Inflammation Nation (Part 2 of 2)
Your body isn’t malfunctioning. It’s responding to a broken world.
I have just returned from a trip to Kenya, the land of pole pole (the famous Swahili phrase that means ‘slowly slowly’).
Instead of twelve hours of screen time, my days were filled with sun, warm Indian Ocean air, simple coastal seafood, and the smiling faces of the Swahili and Giriama people.
(Most of all — I did not hear the letters A or I once on my whole trip!)
Before I left I was feeling quite off for several weeks
→ I frequently woke up with night sweats at 3 am.
→ I would then proceed to beat myself up with ruminating thoughts about life.
→ My C-reactive protein — a marker of inflammation — had climbed to 1.4 (an optimal level is closer to 0.1–0.2).
It took about five days for my sleep to return to normal after I landed.
And a week for my mood to follow suit.
I love going there.
Kenya restores my gumption.
I come back feeling like my cup is full.
As I discussed before in various essays, gumption is not an infinite resource. When you have it, you have to protect it. Otherwise it leaks!
And when it leaks, you have less capacity to solve your problems, less ability to maintain your health, and less grit to pursue big dreams.
If, like me, you live in America right now then…you have to understand this.
While I love and believe in this country, America is full of gumption vampires. Act accordingly! Protect thy gumption!
The more I live from a place of gumption — and the less fear I have about money, success, and fame — the more I realize something: the future belongs to those who understand emotional regulation.
That’s the entire premise behind the Human Dash coaching programs.
Health is so easy if we live in the right environment surrounded by the right people, and it is incredibly hard if we don’t.
Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.
Here’s something many people in health won’t tell you about stress and inflammation.
Not because we are lying to you,
but because we forget.
If you’re facing continuous stress — fast-paced jobs, heartbreak, major life changes — inflammation may be exactly what your body needs to be doing.
The research shows that:
High-pressure, fast-paced jobs with low autonomy are associated with increased stress and ill health)
Job insecurity or fear of job loss can instigate disease, even after accounting for stress-related behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and eating.
Poverty, political displacement, and racism constitute uncontrollable factors that cause disease and can’t be addressed by “working harder”.1
These are all biological triggers, not personal failures. Sometimes you have to leave the environment you’re in to let your body heal.
If you follow enough longevity podcasts, you’ll start to believe inflammation is simply a personal optimization problem — something to fix in you, not in your environment.
Do enough workouts. Take enough cold plunges. Optimize your sleep.
One day you’ll be strong and rich like them.
As I said, we forget.
We forget what we are optimizing for.
But this whole ‘change the world by changing yourself’ bullshit was for the 80s and 90s — back when we had time to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil.
Remember that?
In today’s fast paced currr-aziness, we barely have time to take a shit without sending a text or an email. The world will change you. It will change your thoughts, and your thoughts will change your biology.
Nowadays it happens faster than you can say ‘Tiktok’ or ‘AI’!
The way it does, is via inflammation. More on the science of that in a second.
In the last decade, inflammation has topped our “Biology We Hate” chart. It has far surpassed many of our all time top features such as Carbohydrates, Cholesterol, Gluten, and good’ ol Dairy (may they all rip).
Now Inflammation is public enemy number #1 (along with its evil terrorist cytokines).
Meanwhile, actual criminals rule the world.
Look, I don’t want to dampen your mood, but…
The wars, the genocides, the human-made climate disasters, the racial bias exaggerated now by AI, the extraction of resources from other countries, the terrorizing of local citizens, and the maddening uncertainty of jobs, stocks and when the strait of Hormuz will be shut, all continue.
Never mind that we are setting up the world ablaze, alongside our own institutions.
No. No. You are just inflamed because you are not doing enough saunas and breathwork.
That is the problem!
You are the problem.
Indeed
Medicine blames inflammation for most of our chronic diseases.
Therapeutic companies are rushing to halt immune system responses within our bodies.
Doctors prescribe steroids and aspirins to reduce its impact on the body, and
Wellness & longevity gurus swear by saunas, fasting, supplements and sleep hygiene techniques that will reduce it.
But top researchers on Stress and the Cortisol Awakening Response now know that: Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.
Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist, Robert Sapolsky puts it bluntly (and best):
“...the more disastrous a stressor is, the worse it is to believe you had some control over the outcome because you are inevitably led to think about how much better things would have turned out if only you had done something more.” (Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers p404)
If only I could have done something more
“The built environment is designed, intentionally or not, to cause depression, cognitive decline, dementia, and other illnesses - all mediated by inflammatory cytokines.” says renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author Raj Patel , teamed up with the physician Rupa Marya and explores this idea in her bookInflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.
Studies also show how Climate change events such as fires, air quality, and temp rises impact our bodies
Staci Haines also writes a great deal about reclaiming our bodies as part of social and justice movements in The Politics of Trauma.
“What we tend to think of as individual traumas... are not so individual when we look at the numbers and the social conditions in which they are happening”
Inflammation is a result of a thought process (usually triggered by our environment)
One month ago, in Part 1 of Inflammation Nation, I shared with you the story of a client that got to a suicidal point after an argument with an ex triggered her. We realized later she had a lot of unaddressed thyroid inflammation.
So let’s break down how her environment might have aggravated that.
How exactly does our environment translate into inflammation inside the body?
A well studied field of medicine called Psychoneuroendocrine Immunology (PNEI for short) has risen over the last decade, with research that uncovers how Triggers → Thoughts → Hormones → Disease, via the inflammatory response.
Which means that what my client from Part 1 was experiencing was the following:
External Work and Relationship Pressures→ Triggered deep childhood fears. (Psycho-)
These old deep fears then → activated her Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems (Neuro-)
That Nervous system awakening → released stress hormones and inflammatory molecules. (Endocrine-)
And these hormones then prioritize a state of fight and flight → depressed the less urgent proteins needed to regulate immune function (immunology!).
and the release of cytokines → further drove her towards depression and suicidal ideation (More Psycho- again)
This is exciting because it means that a great deal of the impact of inflammation can be controlled at the level of our brain.
The question becomes — can we learn enough about our own psychology to stop our thoughts from impacting our nervous system?
But How can we control our thoughts when our national policy is driving the Inflammation?
Attempting to heal oneself with therapy, medications, or even spiritual practices while experiencing external factors can (and will) backfire.
If the source of inflammation is external then you have to escape it first before you heal
→ Talk to others, start organizing with others experiencing the same
→ observe your environment, and if none of that is available then
→ plan an escape from the relationship, the job, the toxic boss first.
→ Or learn how to stand up for yourself.
Do not try to solve systemic issues with Meditation and Yoga. This comes later.
Once you are out of the environment that is wearing you down long enough, you can try out all the science-backed tools to reduce inflammation and return your body to a healthy state.
The future will belong to people who can regulate their nervous systems in an unregulated world.
The Human Dash Assessment is a free resource that helps you see whether the source of your stress is external or internal — and what to do next by measuring emotional regulation, burnout, and your readiness to build healthier habits.