MECHANISM ENGINE

What Is Inflammation?

Acute inflammation, a cut, a sprained ankle, that one’s obvious and useful. The kind that took me longer to understand is the quiet kind, running low and constant in the background for years, that you can’t actually feel.

The Silent Cold

Chronic low-grade inflammation behaves a bit like a cold you never quite notice you’ve got. No fever, no sore throat, nothing dramatic enough to send you to bed. Just a background hum of the immune system staying slightly switched on, day after day, usually driven by visceral fat, a high-UPF diet, poor sleep, or ongoing stress. You don’t feel it directly the way you’d feel a proper illness. What you feel, eventually, is the knock-on effects, low energy, achy joints, and over years, a body that’s working harder just to stay level.

Inflammation is the immune system’s response to perceived threat or damage. Acute inflammation is short-lived and protective, part of healing. Chronic low-grade inflammation, by contrast, persists over months or years at a lower intensity, driven by factors including excess visceral fat, ultra-processed food intake, poor sleep, and psychological stress. It’s implicated in a wide range of long-term conditions and is one of the mechanisms linking lifestyle factors to metabolic and cardiovascular risk.

NHS and NICE materials link chronic low-grade inflammation to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and other long-term conditions, with diet, movement, and sleep quality identified as modifiable contributing factors.

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Related mechanisms

Educational only, not medical advice. Speak to your GP before changing your fasting pattern, diet, or medication.

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What this is based on

NHS and NICE guidance, cross-referenced against Neil’s own NHS blood test record going back to April 2012. See the full timeline and current numbers.