Inflammation is often associated with red, swollen and painful bruise or cut which we get in freak accidents. But do you know that inflammation doesn't just happen on areas where we can see them? In fact, every disease and every pain that we suffer can be traced to inflammation. And you may even be suffering from chronic inflammation now without realizing.

What is Inflammation?

Inflammation is part of our body's defense system. It protects us from foreign organisms such as viruses, fungi and bacteria by producing pro-inflammatory chemicals that kill off the invaders. Once the invaders have been eliminated, inflammation stops and healing kicks in.

The entire process, called acute inflammation, is essential to keep us alive and help us recover from injuries and illnesses.

However, when the inflammation process goes awry and continues to simmer in our body for a prolonged period, it starts to become detrimental. Known as chronic inflammation, this type of low-grade inflammation is believed to be the root cause of many devastating diseases such as heart diseases, Alzheimer's and many types of cancer.

What Causes Chronic Inflammation?

What causes acute inflammation to turn chronic? It turned out that many factors are at play. Inflammation is affected by the foods we eat, the level of activity we get, the environment we live in, the hours of sleep we clock, the amount of stress we experience, the way we manage our emotions, the types of genes we have, our age, how heavy we weigh and even how well we get along with others.

Here's a short quiz for you to find out whether your current lifestyle is promoting chronic inflammation and making you a likely candidate for chronic diseases:

1. Do you use polyunsaturated vegetable oil such as corn, cottonseed, safflower, soybean, or sunflower as your main cooking oil?
2. Do you eat less than two portions of fish each week?
3. Do you consume foods prepared with hydrogenated or polyunsaturated vegetable oil frequently?
4. Do you regularly consume refined carbohydrates like white bread, biscuits or white rice?
5. Do you consistently include highly sweetened foods and drinks like cakes and sodas in your diet?
6. Do you feel stressed, worried, anxious and/or angry for most days of the week?
7. Do you usually choose to bottle up your feelings instead of expressing them?
8. Do you have problem establishing rewarding relationships with other people?
9. Do you exercise less than three times a week? (Each session should last at least 30 minutes.)
10. Do you often wake up feeling less than energized, groggy or lack of sleep every morning?
11. Does your work expose you to polluted air, water or harmful chemicals on a regular basis?
12. Are you overweight or obese?

What Can You Do?

If you answer 'yes' to one or more of the questions, then the way you live may be leaving you more vulnerable to chronic inflammation. Unfortunately, chronic inflammation has no obvious symptoms and it usually goes undetected for years before manifesting into one of the dreaded diseases that plagued our society.

But the good news is, you can do something to stop chronic inflammation before it boils over. Although you can't do anything about your genes and age, you can definitely do something about the other influencing factors.

Begin by including more anti-inflammatory foods in your diet, balance your omega-3 and omega-6 fats intake, avoid highly processed, refined and sugary foods and drinks, and start a three-times-a-week exercise regime. Together, they will help you to maintain a healthy weight and improve your quality of sleep.

It's also important to manage stress and emotions well by opening your heart and mind, and reach out to others sincerely without expecting any returns. These will help to widen your perspective and increase your satisfaction in life.

If your work constantly exposes you to harmful contaminants, talk to your company to see if anything can be done to cut down the exposure. For the sake of your health, you may even want to consider changing to a less risky job.

The preventive measures to halt chronic inflammation may seem like a lot of work. But the payoffs are definitely worth the efforts. By paying more attention to the way we live, not only do we prevent ourselves from getting a host of debilitating diseases that have claimed many victims, we will also improve our ability to enjoy life more fully and passionately.