutrients (glutathione, catalase, super oxide dismutase) are the control rods that keep it safe.

If a cell generates too many free radicals (various causes include hyper thyroid, pesticides in food, genetically-modified food, mercury in dental fillings and vaccinations, immune system responses to intestinal reactions, environmental toxins, etc.), then the mitochondria become damaged, aberrant and the cell must either expunge them or destroy itself (apoptosis). Failure to remove free radical-damaged DNA from cellular society means that the cell's sympathetic nuclear DNA can become "rogue," aka cancer or chronic-degenerative disease.

Science has discovered that on going cellular inflammation equals Alzheimer's, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, heart disease and cancer; but research often focuses on developing suppressive drugs rather than issuing a clarion call for the simple, causative cure – cleaning up the environment and restoring nutrition to nature's wholesome standards.

The specific inflammation-based disease that a person gets is dependent upon several variables including: genetic predispositions opportunity (exposure), and biochemically-individual epigenetic transcriptions of DNA (e.g. cellular metabolic processes, which according to Dr. Bruce Lipton are influenced by thoughts and feelings). But here's what's exciting — remediation ultimately returns to two causative concepts: the environment and nutrition, and thus is within our control.

Chiropractors quickly relate to the biological/nutritional concept of cellular inflammation because they are in the front ranks of helping patients with "injury inflammations" in daily practice. An injured, inflamed knee exhibits redness, swelling and pain. At the cellular level, inflammation means that the cell's fluid, undulating, lipid bi-layer membrane becomes damaged by free radicals and cytokine signaling molecules that launch both the cell's immune activities, as well as the immune system's inflammatory processes.

Hormone Resistance

Subclinical, chronic cell membrane inflammation (from within or from the immune system's activity on the cell wall) means that the cells become hormone resistant, a root cause of insulin resistance (sugar is inflammatory, thus diabetes); thyroxin resistance (thus thyroid disorders); as well as estrogen, testosterone and progesterone resistances. Hormones must dock with cell membrane receptors but can't when the membrane is inflamed. This is why thyroid drugs and bio-identical hormones may help but can't cure. They don't address cell membrane inflammation.