

Study: if you want to reach 100, keep your inflammation levels low - ValentineC
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/08/09/study-if-you-want-to-reach-100-keep-your-inflammation-levels-low/

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tajen
They don't explain what is inflamation. Are bone fractures relevant to
inflamation? Chronic asthma? Surgery? Does eating less impact inflamation?

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mindcrime
Inflammation is, under ordinary circumstances, part of how your body reacts to
damage to itself in one area or another. When it's a short-term traumatic
injury you see it as, say, a swollen ankle. Chronic inflammation is different,
but if I understand correctly, involves the presence of the same molecules in
your blood. I'm not sure anybody _completely_ understands what causes chronic
inflammation or exactly _how_ it drives diabetes, heart-disease, etc., but
there's a lot of evidence for this.

OTOH, there is quite a bit of information on how to lower inflammation, and a
lot of it involves changes to your diet. It's also pretty easy to measure
inflammation. To some extent, when you have a blood lipid profile done, your
triglyceride count correlates positively with inflammation. There's a also a
separate, more specific test you can have done, which tests for something
called high sensitivity c-Reactive Protein. If you have high triglycerides
and/or high cRP, then you probably have some level of chronic inflammation.

How to lower it? Well, some people argue that triglyceride level (and
inflammation) directly correlate with carbohydrate intake. These people
advocate something like the ketogenic diet to lower inflammation. There are
also specific foods / supplements which are known to be anti-inflammatories.
Offhand I can think of fish / fish-oil, cherries / cherry-extract, cayenne
pepper, and, IIRC, turmeric. Possibly garlic as well, but I'm a little fuzzy
on that. Google "anti inflammatory foods" or something like that and you can
find a list easily enough.

Also, a good book that I recommend is "Cholesterol Clarity" by Jimmy Moore and
Dr. Eric C. Westman. It goes into some of this stuff.

See also: [http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2014/10/why-you-should-
pay...](http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2014/10/why-you-should-pay-
attention-to-chronic-inflammation/)

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karmakaze
Great description. I didn't know about the diet angle. I was just prescribed
anti-inflammatory meds for pinched nerves and now I can alter my diet to help.

