Inflammation is real. The wellness solution isn't.

On yesterday’s Conspirituality, I chatted with Mother Jones disability and public health reporter Julia Metraux about her new article, “The Great Inflammation Panic.” Inflammation has been a buzzword in wellness spaces for years. As someone who suffers from an actual inflammatory disease, vasculitis, Metraux knows well the problems with wellness influencers selling junk science guaranteed to “stop inflammation.” As she writes:

Living with inflammatory diseases can absolutely suck, but inflammation is not the downfall of American public health. Turning it into a buzzword just makes it a gimmick, instead of truly understanding what it does well and also makes people feel guilty that they must not be doing enough to be healthy.

NY Times writer Kim Tingley also tackled the topic in her recent deep dive, “The New Science of Inflammation.” She too identified the wellness grift:

Mainstream media headlines tell us how to “fight” inflammation by eating these six fruits and following those nine healthy habits. Articles question whether treating inflammation can prevent dementia or reduce depression. Longevity influencers dive into the ills of chronic inflammation on their podcasts. On platforms like TikTok and Reddit, users eagerly seek and dispense advice on how to eliminate their chronic inflammation by any means necessary: by fasting or humming or taking ice baths or injecting themselves with copper peptides. They urge one another to avoid ultraprocessed foods, plastics, pollution, pesticides, tick bites, loneliness — these are just a few of the suggestions.

Tingley notes that inflammation is, in fact, both a consequence and driver of many diseases, and that our awareness of its role is becoming more understood by the day. Wellness influencers aren’t completely wrong in their assertion of inflammation’s problems. They’re just putting the cart before the horse in order to monetize their products and services (as is often the case).

Here’s a sample of influencers like Mark Hyman, Peter McCullough, Paul Saladino (who you won’t hear, but the clip is from his documentary), and Dave Asprey, all of whom sell supplements purported to treat inflammation.

Here’s what these influencers often blame it on, sans evidence:

• My favorite: seed oils. The idea that canola, soybean, and sunflower oils are primary drivers of “chronic inflammation” is now one of the most viral nutrition claims. As with everything in the upside down world of wellness, multiple controlled human trials, systematic reviews, and large cohort studies have found that linoleic acid from seed oils is linked to lower cardiovascular risk.

• My other favorite: leaky gut syndrome. This entirely made-up diagnosis is a great way to sell supplements and diet books, but the notion that a “leaky gut” is the hidden cause of nearly every inflammatory symptom is not real. As always, this needs to be separated out from the intestinal permeability, which is real and treatable.

• Old school: The alkaline diet. The idea that acidic foods cause a state of chronic “inflammatory acidosis” that alkaline foods reverse ignores the fact that our kidneys and lungs tightly regulate blood pH regardless of diet in healthy people. Diet likely plays a role in inflammation, as Tingley writes in her piece. But it’s not so reductionist as being “too acidic.”

• Deep cut: Nightshades and gluten are universal inflammation triggers. Influencers who love elimination diets tell followers that tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, and, of course, gluten are inflammatory for everyone. Out here in the real world, nightshades are generally anti-inflammatory, and actual celiac disease is real but rare.

• Heart disease. The anti-statin crowd loves treating inflammation as the root cause of cardiovascular problems. Inflammation is implicated, but as a consequence of or independent risk factor pertaining to LDL cholesterol. If you’re pitching it as “don’t take statins, take this supplement,” downplaying cholesterol makes business sense, not science sense.

• Mental health distress: As you heard in the first Hyman clip above, depression, anxiety, even autism are caused by inflammation of the brain. Again: there is correlation and possibly even causation in some of these cases. But when the pitch is to buy Hyman’s “anti-inflammatory” cookbook, you can be sure he’s not honoring the science.

Inflammation is weaponized by influencers as a vague, unfalsifiable hook that’s nearly impossible to disprove—yet perfect for selling supplements.

I know many people who claim to suffer from so-called “chronic inflammation.” Indeed, I used to ascribe my anxiety disorder to it, which just felt right. There’s a certain heat that you feel when having a panic attack, so it’s very easy to extrapolate and say oh, I must be inflamed right now.

I’m not advocating for ignoring inflammation or pretending it’s not real. As Tingley notes:

More and more, researchers are starting to see things the way that Peter Libby, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Mass General Brigham, put it to me: “We all study the same disease” — inflammation is involved with everything.

I’m just advising caution before buying the next great “anti-inflammatory” product you see on your social media feed. Chances are the only thing it’s solving is the influencer’s monetization strategy.