How to Fight Chronic Inflammation As You Age | Time Bomb #2: Inflammaging

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
The fire inside, how to extinguish the time bomb of inflammation. As a woman in midlife, you are likely very familiar with feeling hot. But today, I want to talk about a different kind of heat, a heat happening at the cellular level. I'm talking about chronic inflammation. Inflammation, in its acute form, is a beautiful thing. It's your body's emergency response team. But we do not live in a perfect world. And for many of us, that emergency response team never stands down. Your body keeps fighting and fighting when there's actually no more foe. It stays on high alert. This is the second major time bomb of aging. We call it inflammaging. And it is quietly roasting you from the inside out. In my late 40s, despite being an orthopedic surgeon who studied the musculoskeletal system and its aging, I hit a wall. Then my estrogen walked out the door because I was in perimenopause. Estrogen is a powerful anti-inflammatory hormone.
When it declined, I lost that biological shield, and suddenly my whole body hurt. I had arthralgia, and I was exhausted, and I gained visceral fat, and I felt like I had aged a decade overnight. I was experiencing the profound systemic damage of inflammation.
When your body is chronically inflamed, it damages healthy tissues, it accelerates your joint breakdown, and increases your risk for cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and metabolic syndrome. Here's the thing. When you engage consistent strategic physical activity, you release anti-inflammatory myokines from your muscles.
Research shows that engaging in physical activity consistently lowers inflammatory cytokines in post-menopausal women. Muscle, yeah, muscle is your metabolic engine. And when you use it correctly, it acts as a systemic fire extinguisher. We must also look at the gut.
When your gut microbiome loses diversity as you age, it leads to more systemic inflammation. We must feed your microbiome with probiotics, prebiotics, and help to maintain its diversity. First solution to inflammation is unbreakable nourishment. Eliminate the highly processed sugars that act like gasoline on the fire and replace them with omega-3s, antioxidants, and at least 30 grams of fiber a day. Second, hormone optimization. The loss of estrogen removes a critical anti-inflammatory shield. Working with a clinician to optimize your hormones is a critical step. Third, hormetic stress mastery.
Mindfulness, deep breathing, and quality sleep are scientifically proven to help reduce circulating inflammatory cytokines. Listen, you don't have to accept joint pain, brain fog, and exhaustion as the inevitable cost of getting older. You do not have to live on fire.
By taking control of your movement, your nutrition, and your stress, you can extinguish the time bombs of inflammation. Longevity is not passive. It is built by design.
If you have learned from this episode about the time bombs of aging and the shields that you can build to make your Unbreakable Lifestyle, you can find all the information in-depth in my book Unbreakable, A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power. This book has been transformational in the lives of hundreds of thousands of women, and I invite you to read it too. So subscribe to this channel and go get your copy of Unbreakable, A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power.