the.com/inflammation
your body lighting a bonfire to kill the intruder, then forgetting to put it out
means The body's protective response to injury or infection, marked by redness, heat, swelling, and pain as the immune system rushes in to defend and repair the affected area.
from From Latin 'inflammare,' to set on fire, built from 'in-' (into) plus 'flamma' (flame) — the same flame that flickers through 'flammable' and 'flamboyant.' Ancient physicians, watching a wound turn red, hot, and angry, quite literally saw fire in the flesh, and the metaphor was honest enough to outlive them.
- five signs
- heat, pain, redness, swelling, lost function — named by Romans
- chronic killer
- linked to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's
- redness reason
- blood vessels widen to flood the wound with troops
- the word
- from Latin inflammare, meaning to set on fire
- fever ally
- raising body heat literally cooks invading pathogens
rheumatoid arthritis — autoimmune condition affecting 1.3 million americans, causing chronic joint inflammation
inflammatory bowel disease — crohn's and ulcerative colitis affecting 3 million people worldwide with gut inflammation
covid-19 cytokine storm — severe inflammatory response in hospitalized patients in 2020-2021, causing multi-organ damage