Alot of medicines and techniques such as cold compresses fight inflammation. Isn’t this counterproductive? Isn’t the inflamation there to speed blood and nutrients to the site to facilitate healing?
Inflammation is part of the body’s initial defense against infection, but I believe it’s a case of too much of a good thing being dangerous. If you can calm the inflammation, you decrease pain, which is a very good thing and may also speed healing. Inflammation has also been implicated in a whole lot of diseases. This Washington Post article has a lot of detail about the subject.
Inflammation can be good, but only up to a point. Just as fever is the body’s way of trying to heighten the metabolism while killing bacteria, but a fever is often treated with paracetamol (acetominphen) to make the patient feel better. Just because we have evolved a certain response, it doesn’t actually mean that the response is the best thing for our bodies.
The clinical entity known as the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS)would be the result of inflammation getting out of hand.