If you are striving to keep yourself healthy for now and many years to come, and you want to know what single thing you should be paying attention to more than anything else, it is this: inflammation.
The reason inflammation is so critical is that it has been found to be a player in almost every chronic disease. And if it hasn’t been shown to be associated with a chronic disease, it’s probably just because no one has looked for it.
To back up for a moment, let me give you a very brief primer on inflammation. It’s a complex system in our bodies with an ever-growing list of identified components, but the big picture is that it occurs in two main ways. It can be a self-limited response to an injury or infection, for example, if you get a paper-cut or a sprained ankle. You’ll notice redness, pain, warmth and swelling in the area. But once all the cells from the inflammatory response have done their job and the injury is healed, that inflammation disappears. That’s the kind of inflammation you want to happen.
The other kind of inflammation, called chronic inflammation, is the problematic one. It may occur if the immune system is trying to fend off an infection, like Lyme disease, but isn’t having success. Or it may occur if the immune system becomes confused, such as in someone who has antibodies to gluten that also end up attacking other parts of the body that resemble gluten. Inflammation also happens when the immune system senses that something isn’t right, such as when LDL cholesterol makes its way into the lining of an artery. White blood cells follow, but instead of fixing the problem, they inadvertently make it worse by making the plaque unstable and more likely to rupture.
Each one of these looks at different components of the blood to see if there is inflammation in the body. They are non-specific, meaning they don’t tell us where the inflammation is coming from, but they do clue us in to look harder for it. Taken together, we get a pretty good idea as to whether inflammation is an issue, and we can also use them to track if the inflammation is resolving or worsening.
If all this talk of chronic inflammation and its pervasive effect on chronic disease is getting you nervous, don’t worry! You actually don’t need to know which cytokine blocks which receptor to know what to do.
Remove the foods that are known to cause inflammation, like sugar, dairy and simple carbohydrates.
Avoid foods that you are sensitive to. This is something we often test for or figure out with an elimination diet.
Eat lots of foods that are known to be anti-inflammatory, like leafy greens, colorful veggies, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices (eg, turmeric, ginger and rosemary) and extra virgin olive oil.
Supplements such as probiotics, turmeric, resveratrol and fish oil are known to help fight inflammation.
Inflammation is an amazing unifier of most chronic diseases, so if you want to optimize your current and future health, you can do so by minimizing inflammation. Take note if you have symptoms that seem consistent with inflammation, check for it with blood tests, and do your best to adopt an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.
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