Inflammation: Your Body's Natural Healing Power

It’s inflammation. Yes, that notorious health villain. Ground-breaking new research shows that if you practise a few simple strategies after your workout, it will actually help you build muscle, boost immunity and fight stress. Learn to harness the benefits.

- Hollace Schmidt

Inflammation is one of the hottest health topics of the year. But until now, the focus has been solely on the damage it causes. As it turns out, that’s not the whole story. Researchers have recently discovered that inflammation can actually make us healthier. It has powerful healing effects and is a critical component of the immune system, says Joanne Donoghue, an exercise physiologist at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine. You need it to generate muscle, heal from injuries and even power through a tough day. The way it works is this: “Whenever you strength train or do cardiovascular exercise, you’re creating mini-traumas in your muscles,” Joanne explains. That triggers inflammation, which prompts the release of chemicals and hormones to repair the affected tissue and leads to stronger muscle fibres. Your bones also benefit, says Maria Urso, a human performance consultant with O2X, a wellness education company in the US. The load placed on your bones during strength training creates tiny divots in their weak areas, and inflammation kicks off a process that fills in those spots with new, stronger bone.

Inflammation is also crucial to recovering from an injury. Say you roll your ankle while running. “Within minutes, white blood cells rush to the injury site,” says Dr Wajahat Zafar Mehal, an associate professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. They assess the damage and fire up clusters of molecules known as inflammasomes, which activate small proteins that make your ankle turn red and swell. These inflammatory symptoms draw immune cells to the area to begin the healing process, Dr Mehal explains.

Preliminary animal studies show that workout-induced inflammation may even cause the immune system to operate more efficiently. That means inflammation created by exercise could potentially help to fight colds.