Dylan Scott

It can feel hot, but at the same time, that is like your body responding to a problem and trying to fix it.

And so, I mean, my sense is that the word developed because it has these literal associations with heat.

But I do think it's created this problem unintentionally where it just sounds like something negative.

Inflammation sounds like something that you want to get rid of.

And it certainly, like, put me in a different mind space when I learned that, like, oh, no, like, inflammation is, you know, it's your body repairing itself.

Like, that sounds positive, but it's not maybe, like, where your mind naturally goes when you hear the word inflammation.

So as one of the scientists I talked to for my story put it, every cell in your body can experience inflammation.

Oh, God.

A lot of that inflammation, to your point, is happening at the molecular level that we're never going to be able to perceive with our own eyes.

But even there, even with this invisible type of inflammation, there's a good kind and there's a bad kind.

So once again, it's more complicated than you might think.

There's first what scientists call homeostatic inflammation.

And this is basically like your body doing routine maintenance.

Like your cells, you know, we don't like to stop and think about this, but like, you know, they're degrading slowly over time.

Your body's stepping in all the time to make repairs.

Yes, exactly.

When you work out, when you lift weights, your muscles tear.

They're injured, basically.

And part of the reason that you get stronger is because then inflammation takes hold.

It repairs those muscles and it repairs them back stronger than they were before.