Inflammaging: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How Food & Lifestyle Can Turn the Dial Down
I overheard this exchange the other day:
“Remember when you could just jump out of bed in the morning? Now everything hurts.”
“Yeah. Sucks to get older.”
But is morning stiffness, joint pain, brain fog, and that overall “slowing down” just about candles on a cake? Or is there an underlying cause that is at the root cause of these symptoms? If the calendar were the culprit, how do we explain why some 40-year-olds feel 80, while some 80-year-olds feel 40?
A big part of that gap comes down to something researchers call “inflammaging”—a term used to describe chronic, low-grade, system-wide inflammation that tends to rise with age in a compounding effect and is associated with a higher risk of conditions like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and cognitive decline. The good news: we can influence it.
How inflammaging happens
The compound effect mentioned above is really at the heart of this buildup of inflammation in the body. Here are three ways the cascade of inflammaging sets in:
1) Clean-up slows, build-up grows
Over time, everyday exposures and normal “wear-and-tear” byproducts can build up faster than we clear them. The body’s clean-up crew, liver, kidneys, lymph, and cellular housekeeping, may get overwhelmed. When waste lingers, energy production feels less efficient, repair lags, and low-grade inflammation smolders.
2) The immune system gets jumpy (and tired)
With constant low-level irritants, the immune system can become both over-reactive and under-effective—quick to sound the alarm, slower to resolve it. That dysregulation keeps small sparks burning and makes aches, brain fog, and slow recovery more common.
3) Leaky barriers create a loop
Your gut lining and microbiome act like a smart filter. When that filter gets irritated—by stress, poor sleep, low-fiber diets, certain meds, or infections—tiny irritants can slip into the bloodstream. The result is a vicious cycle: irritation → leakier gut → more immune alarms → more irritation.
Signs that chronic inflammation may be part of your picture
Persistent fatigue, brain fog, joint or muscle aches, GI symptoms (bloating, irregularity), high stress reactivity or struggle to recover from stressful events, sleep disruption, and slower exercise recovery are all signs you might be dealing with inflammaging. If you live with an autoimmune condition, many of these may feel familiar—autoimmunity involves immune dysregulation and inflammation, which can accelerate the same wear-and-tear pathways seen in aging. To be clear, aging isn’t an “autoimmune disease,” but the processes overlap.
Whether you battle a chronic inflammatory illness or you are “simply getting older,” the destructive mechanisms of inflammation are present in most of us. This is why anti-inflammatory diets and lifestyle practices can have a dramatic positive impact, even for people who aren’t dealing with an autoimmune diagnosis.
While advanced functional medicine labs can be beneficial at uncovering root causes, simple routine labs can also tell us a lot about inflammatory markers and help paint a baseline picture of inflammation in your body.
Talk to your practitioner about these:
- White blood cells count with differentials
- C-reactive protein
- Triglycerides
- Homocysteine
- Ferritin with a full iron panel
- Liver enzymes (ALT/AST/GGT)
- 25-OH Vitamin D
Can you eliminate inflammaging?
Aging is natural; excess inflammation is not. While we can’t stop the clock, we can lower inflammatory load, improve repair, and clear cellular “debris,” which often translates to better energy, mobility, mood, and resilience.
Below is a practical, NTP-informed plan you can start today.
1) Pattern matters
Establishing patterns and routines can be a way to signal safety to your body and lower inflammation. Your body runs on rhythms and cycles. From the circadian rhythm to how we generate energy. Anchor your day so your biology knows it’s safe to repair by choosing to support those systems, not disrupt them.
- Consistent sleep/wake times (aim 7–9 hours).
- Morning daylight exposure; dim light at night.
- Build simple evening cues (warm shower, stretch, journal) to signal “off-duty.”
Regularity—not perfection—drives hormones, detoxification, and tissue repair. - Eating at a similar time every day
2) Diversity builds resilience
Another key factor is our ability to adapt. Whether it’s strategizing through a new challenge, learn new things, recovering from stressful events, and utilizing different nutrients thanks to something called metabolic flexibility. Our body intrinsically needs to be challenged for our health, but just enough.
While habits are key for repair and detoxification, diversity is key for renewal and growth.
Simple ways to add diversity and pair steady routines with fresh inputs:
- Brain: take a new walking route, learn a skill/dance, or play a strategy game.
- Movement: rotate activities—walk, resistance train, hike, swim. Learn a new dance – you don’t have to be good at it, you just need to challenge your body to adapt to something new.
- Food: “eat the rainbow” and rotate proteins (wild fish, pasture-raised poultry, grass-fed ruminants). Variety broadens nutrients and, for sensitive folks, reduces the chance of reacting to the same foods repeatedly.
This is also why AIP is both elimination and reintroduction. Use the elimination phase to quiet symptoms and flood your body with nutrients, then reintroduce to personalize your long-term diet.
3) Dietary quality > everything
It is a no-brainer that processed foods, synthetic sweeteners, artificial dyes, natural flavors that are engineered in a lab, Genetically Modified Organisms, glyphosate, fruit wax, pesticides, herbicides, all contribute to an accumulation of toxins in the body, which then needs to be processed and removed. This process requires optimized functions and a lot of resources.
Choosing real, whole foods, as close to their natural form as possible, raised and grown for optimal nutrient density, will ensure the fuel we bring to our body is easy to break down, absorbed, and filled with the resources we need for repairing tissues and removing toxins from the body.
Aim for:
- Whole foods close to their natural form.
- Organic produce prioritize the dirty 12 if you can’t source all organic.
- Wild-caught seafood and pasture-raised/grass-fed meats.
- Olive oil, avocado, coconut, olives; herbs and spices for polyphenols.
Environmental contaminants (e.g., certain pesticides and PFAS, “forever chemicals”) can persist in the body for years. You can’t control everything, but upgrading daily choices meaningfully reduces the burden.
4) Move your body—consistently
Movement is life. A sedentary lifestyle is now considered one of the main risks of cardiovascular disease. Our lymphatic system, which carries toxins back to our liver and is a key component of our immune system, relies mainly on muscle action and diaphragm motion to be propelled through the body. Stagnation leads to an accumulation of toxins and an increase in inflammation.
Movement also improves insulin sensitivity, lowers inflammatory markers, and supports mood and sleep.
A quick note, though, too much movement can also create inflammation. Like everything, it’s about balance!
5) Tame the “inflammo-nervous system”
We are designed to adapt and short bursts of stress or challenges can be healthy. However, unremitting stress is inflammatory and highly destructive.
Feeling overwhelmed at the thought of lowering stress in your life? Try this simple “stress bucket” practice:
- Write each stressor on its own slip of paper and drop into a jar, a bucket or a hat.
- Pick one slip daily and take a concrete action toward resolution (call, boundary, plan).
- If it’s not solved, put it back and pick again tomorrow.
Progress over perfection is the point. It’s not about eliminating those in one day, it’s about building progress and breaking free of the oppressive aspect of chronic stress slowly but surely.
6) Smart supplementation (personalize with a practitioner)
The concept of a supplement, like the name says, it to add extra support to your routine. Let me be clear – you cannot out-supplement a bad diet or poor lifestyle. But together they can be used to enhance and offer a protective effect against inflammaging. Here are some targeted supports that can help close gaps:
- Collagen (especially type I/III) to support connective tissue.
- Digestive support if needed: bitters; or supervised betaine HCl/enzymes when low stomach acid or pancreatic insufficiency is suspected. (Stomach acid output often declines with age; avoid HCl if you have ulcers or are at risk.)
- Omega-3s (EPA/DHA) for inflammatory balance and cellular health.
- Glutathione helps fight oxidative stress and protects your tissues
- Fat-soluble vitamins – A,D,E,K
- Magnesium for sleep, muscle relaxation, and metabolic support.
- Prebiotic fibers (e.g., inulin, PHGG) and fermented foods to feed a healthy microbiome; consider butyrate if advised.
Of course, each person might find additional tailored support for their own bio-individual needs, but some of those simple tips can help you stay ahead of the cascade.
Closing thoughts
Whether you’re navigating autoimmunity or “just getting older,” the takeaway is empowering: your daily choices can quiet inflammaging.
Follow your body’s natural rhythms, protect sleep, and invite diversity—of movement, foods, and mental challenges. Choose real, well-sourced food most of the time. Move often. Set boundaries with stress. Use targeted supports when they’re right for you.
Do a little, consistently. Retest simple labs after 8–12 weeks. Notice what improves—energy, joints, digestion, mood—and keep iterating. That’s how we turn down the volume on inflammaging and build a future where 80 can feel a lot closer to 40.
Educational only; not medical advice. Please partner with your healthcare provider for diagnosis and treatment.