Most people do not realize that there is an important link between inflammation and weight gain, especially when inflammation is chronic in nature and goes on for an extended period of time. In addition to causing weight gain, chronic inflammation will also make your arteries much more susceptible to collecting plaque, clog the arteries. When this happens, heart disease becomes much more likely for an individual.
Chronic inflammation can also contribute in a significant way to developing Type II diabetes because it worsens insulin resistance. In this situation, your body produces enough insulin, but the cells of the body don't process it normally, and that leaves a high content of sugar in your bloodstream. In the case of weight gain, fat cells will create chemical signals that lead to chronic inflammation whenever you eat too many calories and too much sugar. These chemical signals also disrupt the way insulin works in your body, and it will cause insulin resistance to be increased.
The connection between weight gain and chronic inflammation
Since fat cells are a significant contributor to chronic inflammation, it shouldn't be surprising that weight gain will also promote chronic inflammation. Whenever a person gains weight, the number of fat cells will expand in excess of their actual capacity while attempting to store extra calories as fat. When this occurs, they cause the level of inflammation in your body to be increased. Instead of just being warehouses for fat storage, they also take on becoming an inflammation factory, emitting signals that activate the immune system.
When you lose weight, it allows those fat cells to shrink back to regular size, and it stops those signals which have been triggering chronic inflammation. A critical study that was conducted in the UK recently established a definite link between chronic inflammation and weight gain. Over a period of nine years, subjects were monitored for a number of different factors, including weight gain and C-reactive protein (CRP), which is a protein that becomes present during activation of the immune system.
The study clearly showed that as subjects gained weight, the level of CRP in their bloodstream increased right along with it. Another study conducted at Wake Forest University in North Carolina showed that inflammation decreased among the study participants when they were involved in a low-calorie diet. By losing weight, the subjects in the study also had decreased levels of CRP in their bloodstream, indicating that the immune system was not being triggered to react.
Reducing inflammation
Given the results of these two studies, it seems apparent that whatever can be done to reduce chronic inflammation should be attempted by a person. Some of the steps you can take to accomplish this are to consume more antioxidants, which are present in a number of fruits and vegetables like blueberries, turnips, broccoli, rutabaga, and kale. It's also a good idea to ingest a good quantity of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids to help with inflammation reduction.
There are also spices that reduce inflammation in the body, such as a ginger, so you should include these in your diet whenever possible. The whole idea is to break the link between increased inflammation and weight gain so that you can live a healthier, more productive life.
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