You take a tumble and your knee explodes into a red, swollen, painful blob. That’s acute inflammation, your body’s healthy attempt to help heal the injury. But there’s another, more serious kind of inflammation that can contribute to serious consequences.

When inflammation persists in the body or occurs in healthy tissue, it’s damaging. It can contribute to further injury and a variety of diseases. This chronic inflammation is a contributing factor, experts say, to more than half of deaths worldwide. And it could be at least partially the reason you’re lethargic, in pain and constantly feeling under the weather.

Chronic inflammation is associated with a long list of diseases, including:

• Rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases
• Cardiovascular diseases, including high blood pressure and heart disease.
• Inflammatory bowel disease and other GI disorders
• Lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Depression and other mental health issues
• Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic ailments
• Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative problems
• Some cancers.

A Body on Fire

Monica Aggarwal, MD, a Florida cardiologist and co-author of Body on Fire, a book about chronic inflammation and how to reverse it, tells patients that chronic inflammation is your body telling you it’s mad at you.

It’s a topic that Aggarwal, who is also chief medical officer at 4 Roots Farm, a not-for-profit aiming to improve food quality, knows well. Chronic inflammation led to her debilitating  rheumatoid arthritis, so severe she couldn’t walk up stairs or run to tend to her three young children. She knew she needed to take action.

She turned her life—and inflammation—around by focusing on anti-inflammatory foods and taking care of her body in other healthy ways. She helps patients do the same. “Heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, IBD, it’s all related to low-grade inflammation,” she tells them. “But you can fix it. When there’s an imbalance between stress and the resources you have, you trigger inflammation,” she says.

Inflammation Triggers

Her action plan: First ditch the ultra-processed food. That’s basically all the foods with ingredients you can’t pronounce and don’t know what they are, she says. Reduce stress. Get enough sleep. Exercise.

“You have to change your lifestyle,” says Aggarwal. There’s no one fix for everyone. She works with patients to identify their “triggers,” such as a high-stress lifestyle that makes their levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, sky high, making it difficult to lose weight and in turn perhaps triggering obesity-related disease such as type 2 diabetes.

Yes, tests such as “sed rate” and C-reactive protein can measure your inflammation, but aren’t good at distinguishing acute from chronic. And, Aggarwal says, “you can easily have normal tests and still have inflammation.”

The whole-body approach to reducing inflammation is crucial, says Jyothi Rao, MD, medical director of Shakthi Health and Wellness Center in Clarksville, MD, and co-author of the book with Aggarwal. When her patients blame their genes—“My mom had rheumatoid arthritis, what can I expect?”—she tells them their genes are just the backdrop and that lifestyle choices are important—not just diet but sleep and stress reduction. “With lifestyle intervention you are targeting everything.”

What does chronic inflammation look like in a patient? Often, Rao says, patients who have it are overweight, tired, have weight gain they can’t shed, hair loss and sleep issues, or some combination. While people often ignore these things, ‘’they are signs our system is out of balance.”

Action Plan

Experts offer some other practical ways to eat that can reduce inflammation.

Staying away from or minimizing pro-inflammatory foods (think red meat, French fries) is important, too, of course.

Mayo Clinic offers this review on why inflammation is bad and what to do about it.

YOUR TURN

Do you have chronic inflammation? How do you manage it? Share your tips in the comments!

Kathleen Doheny is a Los Angeles-based independent journalist, specializing in health, behavior, fitness and lifestyle stories. Besides writing for Senior Planet, she reports for WebMD, Medscape, MedCentral and other sites.  She is a mom, mother-in-law and proud and happy Mimi who likes to hike, jog and shop.
Doheny photo: Shaun Newton

This article offered by Senior Planet and Older Adults Technology Services is for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding any medical condition. If you think you may have a medical emergency call 911 immediately.