Inflammation is a balance of good and bad. Good: Inflammation causes the body to initiate healing. Bad: Inflammation inhibits nutrient delivery and waste disposal from the damaged area.
Caveat: inflammation causes secondary damage where adjacent tissue dies, inflates the healing job beyond the initial damage.
This image shows a zone of necrotic tissue around the original injury. Note the "dead zone" is much bigger than the apparent trauma area. |
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Secondary damage that develops after the initial trauma, usually represents the bulk of tissue. Minimizing the "secondary damage" by controlling initial inflammation limits the amount of healing required. Anything which reduces secondary damage reduces healing time because it makes for less healing.
An initial trauma causes plasma and lymphocytes to flow to an area. This movement brings the both nutrients and oxygen to support the healing process.
Plasma oxygen saturation has two influences:
- Oxygen and nutrient rich plasma enables more tissue near the injury to survive while depleted plasma permits more local damage. Oxygen/nutrient availability is inversely proportional to inflammatory tissue damage;
- Healing efficiency for non-vascular tissue is proportional to the nutrients and oxygen available in the plasma;
- Post traumatic Oxygen/Nutrient availability results from plasma concentration and mobility of the plasma.
These factors control the healing speed. Individuals with high plasma oxygen levels and successful digestion heal much faster, up to 10x, than expected:
- Less secondary damage from inflammation;
- Connective tissue has more energy, oxygen and nutrients to rebuild itself.
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