Dylan Scott

an unfortunate byproduct of our longevity is that our bodies do experience more inflammation over time.

Yeah, there's a lot of these things.

Honestly, Sally, all kinds of chronic health conditions are at least in part a byproduct of the fact that we live longer and our bodies just have more time for these problems to develop.

So there does seem to be this role of industrialization, you know, pollution, changes to our food production that is also playing a role in driving this chronic inflammation problem in addition to aging.

We don't face nearly as many infection risks from viruses or bacterias as we used to because we have modern sanitation and modern hygiene.

But we are still being exposed to all kinds of stuff like pollution and synthetic chemicals in our clothes.

And our immune system's natural response to that is to kick in the inflammation and try to respond to it.

But the thing is, it's not necessarily that there's a virus or bacteria or this sort of short-term health problem that our inflammation is able to respond to and then resolve.

Instead, it's just this miasma that we're living inside of that we're being exposed to all the time.

And I do think it kind of not just agitates our immune system, but it causes our immune system to go a little bit haywire.

And you're continually being exposed to it.

Right.

Whoa.

And I mean, I think like thinking about the food supply in particular is maybe helpful here.

Like to simplify a very complicated story, like our food production has completely changed like within the last century.

Like if we're talking about these long evolutionary timelines for our immune system to adjust and adapt, like we have sent a shock to the system just in like the last hundred years with the advent of, you know, mass agriculture and things like ultra processed foods.

And when you think about the ways that this kind of chronic disease

low-grade inflammation continues to persist, every day you're eating some kind of, maybe even despite our best efforts, you're eating some kind of new ultra-processed food or you're eating more sugar than is naturally healthy or maybe more fat, especially if you live in the United States.

And so your body goes into this response to try to do something about it, but there's nothing to resolve.

The next day, you're going to eat something again that's once again going to continue to perturb your immune system and start these inflammatory responses.