Inflammation is the scourge of modern life, judging by all the supplements, workouts and diets that promise to fight it. But what precisely gets inflamed, and why – and is it always a bad thing?
To understand what can go wrong with our bodies, it helps to remember that they haven’t evolved much since we were hunting and gathering a few thousand years ago. Our greedy response to sugar, for instance, worked well when we could only get it from wild berries; now that it’s combined with salt and fat into foods we can’t stop eating, it can be a problem. Or consider our stress response: if the only time your body reroutes resources from the immune system to your fight-or-flight system is during the occasional sabre-toothed tiger attack, that’s fine. If every mean tweet, upsetting headline or twinge of worry about the mortgage sends your systems into panic mode, your body never gets a chance to recuperate.
Inflammation, one of the least understood and most debated topics in health, works a bit like this. There are hundreds of cookbooks that promise to deliver an “anti-inflammatory diet”, with supplements, gels, teas, workouts, saunas and cryotherapy chambers offering the possibility of even more dramatic results. But inflammation, at its core, is a vital part of the body’s immune response – not something to try to eliminate. It is a complex biological process that occurs when the body detects harmful stimuli and its purpose is to protect you and kickstart healing. Sometimes this process gets out of control, leading to chronic inflammation that damages rather than heals. The tricky part? Our understanding of this process is evolving: there is a chance that, if you tweak your knee on a five-a-side pitch, you will still be given medical advice that was flipped on its head a decade ago.
