When people talk about trauma, you’ll usually hear them mention broken bones, deep cuts, burns, bruises, etc. And that’s indeed all trauma, but in medical terms, ‘trauma’ is broader.
To keep things simple, any sudden and intense physical stress to your body is considered trauma. And it doesn’t matter whether you get it in a car accident or there’s a bad bump during surgery. Trauma is trauma, regardless of how it happened.
Right after any situation like that happens, your body goes into inflammation.
It might sound scary, but at first, inflammation is the good guy. It’s how your body starts its healing process, so essentially, it’s an emergency responder. That inflammation is meant to stay local, though, meaning contained to the site of the injury.
But in some cases, the response can go too far and spread beyond the initial injury and affect the entire body.
What Happens in the Body Right After Trauma
Imagine if you stubbed your toe right now. Within minutes, it’s red and swollen.
This is your body’s inflammatory response kicking in, and it happens just as fast during small or major trauma. It starts pretty much immediately after the injury, and that’s a good thing – you want this to happen.
The way this happens is that your immune system sends out signals to coordinate the ‘rescue mission,’ and those signals are called cytokines.
They travel all through your body and activate white blood cells. At the same time, the blood vessels in the area widen, which means more blood flow. That’s the reason behind redness and warmth at the site of the injury. The blood vessels also become more permeable, which allows the white blood cells to squeeze through the walls of the vessels and get right into the damaged tissue, where they start to fight off potential infections.
What you’re trying to achieve is straightforward – you want to contain the damage, you want to prevent infections, and then, when you’ve taken care of any immediate actions, you want to focus on repair.
What Happens If Inflammation Spreads
Inflammation has its purpose. That’s great. But what happens if it stops being useful/helpful? Inflammation stops being useful once cytokines start spilling into the bloodstream from the injured area.
Now, local inflammation has become systemic inflammation.
So let’s say that you started off with a swollen ankle.
In case of systemic inflammation, you can start to feel foggy and exhausted. You might even get a fever because your entire body is still reacting to that initial injury. Whether this’ll happen or not usually depends on a few things: how severe the trauma was, if your body has been exposed to repeated injuries or not, and, of course, the state of your health overall.
And speaking of severe trauma, that can be caused by many things, from sports injuries to workplace incidents, surgical procedures, car crashes, etc.
Car crashes are among the most common causes, especially in big cities like New York and Chicago, where traffic is absolutely insane. In these cases, a New York or Chicago collision accident lawyer can be a big help while the person focuses on recovery.
How Inflammation Affects Different Parts of the Body
Inflammation travels everywhere once it spreads through the bloodstream, and different parts of your body have different responses.
Brain and Nervous System
Thanks to the blood-brain barrier, your brain is usually protected, but inflammatory molecules can still find their way through, and once they cross over, they can affect your brain. You’ll feel it as brain fog, headaches, mood changes, and even anxiety.
The inflammation messes with your stress response as well.
Cardiovascular System
Your blood vessels are flexible, but inflammation makes them stiff, which puts stress on your heart because it has to work harder to pump blood through the stiffer vessels. Over time, this can cause high blood pressure, and it can increase the risk of heart problems.
Muscles and Joints
Even if the initial injury was nowhere near muscles and joints, inflammation can still find its way there. If the inflammation persists, you’ll feel stiffness that will make getting out of bed harder.
Soreness and reduced mobility are also common here.
Immune System Balance
Your immune system is smart, and it knows when to ramp up and when to stand down.
But systemic inflammation is hard to deal with. And it’s all but predictable, meaning your immune system – even through smart – doesn’t really know what to do anymore. This can easily result in your body staying in a prolonged state of inflammation, even though there’s nothing there that’s causing the inflammation anymore. Other times, it becomes overworked, meaning it can’t perform as well, so you’re more prone to infections.
Basically, your body’s defense system stops working properly.
Conclusion
Inflammation is a good thing. Until it isn’t anymore, the key turning point – from good to bad – is when it stays active longer than it should. This happens most often when it spreads to your entire body simply because it overworks itself.
So even if you have a completely isolated injury, that same injury can evolve into a full-blown emergency.
The good news?
If you’re aware of this, then you can recognize it and react.
Image by TungArt7 from pixabay
The editorial staff of Medical News Bulletin had no role in the preparation of this post. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the advertiser and do not reflect those of Medical News Bulletin. Medical News Bulletin does not accept liability for any loss or damages caused by the use of any products or services, nor do we endorse any products, services, or links in our Sponsored Articles.