How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

You asked us to do a main feature on inflammation, so here we go!

Before we start, it’s worth noting an important difference between acute and chronic inflammation:

• Acute inflammation is generally when the body detects some invader, and goes to war against it. This (except in cases such as allergic responses) is usually helpful.
• Chronic inflammation is generally when the body does a civil war. This is almost never helpful.

We’ll be tackling the latter, which frees up your body’s resources to do better at the former.

First, the obvious…

These five things are as important for this as they are for most things:

1. Get a good diet—the Mediterranean diet is once again a top-scorer
2. Exercise—move and stretch your body; don’t overdo it, but do what you reasonably can, or the inflammation will get worse.
3. Reduce (or ideally eliminate) alcohol consumption. When in pain, it’s easy to turn to the bottle, and say “isn’t this one of red wine’s benefits?” (it isn’t, functionally*). Alcohol will cause your inflammation to flare up like little else.
4. Don’t smoke—it’s bad for everything, and that goes for inflammation too.
5. Get good sleep. Obviously this can be difficult with chronic pain, but do take your sleep seriously. For example, invest in a good mattress, nice bedding, a good bedtime routine, etc.

*Resveratrol (which is a polyphenol, by the way), famously found in red wine, does have anti-inflammatory properties. However, to get enough resveratrol to be of benefit would require drinking far more wine than will be good for your inflammation or, indeed, the rest of you. So if you’d like resveratrol benefits, consider taking it as a supplement. Superficially it doesn’t seem as much fun as drinking red wine, but we assure you that the results will be much more fun than the inflammation flare-up after drinking.

About the Mediterranean Diet for this…

There are many causes of chronic inflammation, but here are some studies done with some of the most common ones:

• Beneficial effect of Mediterranean diet in systemic lupus erythematosus patients
• How the Mediterranean diet and some of its components modulate inflammatory pathways in arthritis
• The effects of the Mediterranean diet on biomarkers of vascular wall inflammation and plaque vulnerability in subjects with high risk for cardiovascular disease
• Adherence to Mediterranean diet and 10-year incidence of diabetes: correlations with inflammatory and oxidative stress biomarkers*

*Type 1 diabetes is a congenital autoimmune disorder, as the pancreas goes to war with itself. Type 2 diabetes is different, being a) acquired and b) primarily about insulin resistance, and/but this is related to chronic inflammation regardless. It is also possible to have T1D and go on to develop insulin resistance, and that’s very bad, and/but beyond the scope of today’s newsletter, in which we are focusing on the inflammation aspects.

Some specific foods to eat or avoid…

Eat these:

• Leafy greens
• Cruciferous vegetables
• Tomatoes
• Fruits in general (berries in particular)
• Healthy fats, e.g. olives and olive oil
• Almonds and other nuts
• Dark chocolate (choose high cocoa, low sugar)

Avoid these:

• Processed meats (absolute worst offenders are hot dogs, followed by sausages in general)
• Red meats
• Sugar (includes most fruit juices, but not most actual fruits—the difference with actual fruits is they still contain plenty of fiber, and in many cases, antioxidants/polyphenols that reduce inflammation)
• Dairy products (unless fermented, in which case it seems to be at worst neutral, sometimes even a benefit, in moderation)
• White flour (and white flour products, e.g. white bread, white pasta, etc)
• Processed vegetable oils

See also: 9 Best Drinks To Reduce Inflammation, Says Science

Supplements?

Some supplements that have been found to reduce inflammation include:

• L-theanine
• Ashwagandha
• Turmeric w/ black pepper

(links are to studies showing their efficacy)

Consider Intermittent Fasting

Remember when we talked about the difference between acute and chronic inflammation? It’s fair to wonder “if I reduce my inflammatory response, will I be weakening my immune system?”, and the answer is: generally, no.

Often, as with the above supplements and dietary considerations, reducing inflammation actually results in a better immune response when it’s actually needed! This is because your immune system works better when it hasn’t been working in overdrive constantly.

Here’s another good example: intermittent fasting reduces the number of circulating monocytes (a way of measuring inflammation) in healthy humans—but doesn‘t compromise antimicrobial (e.g. against bacteria and viruses) immune response.

See for yourself: Dietary Intake Regulates the Circulating Inflammatory Monocyte Pool ← the study is about the anti-inflammatory effects of fasting

The Real Immune-Boosters

What comes to your mind when we say “immune support”? Vitamin C and maybe zinc? Those have their place, but there are things we can do that are a lot more important!

It’s just, these things are not talked about as much, because stores can’t sell them to you

Sleep

One of the biggest difference-makers. Get good sleep! Getting at least 7 hours decent sleep (not lying in bed, not counting interruptions to sleep as part of the sleep duration) can improve your immune system by three or four times.

Put another way, people are 3–4 times more likely to get sick if they get less sleep than that on average.

Check it out: Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

In short, for most of us this means lots of whole plant foods (lots of fiber), and limited sugar, flour, alcohol.

For more details, you can see our main feature on this: Keep Inflammation At Bay!

You may wonder why eating to reduce inflammation (inflammation is a form of immune response) will help improve immune response. Put it this way:

If your town’s fire service is called out eleventy-two times per day to deal with things that are not, in fact, fires, then when there is a fire, they will be already exhausted, and will not do their job so well.

Look after your gut microbiota

Additionally, healthy gut microbiota (fostered by the same diet we just described) help keep your body pathogen-free, by avoiding “leaky gut syndrome” that occurs when, for example, C. albicans (you do not want this in your gut, and it thrives on the things we just told you to avoid) puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes in them. And through those holes? You definitely do not want bacteria from your intestines going into the rest of your body.

See also: Gut Health 101

Actually get that moderate exercise

There’s definitely a sweet-spot here, because too much exercise will also exhaust you and deplete your body’s resources. However, the famous “150 minutes per week” (so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) will make a big difference.

See: Exercise and the Regulation of Immune Functions

Manage your stress levels (good and bad!)

This one swings both ways:

• Acute stress (like a cold shower) is good for immune response. Think of it like a fire drill for your body.
• Chronic stress (“the general everything” persistently stressful in life) is bad for immune response. This is the fire drill that never ends. Your body’s going to know what to do really well, but it’s going to be exhausted already by the time an actual threat hits.

Read more: Effects of Stress on Immune Function: the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

Supplement, yes.

These are far less critical than the above things, but are also helpful. Good things to take include:

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Zinc
• Elderberry
• Echinacea
• Garlic

Enjoy, and stay well!