Office Hours: Inflammation isn't Something to Eliminate. It's Something to Regulate

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a sixteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
If inflammation is designed to heal us, why does it begin hurting us as we age? Why does so many of us feel like our bodies are fighting a battle even when we're not sick? Maybe your joint's sick. Maybe your brain feels foggy. Maybe you're tired all the time.

You can't lose weight like you used to. Maybe your blood work keeps showing signs of inflammation, even though you're doing, quote, all the right things. Well, at first glance, those problems don't seem connected. One affects your brain, another affects your metabolism, another affects your heart or your joints. But what if they're all being driven by the same underlying biological process?

Over the last decade, scientists have discovered that many of these seemingly unrelated conditions are connected by one remarkably powerful part of your immune system. Think of it as your body's master inflammation switch. Its job is to detect danger, to protect you, to coordinate your body's response to injury or infection. And when it's working properly, it's one of the reasons you survive. But when that switch stays activated for too long, the very system designed to protect you can begin working against you.

The researchers believe that this pathway plays an important role in many of the chronic diseases associated with aging, from metabolic dysfunction and heart disease to neurodegenerative diseases and arthritis. The scientific name for this immune switch is called NLRP3 inflammasome. And don't worry about remembering the name. What's important is understanding how it works because once you do, you'll start looking at inflammation and aging in a completely different way. Now today, we're going explore what keeps this inflammation switch turned on, why modern life makes that happen more often than ever before, and the science backed habits that help restore balance to your immune system.

Because longevity isn't about shutting down inflammation. It's about teaching your body the difference between a true emergency and the stress of everyday modern life. This episode was brought to you by Function. Get access to over 160 lab tests annually at functionhealth.com/mark. Now before we can understand this hidden inflammation switch, we have to rethink inflammation itself.

Because inflammation has gotten a bad rap. People hear the word, and immediately think, oh, bad. But that's not simply true. Inflammation is one of your body's oldest survival tools. It's how you heal.

It's how you fight infection. It's how you recover after exercise. Imagine you cut your hand while cooking dinner. Within seconds, your immune system jumps into action. Blood vessels widen.

The immune cells rush to the area. They destroy bacteria. They clear away damaged tissue. They begin rebuilding healthy skin. That's inflammation doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The same thing happens after a challenging workout. Your muscles experience tiny amounts of damage. Inflammation arrives not to hurt you, but to help rebuild stronger muscles than before. In other words, inflammation isn't something to eliminate. It's something to regulate.

The problem comes when your immune system never gets the message that danger has passed. Imagine your home smoke detector. If there's a real fire, you want that alarm blaring. It could save your life. But imagine the fire goes out, smoke detector keeps screaming day after day, week after week.

Eventually, the alarm becomes a problem. So when we have an acute injury, we want that inflammation to take over. We want the body to start to bring in all the repair chemicals and the cytokines and inflammatory repair molecules, and that's all great. But that's acute. What happens in modern life is that we are exposed to chronic inflammatory triggers.

The biggest one being our inflammatory diet, changes in our microbiome as a result of that, chronic stress, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, environmental toxins. All these things create this low grade inflammatory response to the body that doesn't feel acute, but it creates this constant immune activation that damages healthy tissues instead of protecting them. Which raises a fascinating question. Why does the alarm system stay on? Right?

This is a really important discovery in immunology. Inside every immune cell, there's a remarkable molecular security system. Scientists call this the n l r p three inflammasome. And don't worry about remembering the name, like I said. What's more important is understanding what it does.

Think of it as your body's internal smoke detector. Its job is to constantly scan for danger, bacteria, viruses, damaged cells, environmental toxins, metabolic stress. And when it detects a real threat, it sounds alarm. It activates the powerful inflammatory messengers, things called cytokines like interleukin one beta and interleukin 18. These help coordinate the body's defense.

Now those signals are essential for fighting infections and for repairing injury. That's exactly what you want if you have pneumonia or if you step on a rusty nail. But here's where modern life creates a real problem. Your inflammasome can't always tell the difference between an actual emergency and the constant barrage of unhealthy signals we experience every day. Poor sleep, chronic stress, ultra processed food, high blood sugar, visceral fat, damaged mitochondria, sedentary lifestyle.

And over time, these signals can repeatedly activate this immune alarm. So instead of switching on occasionally, it stays on far more than it should. Now researchers believe that chronic over activation of the NLRP three inflammasome plays an important role in many diseases associated with aging, including type two diabetes, atherosclerosis, or hardening the arteries. And you get clots and heart attacks, fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. It's not the only cause, but it's increasingly recognized as a central player in inflammatory signaling.

So naturally, the question becomes, what are the biggest things in our daily lives that keep flipping this switch? Let's start with something we all underestimate, sleep. We tend to think of sleep as passive, like we're simply turning off our brain for the night. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sleep is when your body repairs.

Your brain clears metabolic waste. Your hormones rebalance. Your immune system recalibrates. Think of sleep as the nightly reset button for inflammation. Now when you constantly get enough high quality sleep, your immune system learns to turn the alarm off.

But when you're chronically sleep deprived, the opposite happens. Your body interprets sleep loss as a stress. Inflammatory signaling increases. Recovery slows down. Blood sugar becomes harder to regulate.

Even your appetite changes. One poor night of sleep won't ruin your health. But when poor sleep becomes normal, your immune system begins acting like it's constantly under attack. The The next signal isn't physical. It's emotional.

Stress, a big one. Now here's something important. Your immune system doesn't distinguish very well between different kinds of stress. Whether you're running from a predator or worrying about your finances or answering emails until midnight, your biology often responds in remarkably similar ways. Your nervous system shifts into fight or flight.

Stress hormones rise. Your body prepares for the danger, and that response is incredibly helpful for a few minutes. It becomes harmful when it never ends. Today, many of us are living in a constant state of low grade survival mode, always rushing, always stimulated, always connected. And your immune system is listening to every single bit of it.

And this is why managing stress isn't just about feeling calmer. It's about changing the biological signals your immune system receives every single day. Now sometimes the most powerful anti inflammatory practice isn't another supplement. It's taking a walk, calling a friend, meditating, breathing deeply, spending time in nature. These simple habits tell your nervous system we're safe.

When your nervous system feels safe, your immune system, it often follows. I know one of the hardest things a patient can hear is everything looks normal, especially when they don't feel normal. They're exhausted, their joints hurt, they can't dig clearly in, they know something isn't right. I've seen this happen for years. Take autoimmune conditions.

They often begin long before they're discovered. And the markers to help identify them, ANA and thyroid antibodies, they are always included in routine physicals. So people spend so much time and money trying to explain symptoms and to get answers. That's exactly why we built Function. Function gives you access to 160 plus lab tests annually that measure signals in your blood, including nutrients, liver health, inflammation, and hormones.

You can also complete your health baseline with an annual MRI that helps you see organs, tissues, and other changes. Check your health at functionhealth.com/mark, and if you're one of the first 1,000 people this week, use the code mark 2026 for a $50 credit or your $365 a year membership. So let's talk about ultra processed food next and blood sugar. This is where metabolism enters the picture. Every time you eat, you're sending information to your immune system.

Whole foods send one message. Ultra processed foods send another message. Diet's high in refined carbs and sugars, industrial ingredients, added sugars, highly processed foods. I mean, these contribute to blood sugar spikes, visceral fat, oxidative stress, chronic low grade inflammation. Researchers sometimes call this meta inflammation, Inflammation driven by metabolic dysfunction.

Now over time, those repeated signals keep the immune system and the alarm switch on. Not one cookie or one slice of birthday cake. It's about the overall pattern. What you eat most of the time matters far more than what you eat once in a while. And one of the simplest ways to calm inflammation is eat foods your immune system recognizes, like vegetables, healthy fats, high quality protein, beans, nuts and seeds, lots of colorful plants, rich in polyphenols.

Food becomes information, and your immune system is reading every meal. But your cells still have to process that information, and that's where one of the biggest drivers of inflammation comes in, your mitochondria. And this surprises almost everyone. When people think about inflammation, they don't usually think about mitochondria, but they should. Mitochondria are your cells' power plants.

They produce energy that powers virtually everything your body does. But they're also incredibly sensitive. As mitochondria become damaged, they begin producing more free radicals or reactive oxygen species, like oxidative stress. They release distress signals. Your immune system interprets those signals as a danger, which can activate inflammatory pathways like the NLRP3 inflammasome.

But mitochondria are remarkably adaptable. Exercise stimulates your body to build healthier mitochondria. Quality sleep supports mitochondria repair. Autophagy helps recycle damaged mitochondria. And nutrient dense foods provide the building blocks they need to function efficiently.

Every workout, every walk, every time you challenge your muscles, you're not just burning calories, you're improving the health of the very organelles that help regulate inflammation. And finally, the biggest signal that keeps your immune system activated, visceral fat, which a lot of people have. This is fat stored deep inside your abdomen wrapped around your organs. Unlike the fat just beneath your skin, which is the subcutaneous fat, visceral or organ fat isn't simply stored energy. It's metabolically active.

It behaves almost like its own endocrine organ. It also acts like an immune organ. It produces inflammatory molecules called cytokines. It recruits immune cells. It creates constant stream of signals telling your immune system that something is wrong.

This is one of the reasons improving metabolic health has such profound effects on inflammation. When people lose visceral fat, they improve insulin sensitivity, they build muscle, they stabilize blood sugar. They're not just changing their weight, they're changing the conversation happening inside their immune system, which is why I spend so much time talking about metabolic health because metabolic health is immune health, and the immune health is longevity. Now here's what I find so exciting about this science. The same things that flip your immune alarm on can often be reversed.

Your immune system's incredibly responsive. It isn't fixed. It's constantly adapting the signals that you send. So instead of asking what's the best anti inflammatory supplement, I encourage you to ask a different question. What signals am I sending to my immune system every day?

Because every day healthy choices changes that conversation. Strength training improves insulin sensitivity and reduces visceral fat. Integral training supports mitochondrial health. Eating colorful fibrous foods nurses your gut microbiome and provides polyphenols that help regulate inflammation. Omega three fats from fatty fish, flax, and walnuts, well, they help balance inflammatory pathways.

Quality sleep gives your immune system time to reset. Stress reduction calms both your nervous system and your immune system. So notice something. None of these are exotic biohacks. They're the foundations of health.

And that's the beautiful thing about longevity science. The habits that help you feel better today are often the same habits that help you age better tomorrow. And we've covered a lot of science today, but at the end of the day, this isn't about memorizing the name of a protein complex or or inflammatory pathway. It's about understanding the signals you're sending to your body every day. So let me answer a few questions I hear most often.

Can one supplement turn off the inflammasome? No. Some nutrients like omega three fats, curcumin, they have been studied for their anti inflammatory effects, but no supplement can replace daily signals created by sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management, metabolic health. Another question I get is, can fasting help reduce inflammation? For some people, yes, it can.

Emerging research suggests that time restricted eating and fasting can influence some of those inflammatory pathways and the cellular repair processes. But fasting isn't a magic solution. It's one tool in a much bigger toolbox. Should I measure inflammation? Yes.

And one of the most useful markers we have is high sensitivity c reactive protein or HSCRP. Think of it as a general barometer of inflammation in the body. Now it's important to understand what it can and can't tell you. An elevated CRP doesn't tell you why you're inflamed. It tells you that your immune system may be responding to something that could be a poor metabolic health from a bad diet, It could be an infection.

It could be an autoimmune condition. It could be poor sleep. It could be something else. That's why I never look at HSCRP by itself. I always interpret it alongside the rest of the whole story.

Your metabolic health, your blood sugar, your cholesterol, your triglycerides, your liver health, your lifestyle, and most importantly, how you're actually feeling. This is one of the reasons I'm so excited about function and health. Instead of looking at one marker in isolation, function measures CRP on more than a 100 other biomarkers across metabolism, heart health, hormones, nutrients, liver function, inflammation, toxins. And looking at those markers together, it gives you such a more complete picture of what's driving your health rather than just treating a single lab value. But in functional medicine, we're not asking is the inflammation high, we're asking why is the inflammation high?

And that's where the real opportunity to improve your health begins. And here's what I hope you take away from today's conversation. Your immune system isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. The challenge is modern life keeps convincing it that you're under attack.

Too little sleep, too much stress, ultra processed food, physical activity, metabolic dysfunction, and day after day, those signals keep pressing the alarm button. And here's the empowering part. Your immune system is always listening. Every healthy meal, every strength workout, every walk after dinner, every night of restorative sleep, every time you calm your nervous system, you're sending your body a different message. You're safe.

The dangerous past. You can stop fighting. That's what healthy aging really looks like. Not eliminating inflammation, but restoring balance. Because longevity isn't about silencing your immune system.

It's about helping it become wiser, knowing exactly when to fight, and just as importantly, knowing when to rest. That's how we don't just add years to our lives, we add life to our years.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Doctor Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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