Inflammation and highly sensitive-CRP

Highly Sensitive CRP (C-reactive Protein)

Body fat and insulin resistance itself are both pro-inflammatory conditions.  The inflammation is one of the key factors in the development of heart disease and it plays a big role in the development of diabetes.  Further, in our experience, the inflammation can lead to genuine symptoms such as aches and pains in the joints.  Inflammation can be measured using an important test called the highly sensitive CRP (C-Reactive Protein).  This is a protein that is produced in the liver in response to inflammation anywhere in the body.  It is important to measure for our experiments and like the insulin level above, it is not commonly measured by primary care doctors, so you may need to ask your doctor about this.  Be careful here, there are two versions of this test one that is geared toward higher values that are more indicative of an inflammatory condition like asthma and the highly sensitive version that is geared toward carefully measuring values in the lower-level range.  These lower levels of elevation are the ones most associated with heart disease.  Our experiments are geared toward metabolic problems and risk factors for heart disease, so we want you to use this highly sensitive version.

Collect a recent measurement of your highly sensitive CRP (C-reactive Protein) and enter the value in your notes.  Next to the value, enter the term elevated if it is anything more than 1.