Michael Mosley's five tips to reduce inflammation that could prevent 'silent killer'

Michael Mosley has shared five expert tips on the best ways to tackle inflammation, which can spawn an array of health problems if left untreated.

The response is required by the body’s immune system to help fight off infections. But there are times when it ignites when not needed and instead of fighting off toxins, this type of swelling persists over time, which scientists say is bad news.

If ignored, chronic inflammation could lead to serious conditions including heart disease – a silent killer that shows no symptoms until it’s too late, according to Harvard Health. It has also been linked to arthritis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and Mr Mosley has spoken on how to combat the problem on the latest instalment of his Just One Thing podcast.

Speaking to guest Professor Janet Lord of the Institute for Inflammation and Aging at Birmingham University, Mr Mosley explained how it can come about, Wales Online reports.

Michael Mosley, weight-loss guru and TV doctor

He said: “It certainly evolved as an acute response to injury or infection, and that’s absolutely fine. So normally at the end if you’ve resolved the infection and you’ve healed your wound, then the inflammation goes away. What we’re dealing with with ageing is a chronic inflammation, so it’s persisting for decades.

“And that’s where it’s harmful so that, for example, inflammation can damage the blood vessels, increasing your chance of cardiovascular disease. It reduces the ability of insulin to reduce blood glucose, so you get insulin resistance and then eventually diabetes.”

Prof Lord said: “For example, inflammation can damage the blood vessels, increasing your chance of cardiovascular disease. It reduces the ability of insulin to reduce blood glucose, so you get insulin resistance and then eventually diabetes. “

Professor Lord has shared five tips for reducing inflammation – all of them fairly straightforward.

Five ways to reduce inflammation

elderly man sitting on a sofa in the living room at home and touching his knee by the pain

1. Don’t sit for too long

But if you spend for example, each day, 8 to 10 hours sitting, you pretty well wipe a lot of that good work out. And so my top tip is “Don’t sit if you can help it for more than an hour at a time.”

Professor Lord has advised people to set a timer to remind them to stand regularly. “Just get into the habit of not sitting for any length of time and it really will help your health,” she added.

2. Reduce calorie intake

Professor Lord explained that studies have shown that eating “approximately 20 to 30 per cent less calories than are recommended” could help you live longer.

She explained that inflammation is made worse by being overweight and having more fat tissue. She said: “So the link there again is that if you’ve got less fat in your body, so if you take less calories in, you’ll have less adipose tissue and again less inflammation as a result of that.“

3. Exercise

Senior woman with friends exercising in yard

The academic’s next tip is to exercise more throughout life, as it offers a number of health benefits including lowering inflammation risks.

She said that people of older age shouldn’t fall into the trap of reducing physical activity with age, just because it’s deemed normal by society. Citing scientific testing, she said that people of all age groups can benefit from walking 10,000 steps a day.

Explaining its findings, she said: “So we got 200 older adults to wear a monitor to measure their steps accurately and then I looked at the level of inflammation in their body. The ones that were doing 3000 steps or less had heightened inflammation – we call it ‘inflammaging’.

“The ones that were doing five to 7000 had about half the level of inflammation, but they still had some inflammation. And below me, the ones that were doing 10,000 or more had no age-related inflammation. So it looks like 10,000 steps is what you should aim for. “

4. Reduce stress

Prof Lord said: “My next step is to try to reduce stress in your life if you got stress, no matter what the form or what the trigger is for the stress.

“This produces stress hormones in the body cortisol, which when you’re young, you can deal with. You can cope with this cortisol rise, and that’s partly because we have anti-stress hormones in the body.”

She said as people age they don’t cope with stress hormones and cortisol suppresses the immune system. She said: “But if you get an infection or you have some tissue damage, then the last thing you want is a suppressed immune system.”

If you’re looking to reduce stress, meditation is always a great place to start, while exercise has been proven as an emotional de-stressor.

5. Follow a Mediterranean diet

Mr Mosley is a big advocate of the Mediterranean diet for weight management, but it can also help keep inflammation at bay, thanks to its incorporation of healthy fats.

Professor Lord recommends following the Mediterranean Plus, which incorporates lean red meats, pulses, chicken, olive oil, oily fish, fruit and vegetables – with the addition of berries and nuts at least four times a week

She said: “There have been studies large, really good studies, almost 1000 people in them where they had half of them doing the Mediterranean, half of them doing this Mediterranean, plus Berries and nuts. The ones who were doing the Mediterranean, their cognitive decline was slowed by 7.5 years.

“The olive oil was also very important component and, as you say, the oily fish and the anti-inflammatory effects of the Omega three, definitely, I think I think that’s a lot of the benefit. Because we know these Omega three, the polyunsaturated fatty acids, poof For short, we know they’re anti-inflammatory, they’re another educator of the immune system.”

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