Inflammation

Cause 1: Toxins your body can't kill

Your immune system is built to fight living invaders — bacteria, viruses, parasites. It finds them, attacks them, and kills them. Job done, inflammation resolves.

Toxins are different. Heavy metals, mold-related mycotoxins, pesticide residue, plastics, and everyday household chemicals aren't alive — so your immune system cannot kill them. It can only detect them, react to them, and keep reacting, over and over, for as long as they stay in your body. That's the trap: an immune system locked in a fight it can never actually win, because the real solution isn't attack — it's removal.

This is well documented in the research. A recent review of environmental exposures found that chemicals in food and everyday pollutants are linked to gut barrier breakdown, immune activation, and the kind of chronic low-grade inflammation that underlies a long list of modern health problems [1]. Some of the most common offenders, like dioxins, are literally nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they persist in the body for so long [2].

This is exactly why detox matters so much, and why it's become a focus of my practice — see more details on the Detox page.

Cause 2: Food — sensitivities and quality

Food is supposed to nourish you. For a lot of people, some of it is quietly doing the opposite — in two different ways.

First, food sensitivities. Not the dramatic, show-up-in-an-ER kind of allergy — the slower kind, where a food you eat regularly keeps low-grade inflammation simmering without an obvious, immediate reaction. Gluten, dairy, corn, and soy are some of the most common culprits I test for. Herein lies the value of IgG food sensitivity testing.

Second, food quality. Highly processed foods — the ones with long ingredient lists full of things you can't pronounce — are consistently linked to higher inflammatory markers in the blood, including CRP and IL-6, two of the main chemical signals your immune system uses to keep inflammation switched on [3]. It's not just what's missing from these foods (fiber, real nutrients); it's what's been added that your body has to respond to.

Cause 3: Stress — and the hormone cascade it triggers

Stress isn't just a feeling. It's a full hormonal event. When you're under chronic stress, your body keeps producing cortisol and a cascade of related hormones and neurotransmitters that are meant for short bursts of "danger," not for months or years on end.

Here's the twist people don't expect: cortisol is supposed to be your body's anti-inflammatory. But under chronic stress, your cells stop responding to it properly — a phenomenon researchers call glucocorticoid resistance. Cortisol is still there, but it can no longer tell your immune system to stand down, so inflammation stays switched on [4]. Recent research goes further, showing this same breakdown in the stress-hormone system is directly connected to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus [5].

This is one of the biggest reasons "just relax more" isn't useless advice — it's actually addressing a real biochemical pathway. It's also why stress support is never a side note in my approach; it's one of the four pillars.

Cause 4: Infections — including the ones you don't feel

This is the one most people never consider: infections that don't cause obvious symptoms. I call these "stealth" infections — things like low-grade gum disease, sinus infections that never fully cleared, lingering EBV (Epstein-Barr virus) from when you had mono, parasites, or other lingering microbial activity that doesn't announce itself with fever or pain, but quietly keeps your immune system working overtime.

Researchers now describe this as a real, measurable phenomenon: subclinical, low-grade infection that produces no obvious symptoms but still generates ongoing systemic inflammation, and it's been linked to everything from cardiovascular disease to neurological conditions [6]. Your immune system doesn't need you to feel sick to stay activated — it just needs a persistent trigger, seen or unseen.

Why this matters more than the label

Here's the pattern across all four causes: the inflammation is a smart, correct response to something real. The problem isn't that your immune system is malfunctioning — it's that it's still doing its job, because the trigger is still there. An anti-inflammatory can quiet the alarm. It can't remove what set it off.

That's the whole shift in how I approach inflammation: instead of asking "how do we turn this down," I ask "what is this responding to, and how do we remove it." Sometimes that's one of these four causes. Often, in my experience, it's two or three of them working together.

What working with me looks like

I use your history, functional lab testing, and applied kinesiology muscle testing to help narrow down which of these four causes is driving your specific picture — because it's rarely just one. From there, we build a plan to reduce your triggers and support your body's own ability to find balance again.

If you want the short version: find the triggers among these four, remove or reduce them, and support your body's natural process for calming down — that's the approach I take to help the body find its balance again.

If you want the fuller version: let's sit down, go through your history and symptoms together, and figure out exactly which of these four is running the show in your body. Most people are surprised by what they find.

What this can help with

• Testing to pinpoint which of four root causes is driving your inflammation
• A plan to reduce toxin, food, stress, and hidden-infection triggers
• Applied kinesiology and functional lab testing to guide the picture
• Care focused on removing the trigger, not just quieting the symptom