Quick Note: I’m sharing this based on my personal experience and research, but I’m not a medical professional. This post is for informational purposes only and isn’t medical advice. You can find my full medical disclaimer at the bottom of this page.
What is Type 2 Inflammation really? That’s a question that I was asked today. Well, I’m going to tell you about it as best as I understand myself. To tell you the truth, I’m still struggling with fully understanding the clinical explanation of Type 2 Inflammation. There is a lot of medical terms involved that, despite my extensive experience in being a medically screwed up person, I have never heard before. I am still working at fully understanding how everything ‘clinically’ works. But, usually I am pretty decent I think at analogies, so hopefully I can offer you an analogy that will be able to explain in more layman’s terms how Type 2 Inflammation is interacting with your body.
Before I get too carried away, I will warn you that my analogy is filtered through the medical conditions and symptoms that I personally experience as a result of having Type 2 Inflammation. I have or have had allergies, nasal polyps, asthma and I’m pretty sure I have mild Eosinophillic Esophagitis because I also have weird acid reflux kind of issues. I also get rashy and get this feeling like I have hives inside of my face.
Imagine a candle. Like one of those little skinny ones that you would put on the top of a birthday cake. You’re the candle. Allergens, irritants and chemicals are all things that set fire to your candle. When a ‘flame’ is lit in a regular, healthy immune system, the immune system responds by metaphorically blowing out the flame before any real damage can be done to the candle.
An allergen is something small and innocent that shouldn’t even be a big deal. When a person has allergies this means that the immune system is overreacting in the way that it responds to the threat. Kind of like trying to put out the flame of a little candle with a fire extinguisher. The candle flame being the ‘allergen’ and the fire extinguisher being your immune system.
When you have issues with Type 2 Inflammation, instead of a fire extinguisher, your immune system called in the ENTIRE fire department to put out the flame of a tiny candle. Then, it’s not even like they show up, put the fire out and leave. Oh, no. They hang around, get in the way and spray things seemingly randomly as if they are afraid of a fire breaking out spontaneously. At the same time however, they also run around lighting fires rather than just putting them out. It’s kind of like a bunch of pyromaniacs running out and forming a fire department so that they can both set fires and put them out. Almost like they want to practice fire drills for threat protection, but they do that by setting you on fire. So your immune system reaction is going completely overboard in its threat protection to the point where instead of helping you, it feels like it’s killing you. This results is both external and internal attacks, leaving you feeling not so much like you are burning the candle at both ends, but rather you are the candle and you are melting, inside and out!
As a result of the internal and external attacks, even when you put yourself in a figurative bubble, trying to protect yourself from getting set on fire, you can still be ‘melting’ and having a reaction because your fire department(immune system) is completely out of control; either using a fire hose to put out a candle fire, or just drowning you in the water.
This then results in diagnosis like allergies, asthma, eczema, food allergies, Eosinophillic Esophagitis, and nasal polyps. It can lead to symptoms including sneezing, nasal congestion and draining, rash, itching, sinus inflammation, itchy eyes, inflammation of the esophagus, eczema, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal discomfort, among others.
Type 2 Inflammation or T2I for short, is a full body, systemic ‘overdrive’ of the immune system. The immune system has these little proteins called cytokines. The cytokines are supposed to work like an internal radio system for your immune system. They send out the signals that pass along messages like how to fight off parasites or that there is skin needing repair or an infection forming. For people with T2I, it’s kind of like these little messengers have gone from being clear and direct about what needs to be done and instead are auditioning for the role of a fast talking auctioneer, throwing out messages so hard and fast that the messages are getting garbled and confused, leading to an overreaction in an effort to solve the problem. It’s almost as if it gets to a point where the body stops hearing messages like, repair this cut, and only hears ATTACK EVERYTHING! Next thing ya know, you can find yourself buried under an over abundance of symptoms and are left feeling like something the cat drug in and you don’t even know what set it off.
The good news is is that there is hope. We may not be able to send our immune system back for a new one, but there are lifestyle changes that we can make and medications available to start slowing our fast talking auctioneers down so that our bodies can stop living in full fledged fight or flight mode. For a long time, the medications were limited to ones that specifically targeted the symptoms. Like antihistamines for allergies and lotion and steroid creams for the eczema. But in recent years other options are becoming available. The one that I am most familiar with is Dupixent. Dupixent works by inhibiting the signals of two key proteins in the T2I process. By blocking these signals, it stops that high flow ‘overdrive’ of information that pushes the body to such extreme responses. Although these treatments cannot make cure T2I, they can greatly improve quality of life for some of us who have been buried beneath the weight of our symptoms, unable to find relief through things like antihistamines or creams.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave a message in the comment box below.
For more information please visit the links below:
Understanding Type 2 Inflammation
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