Takeaway

Taking steps to offset, decrease, and prevent inflammation is key to optimizing your current and future health. 

The function of protecting and developing health must rank even above that of restoring it when it is impaired. 

—Hippocrates

The topic of inflammation has experienced a recent explosion of interest, research, and analysis in health-care communities. That may be because inflammation has been linked to almost every chronic disease, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, dementia, and debilitating myofascial pain. It’s even been shown to accelerate the aging process. Alarmingly, in 2005, “133 million Americans—almost 1 out of every 2 adults—had at least one chronic illness.”¹ To rehab or prevent disease, it’s clear healers need to give inflammation the attention it deserves. If you want to optimize your current and future health, you can do so by understanding what inflammation is, the common (and perhaps surprising) signs and symptoms of inflammation, and simple strategies to keep inflammation at bay. 

Inflammation: Friend AND Foe?

What is inflammation? Most simply, it’s the body’s natural and extraordinary healing response to an injury, toxin, pathogen, or infection. At its best, this seemingly magical system protects the body internally, halts further tissue damage, and ultimately activates the processes necessary to heal an area of vulnerability and restore health and homeostasis. Your body is your most loyal consort, and its default setting is always orienting toward supporting your wellness. 

If the stressor is not resolved, inflammation will begin to not only ravish the local areas of the body but can also lead to a full-body, systemic conflagration of illness, pain, and dysfunction. In fact, if you or someone you care about is chronically ill, inflammation is likely playing a pivotal role. As Yale Medicine affirms, “Inflammation has also emerged as a key factor in serious diseases.”²

The Physiological Symphony of Acute Inflammation

Between the two basic types of inflammation (acute or chronic), bodyworkers are generally most versed in observing and being mindful of acute inflammation. Acute inflammation manifests locally and swiftly, following a sprained ankle, a misstep on ice, a joint replacement, or even a minor paper cut. The immune system will dispatch its first responders: inflammatory cells and cytokines. Chemicals like histamines, bradykinins, and prostaglandins are mobilized. Additionally, cytokines and chemokines send out a message attracting an army of white blood cells to surround and protect the area, which may result in pain, redness, swelling, and heat. 

When Chronic Inflammation Takes Hold

The acute inflammatory process works similarly if you have an infection like the flu, COVID-19, or pneumonia. In these circumstances inflammation is essential—without it, injuries and infections could fester and even become lethal. However, if the inflammatory response does not resolve after approximately six weeks, most medical professionals will test for and/or diagnose the symptoms as “chronic” inflammation. Chronic inflammation, as you might imagine, is problematic. It often leads many down a winding road of unanswered questions, dubious treatments, prescription drugs, and mystery symptoms. According to the Colorado Center for Functional Medicine, “Chronic inflammation is associated with most if not all disease states.”³

Where Do You Live on the Inflammation Spectrum?

Inflammation left unchecked can harm the body by damaging cells, tissues, and organs, confusing messaging systems, and overworking the health response. Yet the impact of inflammation is often overlooked, discounted, or simply ignored before anyone realizes it’s even a problem. Consider that most people with chronic illnesses aren’t educated by their physicians about the direct correlation of inflammation to disease or actions they can take that will turn up or down the inflammatory response. Right now, we all exist somewhere on the inflammation spectrum, from no inflammation to mild, moderate, or diagnosis-level inflammation. We can be proactive by being on the lookout for chronic inflammation’s influence in our own system. And happily, we can deter chronic states of inflammation by making some simple enhancements to our daily routine. 

Moody, Hurt, or Tired? You Might be Inflamed 

In a new book by Will Cole, DC, The Inflammation Spectrum, Cole explains common symptoms that are often related to chronic inflammation but may be undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Notice whether some of the following symptoms sound familiar. 

Moodiness

Inflammation can affect your entire body, including your brain. Regularly feeling brain fog, erratic mood swings, or regular bouts of anxiety and depression may be associated with chronic inflammation. 

Pain

The urgent and intense feelings provoked by pain are your body’s essential way to communicate that something needs your attention (and likely needs to change). It can be a call to action. Many autoimmune conditions are a result of chronic inflammation, and often inflammation and pain are coupled, as seen with arthritis and fibromyalgia. 

Persistent Fatigue

Chronic inflammation messes with the way our bodies respond to stress, which may lead to long-term elevated production of cortisol and stress hormones draining the adrenals. This is not only exhausting but can also present as muscle weakness, low blood pressure, and sleeplessness. This symptom is rampant and tricky in that many of us push through physical fatigue (and the body’s requests to rest and restore) and instead gas up on artificial fuels like caffeine, sugar, and synthetic foods laced with excitotoxins. 

Ways to Offset Inflammation

Understanding how harmful chronic inflammation is and knowing what to look for are important. But more crucial is empowering yourself with ways to offset, decrease, and prevent it. You can reduce inflammation in your body by making simple changes to your lifestyle, such as the following.

Add Turmeric

A multitude of studies show turmeric has powerful benefits for your body and brain. Curcumin is the main active ingredient in turmeric, and it has powerful anti-inflammatory effects. We use it in topical forms for pain relief with great success. (Scan the QR code on page 87 to watch Heath make one of our favorite tumeric-inspired teas.) 

Eat Whole Foods

About 70–80 percent of your immune system is found in your digestive tract, affirming that food is medicine (and conversely, food may be poison, depending on your choices). The digestive tract contains gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), a type of tissue that monitors and protects the body against pathogens. There is a high concentration of GALT in the small intestine, where your food gets absorbed. Harvard Health recommends making vegetables and fruits half of what you eat per day, particularly dark leafy greens, which are a fantastic anti-inflammatory choice.⁴ 

Embrace Movement

A study published online in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity found that a 20-minute session of moderate exercise can stimulate the immune system by producing an anti-inflammatory cellular response.⁵ It also revealed that a workout session doesn’t have to be intense to have anti-inflammatory effects: “Twenty minutes to half-an-hour of moderate exercise, including fast walking, appears to be sufficient.” Create and appreciate movement interruptions: Enjoy looking for where you put those lost keys, be glad you need to take a couple extra trips to the kitchen or bathroom, get curious about whether you can invent new and pleasurable changes in how you move your body at the table, etc. 

Use Stress-Reducing Intervals

Chronic stress contributes to inflammation, and simply introducing regular intervals (in as little as five minutes per day) of stress-reducing activities like meditation, yoga, journaling, knitting, or reading significantly helps counteract inflammation. Stress-reducing intervals create a pattern interruption, upregulating to a more resilient neural platform and improving how we perceive and respond to stress. Stress is inevitable. Becoming less reactive and more responsive leads to more positive outcomes both emotionally and physically. What’s one stress-reducing activity you love that you can gift yourself in the middle of a busy day for just five minutes?

Bio-Individual Approaches to Inflammation

There isn’t a magic pill or strategy to rid the body of incessant inflammation. Rather, reducing inflammation begins with lifestyle choices centered around what you eat, how you move, and how you manage stress. “Bio-individuality” contends that each of us has a unique combination of nutritional and lifestyle behaviors that either optimize or disrupt our path to health and happiness. Bio-individuality asserts that you, the individual, are the best person to experiment with and determine what foods, activities, and stress-management practices provide the most benefits. We can use science and research to establish guardrails for us to discover what does and doesn’t work. But we know there is no single anti-inflammatory protocol that will be practical or enjoyable for everyone. And we advocate that health and healing ought to be enjoyable!

The journey of health and happiness is not static and changes throughout our lives. What worked for us when we were 4 years old did not or will not work when we are 14, 24, 44, or 88. Rather, every day holds the possibility of being a healing experiment. Ask yourself what new thing you will learn about your health today so you can fortify a future filled with ease and grace (and less inflammation). The key is to understand your body’s unique way of communicating inflammation. And that key unlocks the shackles of inflammation when we take pleasurable and persistent actions daily to reduce, diminish, and prevent trouble before it arises. Remember, your body loves you unconditionally. 

Notes 

1. FinancesOnline, “Chronic Diseases: An Impending Social Disaster and Its Crippling Costs,” accessed December 1, 2022, https://financesonline.com/the-crippling-cost-of-chronic-diseases.

2. Yale Medicine, “How Inflammation Affects Your Health,” April 8, 2022, www.yalemedicine.org/news/how-inflammation-affects-your-health. 

3. Colorado Center for Functional Medicine, “Chronic Inflammation,” www.ccfuncmed.com/conditions/chronic-inflammation.

4. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “The Nutrition Source: Healthy Eating Plate,” www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate.

5. Stoyan Dimitrov, Elaine Hulteng, and Suzi Hong, “Inflammation and Exercise: Inhibition of Monocytic Intracellular TNF Production by Acute Exercise Via 2-Adrenergic Activation,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 61 (March 2017): 60–8, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159116305645.