ZOE Science & Nutrition - Most replayed moment: Easy Steps to Reduce Inflammation and Slow Ageing | Professor Janet Lord

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Today we’re talking about what causes ageing. Here’s an important term you may not have heard before: inflammaging. It describes the link between chronic inflammation in the body and accelerated ageing. While it’s relatively unknown, this process is one of the most important concepts to understand if we want to live longer, healthier lives. I’m joined by Professor Janet Lord to break down what inflammaging is, why it’s one of the biggest threats to healthy longevity, and the surprisingly simple, science-backed habits we can all use to slow it down. 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily 30+ Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Here's an important term you may not have heard before, inflammaging. It describes the link between chronic inflammation in the body and accelerated aging. While it's relatively unknown, this process is one of the most important concepts to understand if we want to live longer, healthier lives. I'm joined by Professor Janet Lord to break down what. Inflammaging is, why it's one of the biggest threats to healthy longevity, and the surprisingly simple science-backed habits we can all use to slow it down. Inflammaging, what is that?

Basically, it's an increase in inflammation in the body as you get older, so with age. So it's the two things combined. And most people would think that inflammation, if they've heard of it, they assume it's something that happens when they cut their hands. or if they've got a chronic disease like rheumatoid arthritis, oh, I've got inflammation. But with ageing, it's broader than that. So it's a low level, sort of grumbling level of inflammation that goes on for years. So if I measure inflammation in your blood, it's not like that level that you would see in an infection.

Or if you've got a chronic inflammatory disease like rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease, It's much lower than that, but you've got it for years and years, grumbling away there. And that affects how I age? It does indeed. We didn't know for many years really what caused aging, but now we're really beginning to understand the processes in the body that drive aging, that causes to become more prone to diseases like dementia, like cardiovascular disease, like even cancer. And it turns out that inflammation is one of those key processes. So inflammation is one of these words that I feel we hear a lot,

but I'm probably not the only person who still struggles really to understand what's going on. And I was just thinking about what you just described to me because I managed to smash up my finger yesterday one way or another and it's really sore this morning. In my mind, that somehow my finger is inflamed. Is that correct? No, that's correct. No, that's correct.

So what's going on there? And how is that the same or different from this like low, long level inflammation you're talking about? So like everything else in the body, inflammation isn't always bad. It's there for a reason. We've evolved to have inflammation. And so its primary focus is to repair damage in the body. So if you cut yourself, you have inflammation and it stimulates repair processes. is. Its other key function is in combating infections. So inflammation really stimulates your immune

system, directs it in the correct way. So is your infection a bacteria or is it a virus? And depending on which it is, you know, the immune system will then be educated to behave in a particular way. And inflammation is important to that. But that's all acute inflammation. It's rapid. It goes away when the problem is resolved. So when your cutters healed itself, when the infection has been cleared, it subsides. This inflammation is there at a very low level and it's there for years and years. So if you don't turn that inflammation off, then unfortunately it can be damaging. So, for example, too much inflammation will actually suppress your immune system. What are the signs of aging that can be affected by this inflammation and the way the immune system is not working?

as well. So I'm going to give you two examples. So one thing, as I've said, the inflammation can actually suppress your immune systems. So you're more susceptible to infections. And when you actually get an infection, it takes you longer to clear it. So again, most of your viewers will know, if you're a 20 or 30 year old and you get flu, you have a week or two in bed, you have a few duvet days, but then you're fine. But if you're 70, 80 years old and you get the flu, there's a good chance you could end up in hospital and even die as a result because you get secondary infections like pneumonia as well. So that's one thing.

That's one very visible thing that most of your viewers will know that the older you are, you're in a high risk category. Coming back to my thinking, isn't that just what it means to be older? You're looking at me as like, no, definitely not, Jonathan. It is a marker of ageing, so it's something we recognize, but it's not inevitable. And so you're saying that this is because the immune system has, Declined. Has declined.

Yes, it's compromised. Because of this ongoing level of inflammation. Yes, it's certainly one of the key drivers, we think. Other things happen as well that can affect your immune system, but inflammation is looking like a major driver. Another aspect that, again, your viewers will recognize us and think about as an old person is walking more slowly, perhaps less struggling to get out of a chair,

you know, groaning every time you get out of the chair. And that is because with age, our muscles, we have less muscle and it's less good quality muscles. It's called sarcopenia. So you lose muscle strength. And we know that inflammation is one of the drivers there. So this inflammation actually does lots of things to muscle. It slows down the production of molecules that you need to grow the muscle. They're called growth factors.

So it suppresses that. It also causes the production in the muscle of hormones, stress hormones. And again, some of your viewers may have heard of one called cortisol. And cortisol breaks muscle down. So it's suppressing the growth of new muscle and it's accelerating the breakdown of existing muscle. So again, inflammation, we know, drives this cortisol production and suppresses these growth factors. It's one of the factors that's causing this frailty. Janet, that's amazing.

I've never heard that before. So you're saying that if my inflammation is higher, it's actually basically like reducing my muscles and like breaking them down and making it hard to build them. Exactly. So it's one of the things that's going to increase the risk of an older adult becoming physically frail. So I'd love to talk a bit about what we can do

because I think you're now painting this picture that inflammation is playing a really big role, I think, in how many healthy years we're having to enjoy. But there's one intervention that I know that you've studied really extensively. And I understand that's exercise. I think lots of people listening is like, well, you know, I know that exercise is good for me. But what's that got to do with my immune system and inflammation?

Can you help us understand, Janet? I can. Again, lots of ways. And as you said, we've known for a long time that the more physically active you are, you know, you reduce your risk of a whole range of diseases. You're likely to be longer lived. and have a longer healthy lifespan. And it's now becoming clear that this might be because exercise reduces inflammation.

And it does it in lots of ways. So if you're being very physically active, you're less likely to have too much adipose tissue, too much fat. So you've reduced one of those sources of that inflammation. By doing that, you've reduced the risk of your vessels being damaged. I told you earlier about inflammation reduces your muscle mass and strength, so you've reduced one of the causes of your feeling more frail and less able to function physically. The other thing that your viewers may not be aware of is that muscle itself actually can be anti-inflammatory. I didn't touch on that earlier, but moving muscle produces cytokines that dampen the inflammation down.

particularly they educate immune cells to be anti-inflammatory. And so the more your muscle is moving, the more it's producing helpful cytokines to dampen the inflammation. And the more you sit, the less of those are being produced. So that's why we know that sedentary time is also important. So your viewers might struggle with this one. To help me to understand that. So they're two different factors.

So the time you spent doing exercise is great. It's going to give you all of these benefits, reduce the inflammation, help you to be more anti-inflammatory. But if you then, say you do your 45 minutes of exercise in the morning, you go and walk the dog or you do a little jog, whatever you do for your exercise, and then you sit then for eight or ten hours watching daytime television or you're at work and you're at your desk, you can undo a lot of that because the muscle will then not produce that dampening cytokine for that long. period of time. So now we know that, yes, you need to be physically active, but also don't be too sedentary. If you're sitting, you've got a desk job or you're at home, you're retired now, perhaps every hour, get up and move around, even if it's just for 10 minutes. I think I'd understood why that might be good for my heart or something. There's all the things like, you know, just having the muscles is good. But here you're describing the way that it's directly sort of

almost orchestrating my immune system. Totally, totally. It turns out that your muscle is a major regulator of your immune system. It can make it less inflammatory, basically. And so if you're not moving, then say you get an infection, you're much more likely to have this overshoot with your inflammation. As long as you break that sitting time up and then this pro-inflammatory system can't really get established. So you get up, you know, after an hour, move around and then, yeah, because sometimes, you know, you may not be able to, you know, stand up all day. I had a standing desk at work, and so I did stand all day. So think about that one.

That's another good one to think about. So one thing you're saying is don't sit for a long time. I need to walk around because then I'm getting all of these benefits from my muscles that are sort of dampening my inflammation. What about the exercise itself? I guess how important is that 45 minutes of something more intense? And what do you need to be doing to get the benefit to sort of fight this inflammation? Yeah, so we sort of class exercises in two broad areas as aerobic. So that's basically anything that raises your heart rate, gets you a little bit out of breath. And that is very good for reducing the inflammation, for helping your heart, helping your lungs, as well as your muscle function itself. And the other type of exercise is what we call resistance exercise. So that's strengthening. This might be bandwork, or if you go to a gym, lifting weights. Or I always say to people, you don't even need to go to

gym, just go up and downstairs. And then, you know, that's a really good exercise. It's aerobic and its resistance. But the resistance is more important for the building of strength of your muscle and the muscle mass. So ideally you need to do both. The aerobic to bring the inflammation down, the evidence is stronger there for aerobic bringing inflammation down and the resistance to keep your muscles themselves a good size and good function. I always say, you know, worst thing you can do is an older adult is to go and get a bungalow or live in an apartment with no steps and you'll end up with bungalow legs. So legs with less muscle and less strength. That's really interesting.

I heard this on speaking to another scientist a little while ago thinking about what you should do with your parents. And I definitely was brought up with this idea that as your parents get older or anyone gets older, like they should take it easy. They shouldn't have to carry their own bags. And he was saying, oh, no, you should make your parents carry the shopping. Upstairs if you really love them. Is that really true? Yeah, absolutely true. Yes.

My mother, when we were looking for a home for her to move into when she was downsizing, she wanted a ground level apartment. We said, no, mom, you're getting one with stairs. You're on the first floor or the second floor. She wasn't pleased about it, but I think she enjoyed it eventually. And you feel that basically you were giving her more years of healthy life. Absolutely. Your ground floor, you're not using those stairs.

You're not getting that exercise for your muscles. And it's such a simple thing to do. You know, I always say to people for no other reason every day, just going up down your stairs 10 times, just for no reason, just go and do it as your exercise. I'll end this recap with something I think you'll like, a free gut health guide created by our team of scientists here at Zoe. Many of us aren't sure how to best support our gut, so we developed an easy-to-follow guide, complete with tips, recipes and shopping lists, designed to help you look after your gut. The guide is delivered straight to your inbox, along with

ongoing nutrition insights from Zoe, the Science and Nutrition Company on a mission to transform the health of millions. To get your free gut health guide, just visit zoe.com slash gut guide. Thanks for listening.