How bad is inflammation really?

Inflammation chatter is everywhere, and it’s coming for your lemons.

I first heard this from a friend recovering from surgery, who (wrongly) reported on TikTok that she attributed her unusual post-op-incision site irritation to inflammatory foods like lentils. Antibiotics finally fixed her pain – turns out the incision was infected. Who knows what happened to the words of nutrition standing in his mind?

Plenty of good science shows that lentils, beans, and other legumes actually have Anti-inflammatory effectBut fad diets like the whole 30’s demonized them Years ago these rumors returned, along with many others, as influencers told people to avoid them all type Foods with the ultimate goal of eliminating inflammation from the body.

says Shilpa Ravela, a Hawaii-based gastroenterologist whose book No One Wants to Understand the Complexity of Inflammation A silent fire Explore the topic in detail. But this is typical of the binary approach popular in social media, “where it’s either all good or all bad.”

In reality, inflammation is a double-edged sword: it is an ancient weapon that has enabled the human body to fight pathogens, toxins, and injury for millennia, but it is also a biological process that can damage and debilitate. This is not just a matter of thousands of TikToks, but a matter of scientific research.

Here’s how inflammation can help and hurt us, and what you need to know about reducing the risk it may pose to you.

Is there such a thing as good inflammation?

Inflammation is involved in the immune system, but not all immune system activity is inflammation, he said David Huffleris a neurologist and immunobiologist at Yale who specializes in the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis.

In inflammatory conditions, the immune system is switched into attack mode, which at a microscopic level means that a variety of specialized cells are fighting what they perceive as invaders. They often attack their opponents directly or release toxic chemicals that create unbearable conditions for them.

Many experts divide inflammation into two types, acute and chronic. Acute inflammation is the type that occurs within hours and days of an injury or infection. It’s rarely calm, says Ravella: “Blood flow is increasing, fluid and protein are leaving the vessel,” and as a result, people experience symptoms like swelling, redness, fever and pain either all over or in one area. Certain injuries or infections. “You can feel it,” she says, “and you know that this kind of inflammation helps the wound heal.”

When it’s short-lived—usually on the order of days to weeks—this kind of inflammation is good for us. Without it, we wouldn’t heal wounds or fight infection. When acute inflammation is suppressed by an immunocompromising condition or medication, people are at risk of becoming seriously ill from minor injuries or common cough-cold viral infections.

In other words, there is such a thing as too little inflammatory activity, says Ravella: “We don’t want to get down to zero.”

What makes inflammation worse?

In contrast to rapid-onset acute inflammation, chronic inflammation—which typically lasts months to years—is associated Collateral damage that limits both quality and length of life.

Some of the most prominent examples of chronic inflammation are: Autoimmune diseaseWhere the immune system turns against the body — rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), and lupus. These diseases are initially easy to confuse with acute, infection-related inflammation because they include many of the same symptoms. While these symptoms do not harm our body when directed at an invader, they can harm us when they are directed at our own tissues.

However, chronic inflammation can also be physically silent, producing noticeable symptoms for years until the disease state ends. Many cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, and cancers overlap with this type of systemic chronic inflammation. Because chronic inflammation is harder to detect in routine lab tests than acute inflammation, it is harder to diagnose and intervene.

What causes chronic inflammation and what causes chronic inflammation? 

Although experts thought for years that chronic inflammation was merely a consequence of the disease, there is now evidence that in some cases, the inflammation itself can lead to the disease.

The paradigm shift in science began in 2017, Ravella said, with a clinical trial showing that heart attack patients who had abnormally high levels of an inflammation-related protein in their blood received an anti-inflammatory drug. Reduces the risk of a second heart attack by 15 percent.

“The causal evidence is stronger for some conditions — such as heart disease and cancer — than for others,” says Ravella. For obesity, neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease), and some psychiatric disorders (such as depression), separating cause from effect is more challenging.

David Furman, a Stanford immunologist who uses genomics data to study links between aging, the immune system and cardiovascular health, says that chronic inflammation is more common in people with chronic pain, older people and obesity. One effect of the immune system always being boiled is a “boy who cried wolf” situation: It’s so used to being flooded with inflammatory proteins that “when the real threat comes, the cells don’t respond,” he says.

This may explain why people in this group were at such a high risk of death from Covid-19 infection early in the pandemic, and why they are at high risk of other diseases.

Scientists are exploring other triggers in the world around us that can cause chronic inflammation, including toxins in our air; Disruption of our circadian rhythm and other stressors; our food and water problems; and changes in the microbes that colonize our guts.

Researchers call this range of inputs “revealedIt’s something we don’t have a lot of control over — “You’re fighting a ghost,” Furman says — and yet a deep bench of research links many of these exposures to inflammatory pathways.

Why is there so much confusing information about inflammation?

In general, it is difficult to link any single exposure to a common outcome in humans because scientists cannot ethically control a person’s environment like they can with a lab rat. This makes it difficult for many health experts to conduct the kind of randomized, controlled human trials. Researchers still have many open questions about when inflammation is a cause, an effect, or incidental to a disease or symptom set. And where there are gaps in science, people can make money and gain attention by exploiting public understanding.

TikTok is a showcase for many inflammatory myths and scaremongering, much of it perpetuated by influencers who make a living off of your engagement or, in some cases, Actively trying to sell you something

“Listing a bunch of random symptoms to try to sell you a program or product is unprofessional and predatory, even if it’s coming from a professional,” says dietitian Abbey Sharp in a TikTok debunking of “hidden signs of inflammation in your body” style.

Echoing expert advice on avoiding health misinformation, Sharp advises that consumers should be suspicious of vague, oversimplified, context-free statements about the causes and solutions of inflammation, especially those that make money off your attention.

Additionally, be aware that foods aren’t necessarily inflammatory because they make you gassy (hello again, legumes!), cause allergic reactions in some people (think: soy), or aren’t tolerated by people with certain conditions. Gluten, for example, causes inflammation for people with celiac disease but is fine for most others.

OK, so what can I do to reduce chronic inflammation?

There are ways to reduce your risk for chronic inflammation that can lead to health problems. One of Hafler’s main recommendations for his multiple sclerosis patients is to avoid processed foods; Nutritional habits that, and many others, are associated with lower markers of inflammation may also benefit people with cardiovascular disease risk factors, but also those without certain health conditions.

Real experts on anti-inflammatory diets recommend that all have something in common: “We have one anti-inflammatory nutrient, probably our most anti-inflammatory nutrient,” says Ravella, “and that nutrient is fiber.” He recommends going beyond the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily allowances of fiber — especially soluble fiber, which nourishes the gut bacteria that can do the job. help lower inflammation elsewhere in the body.

Beans – yes, beans! – and grains are excellent sources of soluble fiber. Nuts, seeds, fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, and leafy green and cruciferous vegetables like a variety of berries also contain compounds that protect against inflammation.

Fermentation is also a powerful way to enhance the anti-inflammatory properties of foods. This is partly because this process creates good bacteria and fungi that strengthen the gut microbiome when eaten raw. Even in fermented foods that are cooked – such as sourdough bread – the microscopic architecture changes. May have anti-inflammatory effects.

Hafler recommended reducing fat and salt in your diet, and all the experts I spoke with recommended avoiding processed foods, especially those with compounds and ingredients uncommon in the home kitchen. Methods used in home kitchens are much less likely to cause inflammation than methods used in industrial food production, which makes cooking from scratch really important, Furman says.

That even goes for foods like ice cream, he says: surfactants and emulsifiers that temporarily create a smoother texture in many mass-produced ice creams. Alters the gut microbiome And Reduce the protective layer of the intestineWhich can contribute to inflammation in a way that the raw ingredients in a homemade version won’t.

Spending time in nature and with other people and animals can also reduce inflammation, in part The microbiome is diverseBut possible through other process. Exercise, including strength training, is also important — “muscle is a secret organ with anti-inflammatory properties,” Furman says — and weight control can reduce risk by reducing fat cells’ release of inflammatory substances.

Finally, most of the evidence-based recommendations for an anti-inflammatory lifestyle overlap significantly with what experts have long advocated for a healthy lifestyle. We can always do more – eat more pesticide-free food, always breathe cleaner air. But “we can’t go back to being cavemen,” Furman says. It really depends on us how far we can go.

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