The problem with blaming everything on inflammation

Chronic inflammation is a modern health problem — one that too many wellness influencers oversimplify.

Inflammation is on everybody’s minds these days, and it seems like wherever you look, someone is telling you how to reduce your inflammation, from influencers on your TikTok feed or Instagram reels to even US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s the subject of countless papers in scientific journals, and the focus of self-help guides and so many news stories — like the one you’re reading right now.

When White House officials announced their new dietary guidelines on Wednesday, they said their approach would help people reduce the “general body inflammation” that they blame for driving America’s chronic disease crisis.

You’d be excused for wondering if inflammation is the cause of all our ailments and reducing it is the skeleton key to a healthy life.

But the story is more complicated.

“Inflammation has become a catch-all culprit,” Shruti Naik, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told me. “It’s a convenient shorthand, but it flattens a very complex biology.”

Key takeaways

Inflammation has become a catch-all culprit for our medical problems — but it’s actually an important biological process that our body needs. What we actually worry about is chronic low-grade inflammation above what is normal for us as individuals. That can lead to tissue damage and ultimately chronic diseases.
Scientists are working to establish better baselines because inflammation is so individualized. One day, we may actually be able to measure our systemic inflammation like we do blood sugar or blood pressure.

Chronic inflammation is indeed on the rise, a phenomenon that researchers have linked to industrialization and modern life. But inflammation isn’t all bad — it’s actually one of the most important things your body can do to fight infections and repair tissue. It is a flashing signal from your immune system. We just aren’t very good at reading it yet.

That uncertainty has created a vacuum, filled by oversimplified advice and dubious cures. In reality, managing inflammation requires far more nuance than a single supplement or a “clean” diet hack.

And today, scientists are starting to figure out that nuance. At major academic medical centers like Stanford and Mount Sinai, new clinics are measuring inflammation in patients over time, trying to define what “normal” actually looks like — and when it becomes dangerous.

Right now, when we go in for a health check-up, we might ask our doctor, How is my blood sugar? What’s my blood pressure? But none of us asks, How is my immune system doing? “Even if we did, they........

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