system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If inflammation is an immune response, then why are so many medicines that we take anti-inflammatory?
gpt
Typically it is to decrease the inflammatory responses in cases where it is inappropriate or overly strong. Sometimes immune responses can be so strong locally that they end up having systemic effects, which can result in non-productive inflammation that doesn't help in alleviating the disease or in healing tissue damage. You might also take a steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to help alleviate allergic responses or autoimmune responses, as another example.