It is one of the scourges of life in the modern world: chronic inflammation. This unhelpful response from the body’s immune system is linked to accelerated aging and conditions such as stroke and heart disease.
What if we could curb it by consuming certain foods, like spinach, walnuts and salmon? That’s the promise of anti-inflammatory diets, often promoted in vague terms by the media and the nutrition industry. It can cause the scientifically minded to have moments. But recent research reveals that this approach is not as fancy as it sounds and paints a nuanced picture of the connections between food, inflammation and our long-term health.
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Inflammation is a critical part of our response to injury and disease. But when the body continues to distribute it even when there is no traumathis results in chronic inflammation. Exactly why this occurs is unclear, but genetics, environment and lifestyle play a role. It can be detected by measuring certain chemical markers in the blood, and has been increasingly linked to poor health.
“Chronic inflammation is a driver of many common diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis and dementia,” says John Mathers at Newcastle University in Great Britain. It has also been involved in certain mental states.
But how…