You may be wondering, do I have inflammation? So I`m going to share with you all an easy way to know and remember the signs of inflammation and how you can check for them.

There are four cardinal signs of inflammation. These four signs are found in an easy mnemonic which are their Latin names because medicine was and still is often written in Latin. These four signs are:

Calor, Dolor, Rubor and Tumor.

Let`s go through them.

1. Calor – this refers to a feeling of heat. Its also similar to the French word chaleur which also means heat. If you have a right wrist that isn`t healing well, feel the right wrist temperature, and then compare that with the left wrist temperature. Better yet, have someone else test both wrists for you. An elevated temperature of the area is a key sign of inflammation.
2. Dolor – this refers to pain. Its also similar to the French word douleur which also means pain. Pain is often the first signal that something is wrong and the signal we tend to act on quickly. Pain and inflammation are linked because inflammation creates pain. Pains` function is to put us into fast action to care for the injury. If pain has gone on longer than six weeks, youre now dealing with chronic pain. In a chronic pain case, acupuncture points that help the body turn off continuous pain signaling by the nervous system will also be used.
3. Rubor – refers to colour, the reddish colour that happens during an inflammatory process when blood has rushed to an area to feed the injured tissues, providing key nutrients to the area as the building blocks of the repair process. Blood flow to the area is part of the acute healing process. However, acute inflammation should not become chronic, meaning more than six weeks. If you`re still having signs of inflammation past six weeks what you want to do is get in for acupuncture treatment to decrease inflammation in general as well as decrease inflammation to the injured area. The acupuncture treatment goal will be to increase micro-circulation to the injured areas, and the affected channels so that the repair work can complete and the inflammatory process can be put to rest.
4. Tumor – is just like the English word we use with the same spelling. Tumor in Latin simply means swelling. You can check for swelling of an injured area by comparing the size of your right wrist for example, versus the size of your left wrist. The swelling happens because of the increased blood flow to the area that is there to complete the repair work of the injured tissues. Again, although swelling is a normal part of acute injury, this process should not be going on longer that six weeks. If your knee is so swollen to the point that you haven`t seen it in a year, it`s time to come in and get acupuncture and clear up the swelling by increasing circulation to the area.

Are you noticing any of these four signs? If you have even one or two of these signs, its very likely that inflammation is part of the picture. Give me a call at 647-378-3182 and let`s talk about getting you out of inflammation and allow your injury to complete the repair process.

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R.Ac.