Today, Explained - Blame it on the inflammation

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

We are living in a time of inflammation information overload. Chronic inflammation is real, but Vox’s Unexplainable asks if it’s all bad. This episode was produced and hosted by Sally Helm, edited by Lissa Soep, with help from Joanna Solotaroff. Mixing and sound design from Cristian Ayala. Fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. A doctor assists a patient. Chronic inflammation is linked to numerous major health conditions. Photo via Me 3645 Studio/Getty Images. For Unexplainable transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Listen to Unexplainable ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometimes Sally Helm just wants to know what's wrong. Like, why am I so tired? Why does life feel so hard? And I have come to learn that if you address that question not to your sister or your therapist, but instead to TikTok, you can get a blessedly simple answer. Inflammation is the root of all disease. The root cause of almost all chronic illnesses and aging itself. Heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, even some forms of cancer. Acne, eczema, hair loss, hormonal issues, PMS, bloating, irregular bowel movements.

Are you worried? Because don't worry, there are also tips. First is supplements. Curcumin is extremely anti-inflammatory. Cinnamon's very anti-inflammatory. Tip number two, consider taking a break from food. Number three, more fish. Okay, and now I am confused, because it sounds like a lot of. like I'm supposed to eat a lot of fish sprinkled with curcumin, which I don't actually know what that is. The main active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin. Okay, great. Which on its own is not easily absorbed by your body.

Uh-oh. Enter black pepper, specifically peppering. Okay, check. But then I'm also supposed to not eat food? The ancient practice of interminton fasting can also help lower inflammation in the body. And I'm probably also supposed to buy something? Together, they really create this potent, extract in this bottle. At this point, I'm like, as much as I wanted a nice simple explanation, this just can't be real. Like, inflammation cannot be the root of all diseases. But then I came across a recent big piece by my colleague at Fox, health reporter Dylan Scott. And the science in this piece, it was really surprising to me.

Because it sounds like there is something to the idea. that chronic inflammation may be behind many of the diseases of modern life. But it also sounds like we've demonized inflammation without pausing to ask what it's good for. Today Explained is ushering in the long weekend with a feature from our friends at Unexplanable. So get ready to get inflamed. Support for Today Explain comes from Service Now. AI is moving fast, but without visit, It's just chaos, different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely

different ways. A mess. Service Now turns that mess into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. Oh, what it's doing, what it's done, what it's about to do, so you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I am talking with Roxanne Gay.

That's right. Roxanne Gay. Roxanne is a fearless writer and cultural critic whose impact goes way beyond her New York Times bestselling books. We dig into all the big moments of her life. And of course, she shares if she's more mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Dylan Scott, hello. Hi, Sally.

All right, Dylan. I have seen many, many different TikToks about inflammation and how it's perhaps causing like every single health problem in our lives. And I am curious, like, before you started looking into this, did you see those? Is that what sent you on this journey? Absolutely. Like, I love something that's sort of at the intersection of there is, like, a genuine scientific question underlying all of this. Like, this is a serious topic that a lot of, you know, well-credentialed researchers are spending their time looking into. But at the same time, it's sort of infiltrated the wellness influencer subculture. that defines so much of how we talk about health these days.

And it has become a catch-all culprit for a lot of different health conditions. And you've also got people out there talking about, you know, diets or supplements or some kind of other interventions that you can take to try to reduce your, quote-unquote, inflammation. Do you have any favorites or least favorites? Seamoss has become a fixation for some people, like, people on TikTok. It sounds so specific that I'm like, okay, let's do it. Like, maybe it works.

Right. Well, and people, they talk about it with such confidence. Like, that is the weird, like, allure of, you know, a lot of this wellness content on social media is because, yeah, it's like, it's quick. It's, you know, whatever, a 90-second video. It's digestible. And they're like, here, here is the elixir, the solution that will help to reduce your chronic inflammation. I think any of us would be like, well, that, those, that sounds. appealing. I'd like to try that out.

But as you've already said, Dylan, like, this is not just TikTok nonsense. Right. Like, the thing about inflammation is that there is this real body of evidence suggesting that there's something important to think about here. Yeah. So let's get into it. I do feel like I need to ask a kind of basic question before we go much further here, which is, Dylan, what is inflammation?

In essence, inflammation is your immune system going to. into attack mode and either sending like immunity cells or other kinds of chemicals that your body can release to try to get rid of some outside invader that your body perceives as having infiltrated it and wants to get rid of to keep you healthy. And so obviously, if that outside invader is a cold virus or the influenza virus or some bacteria or something like that,

like that's what we call a cute, inflammation. And that's, you know, that's something that we've known about for ages, even like ancient doctors knew that, like, the body goes into some kind of response when you get sick. And it's like, okay, great. Yes, get it gone. I don't want that in that. That's, I mean, yeah, for this kind of acute inflammation that we're talking about in response to a virus or a bacteria or a wound, you know, back in the ancient times that you might have gotten on the battlefield or something, you know, the red skin or puffy skin that can surround a wound. And, like, it can be painful, 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, like, the word developed because, like, 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 learn that, like, 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. I mean, and what you're saying, like, cold virus, wound, we've, like, felt and seen that. Like, I can imagine my throat being swollen if I have a cold.

But the scary thing is that it sounds like there's this secret other inflammation that can happen where it's just, like, invisible, microscopic in your whole body. Tell me about that. Is that the bad one? So as one of the scientists I talked to for my story, put it, like, 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, like, 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. And I'm even thinking, like, I guess if you like lift weights or workout or something, like do you... Exactly. Well, we want that. I mean, we need that type of thing. 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. I mean, that's the essence of strength training. So that is exactly, that kind of inflammation at the invisible level, that's desirable. That's just a part of your body functioning as it's supposed to. The third kind of inflammation and this other kind of invisible inflammation is what we're concerned about. And I've come to think, of it as this like chronic, low-grade inflammation that is above those routine maintenance levels,

that is not like sort of your body's normal homeostatic state of being. And that kind of inflammation, which can persist over a long period of time, is the kind of inflammation that scientists and physicians are worried about that we're beginning to realize can be associated with a wide range of health problems. All right. So I'm just recapping. Sure. Inflammation happens when your body goes into, like, defense mode, and your immune system sends blood containing, like, chemicals to help fight pathogens or heal a wound. And I can imagine why blood flowing to an area could lead to redness and swelling and heat and all those things. But it sounds like the concern is that being in constant defense mode like this can actually cause its own problems.

Yeah. And that is chronic inflammation. And, okay, honestly, Dylan, I can see why it is a concept that people are gravitating towards because it's just like something in the world is leaving us in this constant state of being a little bit agitated and like a little bit overheated. And that just kind of feels true to me. But I want to dig in on whether it is true. Like what is going on here?

So tell me first, like, what causes chronic inflammation? So I do think that your idea of sort of our bodies being agitated is really appropriate because there is increasingly evidence that it is modernity itself, our industrialized lifestyles that are at least contributing to this rise in chronic low-grade inflammation that leads to chronic health problems over time. It was easily the most interesting thing that I learned in reporting out this story. I mean, if you think about human beings and our immune system, those are things that develop over these really long timelines, tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of years. And when you think back to, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago, when modern humans were developing and their immune systems were evolving, we didn't live very long. And so like any kind of problem of like, you know, while your inflammation is starting to slowly increase over time, like had a pretty finite end point if you're not living past 40. It's not really going to become that much of a concern. And at the same time, we were living in a world where there are all kind of pathogens out there. There are viruses and bacterias as well as like, you know, physical risks that our body is confronting all of the time.

And we didn't have any kind of medical interventions to try to address it. So basically, like, our immune systems evolved for pretty short lifespans compared to how long we live today and a really high infection risk compared to what we face today. An unfortunate byproduct of our longevity is that our bodies do experience more inflammation over time. I mean, and that's interesting just to pause you quickly, Dylan, because that is kind of another example of, like, it sounds bad, but maybe it's good. Like, in that explanation of chronic inflammation, it's like, well, it's a tradeoff for a lot. longer life. Yeah, there's a lot of these things. All kind, honestly, Sally, like 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. Okay, I am hearing you that aging is a part of what's going on here. But can you go back to what you were saying at the beginning about the role that modernity might be playing here? So there does seem to be this role of a 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 like viruses or bacterias as we used to because we have modern sanitation and modern hygiene. But we are still being like 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, like, it's not necessarily that there's like a virus or bacteria or this sort of like short-term health problem that our inflammation is able to respond to and then resolve. Instead, it's just this, you know, this myasma 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 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 low-grade inflammation continues to persist, like, every day, you're eating some kind of, you know, 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, stuff. if you live in the United States. And so your body goes into this response to try to do something about it. But like, 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. And so, yeah, it's like you can't escape it. Like, we live inside of modernity. Like, you step outside and there is, like, air pollution. You know, like, look at our clothes and they have these new synthetic chemicals

that do inevitably seep into our skin and into our bodies a little bit. And then especially with food and food processing, there's just this constant exposure to things that your immune system doesn't recognize and doesn't know what to do with and thinks that it wants to get rid of, but it never can because that exposure is continual and constantly renewed. And so I think that's, I hope that's sort of a helpful way of thinking about how, like, your body is doing something that's natural

in response to these unnatural exposures, but it's sort of an endless cycle and endless loop that continues to drive this inflammation over time and eventually does lead to tissue damage and some of the more serious health problems that we worry about. Yes, I mean, I have heard of absolutely one million things that seem to be caused or worsened by inflammation.

Like, the range is huge. So what do we actually know about whether inflammation is contributing to all of these diseases and health problems. Yeah, so there's, I do think this is, it's important to pause and say, like, this is where a lot of science is happening, like, right now. More from our friends at Unexplainable on Today Explained in a minute. Support for Today Explain comes from Service Now. Service Now says AI was supposed to handle the parts of the job that you hate. Instead, it just describes them, suggests what to do about them, and then leaves you to do it.

What? That's not help. That's homework. Service Now's AI specialists are different. they say they're not a tool. Think of them as digital teammates who actually do the work from start to finish. Cases get resolved. Requests get processed. Loops get closed. And most importantly, they say no extra work for you because when you can truly delegate to AI, you can get back to the work only. You can do the work that requires a person with ideas and judgment. And you know,

a pulse. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Support for the show comes from Rippling. Imagine you just found your sales team is at risk of missing a quota. No need to panic. Just ask, Rippling, AI. Since it's built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI, can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting-ready dashboard, showing quota attainment, hey-o, headcount trajectory, hey-o, and monthly revenue to quota by region, hey-o.

In seconds, you can see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Question answered. Action taken. Crisis averted. Mike dropped. Ready to rule your business? Business rules. Head to rippling.aI.S. Explain to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-I-N-G.a-I-S-E-E-I-S-E-L-E-I-S-E-E-S-E-E-L-E-S-E-L-E-L-E-S-E-E. Sign up for exclusive access today. Dylan Scott told me, the science on this is evolving. But some serious health conditions do seem to be, at least associated with chronic inflammation. There's heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and dementia. Those are, I think, the most studied and the most commonly cited ones. And with something like heart disease, there does seem to be a pretty clear, you know, relationship.

But this picture is still coming into focus. And oftentimes there is like a question of, you know, of, is inflammation causing this chronic health problem, or is inflammation a symptom of this chronic health problem that's being driven by other factors? Mechanistically, which direction are things moving? Is it time something that scientists are still in the midst of figuring out and can be murky to them even?

So I wanna be clear about that. But on a variety of things, there seems to be a pretty strong relationship. And I do think that's why, for totally natural reasons, People hear that and they're like, okay, what can I do to prevent that and get rid of this thing that's going to cause me all of these problems? But it's interesting. I mean, we're back in the quagmire. We've been in the whole time because you're also saying we still don't totally know when it's a symptom of disease and when it might be tipping into this chronic inflammation that causes disease. I mean, Dylan, how can I sort that out?

Like, how can I know when it becomes chronic inflammation? Look, it's a great question, and we know at certain extremes, like if you have, you know, an enormous amount of some kind of inflammation-related biomarker, like, that probably means there's an underlying problem. But we're still in the process of establishing baselines for what's normal. There's something called immune monitoring programs at major health systems around the country. And basically what they are trying to do is establish those baselines, collecting samples, from all kinds of different people, collecting them from people over time, from people, you know, before they got sick, while they got sick, after they got sick, to try to just figure out at the most basic level,

like, what is normal and what is normal for different kinds of people? Like, you know, if you went into your primary care doctor right now and said, like, what's my inflammation? I think they would just sort of like, look at you like, huh? What are you talking about? And you probably wouldn't even necessarily think to ask that, because all of this is so new in a lot of ways. But it does seem possible that we're working towards a future where, like,

we figured out the right things to measure to gauge your chronic inflammation. We've figured out the right baselines against which to judge or whatever we're able to measure. And it could be that, like, in the future, you get, like, an inflammation score that's similar to, like, your blood pressure reading or your cholesterol level or your blood sugar or something like that. Like, the folks who are working on those programs today, Like, that's the future they're envisioning and trying to, you know, work towards. But the work is still in progress. Like, we aren't there yet.

Right now, a lot of, you know, with a lot of these, and you'll see them hawked sometimes on these social media feeds of, like, inflammation tests or something like that. Like, yes, we have gotten to the point now where if, you know, certain kind of proteins are associated with inflammation. But being able to interpret that information and saying, like, whether this is good, whether this is bad and what we do about it. Like, that's much murkier as the science stands today, but trying to sharpen our understanding

is the work that a lot of inflammation scientists are doing right now. Wow, that's so interesting. So it sounds like we're kind of in, like, number soup world where it's like we can measure some stuff. Like, we can know what the proteins are and whether they're elevated, but we don't necessarily know what that means yet. No, I do think, like, one of the things that a scientist said to me

was like, I can see a future where like measuring your inflammation is a way to get ahead of health problems that are sort of asymptomatic, at least for a long time, you know, before they get really serious. And so that, to your point, sounds super appealing to me. If it's like we can now have this indirect measure of things that are going wrong in your body before you ever sort of feel or notice them, you know, naturally going about your day, like that seems like the ideal for early intervention, which we know, you know, usually leads to. better outcomes. But we're still in the process of like refining our understanding to be able to do that. So the hope is that this will become something almost like cholesterol or something where you can go in, you can measure it, you can get a number, and then you can take some like sane and reasonable steps to address that number. And maybe that helps you prevent future health problems. Yes. That sounds great. And I should say we do know things now that can help to improve your

inflammation. It's just like the most basic health advice in the world. Yes, Dylan. Cut through the fog for me. Like, what can I actually do? Do I need to wrap a turmeric supplementary supplemently fast while I only eat that? Like, what should I be doing here? Look, it's the old standby, Sally, of eating a healthy diet and especially eating a diet of whole foods, vegetables, fruits, things like that, exercise, stress, things like that. You know, that can perturb your immune system. You know, it's funny, Dylan, that makes me think, do you think it's possible that we're causing more inflammation by stressing about inflammation? It would make, yes, it makes some sense. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but yeah, I mean, it's this funny thing where it's like, I think that brings us back to the top of our conversation where it's like, there are, you know, there are these tests, there are these measures that you can take to try to assess the state of your inflammation. And there's a lot of unscrupulous,

people who are willing to sell those to you and who are presenting more confidence about what you can understand from those measures than, like, actual scientists who work on this would say is appropriate. And so I do think just the whole universe of inflammation testing, of interventions or tonics like CMOS, like, that's, I think, what arises in this gap between, we know there's something going on here, and we're understanding it more by the day, and, like, people wanting, like, answer right now. And I think what these scientists worry about is like people either trying out these approaches that are unproven and may just be pointless and not lead to anything, or obviously, God forbid, like you have some kind of other health problems arise from whatever you're

trying to do to address your inflammation. Like, this is in a way, I think one of the more underappreciated stories about modern medicine in general, which is like our ability to detect things often outpaces our ability to interpret them. And that's true, not just for inflammation, but for all kinds of things, because we have developed these amazing technologies that can detect things at the cellular, subcellular level.

But, you know, you have to detect things before you can then kind of create a working understanding of what's going on with them. And that often obviously takes a lot of time and failure and refinement. And so we're in the middle, we're in the middle of that story right now where it's like

people are kind of rushing in to provide answers that are beyond what science has actually learned it and figured out yet. That was Dylan Scott from Vox and Sally Helm with Unexplanable. You can find more unexplainable on your preferred podcast application but also on Netflix.

No big deal. Their episode was produced by Sally edited by Lissa Soap with help from Joanna Solitaroff mixing in sound design from Christian Ayala. Fact-checking from Melissa Hirsch. I'm Sean Ramos for him,

and this one's today explained.