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How do I reduce inflammation?

Are you sure you actually have an issue with inflammation?
If you are overweight, take steps to reduce body fat.
If you are a healthy weight, maintain your healthy weight.
Exercise regularly.
Eat a varied diet including whole grains, vegetables, beans/legumes, fruits, nuts and fish, including oily fish like salmon and sardines.

Inflammation, like gut health, is a hot topic in nutrition. Both are areas of developing research in which the experts say more research and time is needed before making specific recommendations.

Both are also areas in which ‘gurus’ are trying to make money from the hysteria and noise. Be very careful of anyone who claims to be sure about inflammation, dietary causes and dietary treatments. If you are considering spending any money on “inflammation reduction” from anyone who is not your doctor or medical professional, be sure to ask them which measures of inflammation they’re concerned about and exactly how their proposed treatment works for the particular inflammatory processes they believe you have. Then take that information to your medical professional before giving any of your hard earned money to a guru.

Now that the rant is done, let’s try to explain things as simply as possible.

What is inflammation

A complex biological immune response of body tissues to cellular injury
The purpose of inflammation is to eliminate toxic agents and repair damaged tissue
We want inflammation to happen, however we also want inflammation to go away when its job is done.
The resolution (removal) of inflammation once the job is done is also important.
- eg. switching off inflammatory processes when the injury has been repaired.

Inflammation is a ‘friend’. However we can have issues if our friend overstays its welcome.

Acute inflammation

A great friend. Goes in and gets the job done. As soon as the job is done, leaves you in peace.
You get a splinter, the area becomes red and swollen as the inflammatory response heals you. The area goes back to normal as the inflammatory response is turned off after healing.
Exercise produces an acute inflammatory response and contributes to lower chronic disease risk. Not all inflammation is bad.

Chronic inflammation and auto-immune diseases

A foe. Overstays welcome, won’t leave and becomes damaging.

Eg: Celiac disease, Inflammatory bowel disease

Chronic low grade inflammation

The ‘hot topic’ inflammation people are telling you to reduce.
Widely observed in obesity.

There is an association between chronic low grade inflammation and:
- metabolic syndrome
- non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
- type 2 diabetes
- CVD (1)(2)(3)

Gut health

There is a link between gut health and low grade chronic inflammation
Interactions between the GI tract and gut bacteria influence immune function and inflammation

How to maintain a healthy gut to help with inflammation

Research is still developing and recommendations are tentative, however:
- Eat a varied diet including whole grains, vegetables and fruits, nuts, and fish. This ensures you are eating fibre, particularly fermentable fibre (prebiotic), antioxidants and Omega-3 fatty acids. (1)(4)(5)

How do we test for inflammation?

We know that inflammation occurs in the body tissue, however we generally look at blood to find biomarkers and signs of inflammation. (6)

To give you an example of how many markers of inflammation show up, here is a chart from a review of research on dairy and biomarkers of inflammation.

Here is the key for the graph if you can see the bars:

significant anti-inflammatory change (black bars)
no significant change (grey bar)
significant pro-inflammatory change (white bars) (7)

The main purpose of the image above is to show how many markers of inflammation show up during these tests. Top researchers are unclear as to which markers are necessary to focus on. In fact it could actually be a combination of markers which determine if there is a level of risk or issue which needs to be addressed.

An expert group, organised by the Nutrition and Immunity Task Force of the International Life Sciences Institute European Branch, stated -

“Currently, there is no consensus as to which markers of inflammation best represent low-grade inflammation or differentiate between acute and chronic inflammation or between the various phases of inflammatory responses.” (6)

Despite this, there are ‘inflammation gurus’ out there claiming that they somehow know you have inflammation and obviously know how to fix it.

Foods with anti-inflammatory properties?

Rather than focusing on individual foods, it’s better to focus on eating a varied diet including whole grains, vegetables and fruits, nuts and fish. Focusing on one particular food and particular markers of inflammation may be too reductionist at this point.
Some studies indicate that Omega-3 supplementation (fish oils) appear to reduce markers of inflammation however not all positive results have been replicated in further studies. It could help reduce these markers but we are probably talking about a neutral to slight positive effect. (4)

Best way to reduce chronic low grade inflammation?

It appears that fat gain causes inflammation, not the other way around.
An increase in body fat is associated with an increase in inflammatory material.
Flip that and a reduction in body fat is associated with a reduction in inflammatory material.

Reducing body fat may have the greatest effect on lowering markers for low grade chronic inflammation. (8)(9)(10)(11)

This is an attempt to simplify chronic low grade inflammation and help you stay informed. To read a more in-depth review, check out the paper from the British Journal of Nutrition entitled “Low-grade inflammation, diet composition and health: current research evidence and its translation.” (1)

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