For many years, medical researchers have thought there may be a common thread that is present in, and maybe the cause of, all disease.

There are more and more researchers coming to the conclusion that chronic inflammation plays a role in almost all the major diseases known to man.

The logical conclusion, if that's true, is if you can eliminate or control chronic inflammation from the body, you can have a major, postive effect on health. But is it possible to lower or eliminate the amount of inflammation in the body?

Inflammation is present in conditions like arthritis, asthma, diabetes, alzheimer's disease, heart disease, cancer, hypoglycemia, Crohn's disease, osteoporosis and dozens of other diseases.

There is a simple blood test you can have done, through your physician, that measures the level of inflammation in your body.

It's called a high sensitivity c-reactive protein test and it's not expensive at all. You may want to ask your doctor about having it added to your next blood work.

The normal range is from 1.0 to 3.0 so if you're higher than 3.0 you're at higher risk for any of the above diseases. If you're lower than 1.0 you're considered low risk.

As a measure of heart risk, it seems that c-reactive protein in high levels is present in heart attack victims almost twice as often and high ldl cholesterol. That being the case, c-reactive protein would be a better indicator of a possible heart attack than ldl cholesterol.

I know of no medications that are designed to lower c-reactive protein. You can take anti-inflammatory drugs, but they have some potentially nasty side effects.

Many of the side effects are dangerous to deadly.

A natural source of anti-inflammatory agents comes in the form of a not so well known fruit called the mangosteen. This fruit is no relation to the mango and it looks like a miniature pomegranate.

Most of the beneficial properties of the mangosteen are in the pericarp, the hard, outer shell of the fruit.

At the time of this writing, mangosteen fruit isn't allowed into the U.S. so you have to buy it in the form of juice or tablets.

Most people agree that the juice form is best and you can search around the internet for different suppliers of mangosteen products.

Discover more about the deadly effects of inflammation and how the mangosteen fruit can help at http://www.chuckharmon.com