June 12, 2025
I spoke with The Times and the Telegraph recently about inflammation, diet and disease, and one of the recurring themes was physical fitness and inflammation:
This statement is overwhelmingly true. Physical, visible “fitness” seems to be a proxy for optimal health and wellness. But even if an individual appears ultra-fit and devoid of excess body fat, inflammation may nonetheless simmer underneath the surface. While exercise generally dampens inflammation, it can actually trigger excessive inflammation if not performed properly, including from issues like overtraining, exercising in the wrong way, or failing to schedule adequate recovery periods.
A fit, frequent gym-goer can also suffer with hidden inflammation due to an unhealthy diet, or even an ostensibly healthy diet that includes ultra-processed “health” foods that are not truly nutritious. Or perhaps the individual has optimized diet and exercise but faces other inflammatory exposures, like a high-stress lifestyle, inadequate sleep, poor air quality, chemical exposures, or undiagnosed infections. The inflammatory exposome—the external and internal factors a person is exposed to from birth to death that can lead to chronic inflammation–is vast.
Conversely, the following holds true as well:
Exercise, even in the absence of weight loss, can melt inflammatory visceral fat deep within the body and lower the numbers of immune cells infiltrating fat tissue. This is a remarkable notion, and one that reminds us that the most valuable gains from lifestyle habits like diet and exercise are not necessarily about the image in the mirror or the number on the scale. The bodily benefits, the imperceptible biological changes accruing from humble, daily habits, are hidden—as is the inflammation they are fighting—but they cannot be discounted.