What Is Inflammation? in breast cancer survivors

What Is Inflammation? in breast cancer survivors

Inflammation is your immune system’s natural response to an injury, such as a
pulled muscle, or to germs, allergens, chemical irritants, and other threats. Your
immune system reacts by releasing white blood cells and chemicals into the
bloodstream, which infiltrate your tissues, causing the indicators of inflammation
that most of us are familiar with: redness, heat, swelling, and pain. There’s a
biological domino effect at work here: all of these symptoms are created by the
activity of immune cells breaking down injured tissue so that fresh, healthy tissue
can replace it. This is a normal and appropriate response; our bodies need to stay
vigilant in order to fend off an invasion or injury with aggressive proinflammatory
mechanisms, such as clotting, fever, and swelling. But too often,
inflammation becomes a chronic condition, and in this state, we leave ourselves
more vulnerable to breast cancer occurrence and recurrence.

Here’s how: When inflammation arises, chemicals known as inflammatory
cytokines, or chemokines (proteins that serve as messengers between cells) are
released into the blood and tissues. These types of cytokines are created primarily
by immune cells engaged in the process of mounting an inflammatory response, as
a way of dealing with a health threat to the body. By relaying messages between the
cells, the cytokines help to modulate the immune system response to whatever threat
is at hand. But the presence of too many inflammatory cytokines harms our normal
cells—and there’s the rub.