By now, I bet many of my readers are familiar with the concept of inflammation. Acute inflammation is the body’s first response to injury or infection – the swelling, pain, heat – and we wouldn’t live very long without it. Chronic inflammation is what we don’t want, when the body’s immune response fails to shut down and keeps chugging just persistently enough to clog up the works. 

‍

It’s chronic inflammation that’s implicated in just about all of our common “diseases of aging”: cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, even some forms of cancers. But what more recent research is telling us is that chronic inflammation isn’t just driving individual diseases, it’s driving aging itself – it’s one of the key “hallmarks of aging” and it’s linked to most of the other hallmarks as well.

‍

 In fact, chronic inflammation is so important, scientists often use the term “inflammaging” as a way to grapple with aging in its entirety. For my money, that’s a useful concept. If we want to live as long and well as we possibly can (and we all do), our mission is to “inflame-age” as slowly as possible. Here’s a topline on what’s causing inflammaging and what we can all do to push back against it:

The immune system is not immune from aging. 

...And what’s even worse, when the immune system grows less dependable with age, it has a way of taking down the rest of the body with it. There are a couple of different ways this happens. The immune system develops a bad habit of overreacting to mild threats, attacking invaders, but not with enough force to clear them out, and without the ability to call them back to the barracks. This type of chronic inflammation results in the gradual exhaustion of the immune system which helps explain how a respiratory virus that might be merely an inconvenience in a younger person can turn into life-threatening pneumonia in an elder. 

‍

But that’s not all. The immune system is charged with clearing the system of old and worn-out cells, either destroying them or recycling them for parts (“autophagy”). But, unfortunately, the immune cells themselves become decrepit. Not only do these “senescent” cells fail to police other types of old cells, they start spitting out nasty inflammatory molecules, cytokines, that can affect all parts of the body. Cytokines can be either anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory but, with age, the balance shifts more to the “pro- “side, just what we don’t want. (As you may recall, most of the damage done in severe COVID cases wasn’t done by the virus, but by an out-of-control cytokine “storm.”) 

“Hallmarks” hang together.

The hallmarks that molecular biologists have described to encompass the central elements of aging aren’t independent actors – they interact and reinforce each other. And most of them come home to roost in the form of chronic inflammation. I’ve already mentioned cellular senescence but there are others. Over time, the mitochondria, the powerplants inside the cell, grow less powerful. They become more vulnerable to harmful mutations in the mitochondrial DNA and more prone to producing more oxidative stress, the free radicals that deliver inflammatory hits throughout the body. What does it all add up to? Inflammaging. 

Inflammaging and “diseases of aging”. 

While researchers have made a lot of progress teasing out how inflammaging works “under the hood,” at a deep cellular and even genetic level, the rest of us experience it more directly when it manifests as disease. And when one body system succumbs to a serious chronic disease, it turbocharges aging for the whole person. In the case of cardiovascular disease, inflammation helps “arm” the LDL cholesterol particles trapped in the coronary arteries and turn them into potentially lethal plaque blockages. In the case of the brain, the inflammation connection isn’t as well worked out, but some neurologists are so convinced that an “inflamed” brain is more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s, they’ve taken to calling the disease “type 3 diabetes,” because we know diabetes is an inflammatory condition. 

Metaflammation – the combo platter nobody wants. 

Inflammation and metabolism – that is, converting food into energy – are so closely linked, that a new term has popped up – metaflammation. The basic problem is that too much energy is coming into the system in the form of food and too little of it is being burned by moving the body. The consequence is elevated blood sugar which in turn raises insulin levels which promotes insulin resistance, inflammation, and worst-case scenario, type 2 diabetes. Doctors are so sensitive to the way that inflammation-driven diabetes speeds up aging, they’ll sometimes describe the disease as “accelerated aging.” Adding insult to injury, when the body is in an energy imbalance, fat cells increase in size and themselves spit out inflammatory hormones to further inflame-age the system. 

Inflammaging – and the gut connection.

The gut can be a veritable inflammation factory. If we eat a lot of sugar and low-fiber processed food, and skimp on plant foods, especially non-starchy vegetables like greens, we’re literally starving the gut of the protection it needs. When our good bacteria go hungry and the bad ones multiply, the lining of the gut thins out and becomes more prone to “leaky gut,” when particles that should stay in the gut escape into the bloodstream causing system-wide inflammation. 

Slowing inflammaging – courtesy of the right diet, plus smart supplements.

The good news here is that we have the tools to slow down the inflammaging express. And nothing is more important than diet. You’ve probably heard this from me before but – ditch the bad stuff and embrace the good. I’m talking about proteins from clean sources, vegetables that are organic or locally farmed, and healthy fats. Low-sugar fruits that are high in polyphenol compounds, like the berries, are welcome on anybody’s anti-inflammatory menu. The more fiber in your diet the better – that’s food for your inflammaging-fighting good bacteria. Small, oily fish like sardines and herring are especially high in omega 3 fats which pack an anti-inflammatory punch. I recommend non-fish eaters, and anyone else for that matter, also take advantage of omega 3 supplements. Other anti-inflammatory supplements to consider include turmeric/curcumin, D3 and alpha lipoic acid to name a few.

Move your way away from inflammaging. 

Movement is right up there with diet when it comes to tamping down inflammation and slowing down inflammaging. A vigorous gym routine is fine, but the most important thing is just to move the body regularly and frequently – a long brisk walk is great – and avoid prolonged stretches in front of a screen without a break. In other words, don’t just sit there! Not in the mood to go outside? Then add a small under-the-desk walking pad or a mini-stair-stepper to your work set up and hop on for a few minutes every hour or so. The more you move, the more blood sugar you burn up, and the easier it will be for you to keep both your metabolism and your weight under control. 

De-flame with good sleep, stress relief and relaxation.

Excess stress and poor or too little sleep are inflammaging allies. Both of them pump up the production of the body’s primary stress hormone, cortisol, which pushes up insulin resistance and, you guessed it, inflammation. If you struggle with sleep, working on upgrading yours, and get started on that with my top better sleep tips as inspiration. When it comes to taming stress, here too, it’s an essential inflammaging-fighting practice. I’m a fan of meditation and yoga to chill out the system and stay on an even cortisol keel. But everyone is free to find their own combination of activities and techniques to stay centered. For some, a walk in nature or a regular session in the sauna or a hot bath before bed are indispensable anti-inflammaging tonics.