Inflammation is actually your body’s method of providing an environment for healing. When faced with an injury or a disease requiring an immune response, your body reacts in ways that seem alarming, but actually are helpful in allowing your systems to attack the problem. That idea doesn’t provide much comfort when faced with the side effects of inflammation, because they can be quite debilitating, if not merely inconvenient. We are most familiar with inflammation we can see, such as the swelling that occurs after a contusion or infection. The body is becoming inflamed because of a rush of blood flow, bringing white blood cells and other healing factors to the injured or diseased areas. If you are infected or injured, the body fills the area with these healing factors, producing inflammation.