The Brain’s Innate Immune System and Neuro-Inflammation

How Our Brain’s Immune System Goes Into Attack Mode Causing Symptoms That Can Be Devastating and Difficult To Figure Out.

We have been discussing the process of neurological inflammation and the brain’s innate immune system over the last several posts.

This series is based on some of the latest research presented by Dr. Kharrazian on neurological inflammation including the process, the causes, and natural treatments that helps the serious problem.

The 1st post was a discussion defining the basic process of neurological inflammation.

Followed by the 2nd post on brain inflammation and it’s importance of understanding neurological symptoms that might be difficult to diagnose including brain fog.

The 3rd blog post looked at how a mother’s stress during a pregnancy can activate the unborn baby’s innate immune system and “pre-wire” the baby for problems in the future.

This same exact process happens after birth from some major stressor that activates or primes the brain’s immune system. It doesn’t happen in every case, but it can happen.

This is a brain sample showing the immune cell transformation.

The immune cells go from the crawling spiders (‘A’ seen on the left) that support various brain functions to a cell (‘D’ on the right) that is like a soldier in battle that has kind of lost their mind attacking and destroying things that are near it as it moves around the brain.

There is collateral ‘friendly fire‘ damage that occurs to the brain tissue.

Dr. Kharrazian described the regular immune cells as a friendly Labrador that changes to an aggressive Chihuahua.

The analogy doesn’t quite work in that the Chihuahua may be aggressive but it can’t really hurt you, maybe a huge pack of zombie Chihuahuas?

Once they change shape and function, it’s permanent.

Like a boiled egg, the primed microglia never go back to their original shape or function.

Once it’s boiled there’s no way to get it back to it’s original state.

The ones that are ‘primed’ don’t go back. We’re stuck with the immune cells we have in the brain. Unlike neurons, you also never create new ones.

This is why it’s critically important to reduce the chances of them making the transition by doing absolutely everything in your power to prevent it, more on that in a moment.

The one thing we can change once they are primed or activated is whether the cells are more inflammatory or more anti-inflammatory in nature.

If they’re more inflammatory, they will continue destroying brain tissue and lead to ever bigger and more serious problems. If they are more anti-inflammatory then they will not.

The driving force of whether they’re inflammatory or anti-inflammatory is dependent mostly on factors you control.

More on that in a moment.

This inflammatory destruction of brain tissue results in the problems you’ve probably heard about with NFL players, soccer players, MMA fighters, or boxers (etc) that had a history of concussions.

It’s also how people develop Alzheimer’s dementia, cognitive decline, neurological autoimmunity, and other very serious problems that you don’t want.

The damage from these processes generally takes many years to develop meaning that they’re going on for a long time without you having any idea they’re occurring.

It can happen suddenly too as mentioned above if exposed to a major stressor like a concussion, major infection, or chemical exposure for example.

You’re probably wondering, “OK, great so maybe me, my spouse, or my kid have a problem. What can I do about it?”

Here’s the answer, “It depends.”

So now you’re thinking, “Thanks doc, but that’s not helpful at all!”

The treatment varies from person to person.

All treatments have something in common though, addressing lifestyle issues that will further drive the neurological inflammation creating ever increasing damage.

These factors have been shown in research to improve (or make worse) neurological inflammation.

We’ll continue this discussion in the next post on concussions and improving recovery from concussions.