What is inflammation,and what does it have to do with being overweight? Remarkable new research links obesity and inflammation. Being overweight promotes inflammation and inflammation promotes obesity in a terrible, vicious cycle. More than half of Americans are inflamed, and most of them don’t know it. Getting to the root of inflammation and cooling it off is key to reducing the obesity epidemic and your own waist size.

What is inflammation, anyway? Most of us are familiar with inflammation. The classic signs are pain, swelling, redness, and heat—as with a bad sore throat or infected hangnail.This is a good thing, as it fights foreign invaders of all types.

Inflammation is part of the body’s natural defense system against infection, irritation, toxins, and other foreign molecules. A specific cascade of events occurs in which the body’s white blood cells and specific chemicals (cytokines) mobilize to protect you from foreign invaders.

But sometimes the natural balance of the immune system, which produces just enough inflammation to keep infections, allergens, toxins, and other stresses under control, is disrupted.The immune system shifts into a chronic state of alarm or inflammation,spreading a smoldering fire through- out the body.This fire in the heart causes heart disease, in the brain causes dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, in the whole body causes cancer, in the eyes causes blindness, and, as we are just discovering, in our fat cells causes obesity.

While on the one hand this inflammatory process is protective, it can go awry, not only in individuals with inflammatory diseases such as arthritis but in otherwise healthy individuals whose lifestyles and/or environments expose them to substances the body perceives as irritants, such as low-grade infections from gum disease, food allergens, toxins, and even inflammatory foods such as sugar and animal fat.

Likewise, while inflammation is sometimes obvious, such as when an injured area becomes swollen, red, and warm to the touch, what science is teaching us is that inflammation can occur much more quietly and insidiously. It can occur silently without any symptoms. It is even emerging as a major cause of heart disease, diabetes, cancer,Alzheimer’s disease, and aging in general. It is also connected to weight gain.Inflammation is a silent killer, and unless it is adequately dealt with it can have disastrous effects on your weight and your health.

Anything that causes inflammation can make you gain weight, and any weight you gain can cause more inflammation. The most common cause of systemic inflammation is our modern diet (sugar, animal fat, and processed food, or the high-glycemic-load diet most Americans are eating) and lack of exercise. Other things contribute but to a lesser extent, such as food (particularly gluten) and environmental allergens,infections, stress,and toxins.

To help you get a sense of whether or not you are suffering from chronic inflammation, take the following assessment exam.



If you are inflamed for any reason, it is very important to find the cause and reduce the inflammation,not just for the purpose of weight loss but because it is a major cause of all the major degenerative diseases of modern civilization: heart disease, dementia, diabetes, and cancer. Now that you know how inflamed you are, you can take action to turn off the fire that’s burning in your body.This chapter will teach you how to do that.


We have to find the factors that increase inflammation and get rid of them. You can take all the anti-inflammatory drugs you want (or eat all the fish oil or chocolate nibs you want), but if you don’t get rid of the cause you will simply be covering up the symptoms.

It’s like the old adage from my mentor, Sidney Baker,M.D.:“If you are standing on a tack, it takes a lot of aspirin to make you feel better.The treatment for standing on a tack is removing the tack.”The treatment for inflammation comes on your plate and in your shoes.What you eat and how much you exercise are the most important factors governing inflammation.

Finding the causes of inflammation is not always easy.The most common and obvious causes are our diet and being sedentary. But there are many factors, and at times specialized testing is needed to find hidden causes. Dietary factors such as excess sugar, refined carbohydrates, saturated and trans fats, or just too many calories can also cause inflammation. Sometimes the cause may be a hidden infection, something you eat or breathe that you are allergic to, or an environmental toxin.

Stress will also make you inflamed.And though just sitting around doing nothing also causes inflammation,regular exercise is one of the best-known anti-inflammatories on the planet.9 Multivitamins are also a great natural inflammation-fighting tool.10

By identifying the sources of inflammation—sugars and refined highglycemic- load, rapidly absorbed carbohydrates; saturated and trans fats; lack of exercise; gluten; food allergies; mold in damp basements or moldy bathrooms, or hidden in walls; a hidden infection such as a virus, parasite, or bacterium that doesn’t cause immediately obvious symptoms; or a medication you are taking—and getting rid of them you can stop chronic inflammation.

Sometimes this requires detective work, testing, and working with an experienced doctor, but the results for your weight and your health will be worth the effort.


Copyright © 2006 by Mark Hyman, M.D. From the book ULTRAMETABOLISM by Mark Hyman. Published by Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y. Reproduced by permission.