The Weight Cycle (Part 1)

Inflammation goes hand in hand with body weight. Here’s how to balance this relationship and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

By Courtney Mifsud Intreglia

FIRST THING IN the morning, you get up, brush your teeth, wash your face, and maybe step on the scale. You go about your day, then check the scale again following dinner; this time, the number is three pounds higher. No, you didn’t magically gain three pounds of fat throughout the day–that would be next to impossible. Rather, chronic inflammation is to blame for the sneaky weight change. Low grade chronic inflammation can allow fluid from your blood vessels to seep into your tissues, which then manifests as weight gain through water retention. So you haven’t really gained weight when the number on the scale changes so suddenly. This is just one example of the bidirectional relationship between weight management and inflammation.

Researchers are learning that a meaningful approach to taming chronic inflammation is found not just at the doctor’s office but in your own kitchen or the gym. Lifestyle habits that contribute to a healthy or unhealthy weight have been found to correlate to increases or decreases of inflammation levels in both your short- and long-term health.

There are two labels used when inflammation is discussed: chronic and acute. And while chronic inflammation is linked to myriad health concerns ranging from type 2 diabetes to certain types of cancers, acute inflammation is actually the body doing its job of keeping your system on high alert for potential threats. If you’re hitting the gym regularly in order to lose a few pounds, acute inflammation, also known in this case as post-workout inflammation, helps your body recover if you’re injured. A sprained ankle, for example, would prompt an inflammatory response. That reaction tends to bring with it redness, swelling, and even warmth to the touch. But when we’re talking about chronic inflammation, we’re taking about a process that’s often ongoing for weeks, months, or years. And it’s usually not in response to a specific injury. We’re talking about wide spread inflammation throughout the body. While this type of inflammation is considered low-grade, it is still excessive.

The relationship between weight and inflammation goes both ways: Inflammation can contribute to weight gain, and weight gain can contribute to inflammation. There are many ways chronic inflammation can cause weight gain. One is by interfering with the body’s insulin response, which has a direct link to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. More than 38 million people in the United States have diabetes, and research suggests that more than 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. are now prediabetic (98 million Americans). Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the body either resists the effects of insulin (the hormone that regulates the movement of sugar into cells) or doesn’t produce enough insulin to maintain desired glucose levels. Type 2 diabetes is often associated with being overweight or having obesity. As cases of diabetes have climbed over the past few decades, researchers have been studying how people can stave off the disease. In the early 1990s, researchers at Harvard University discovered that people with type 2 diabetes had overly active immune responses and higher levels of inflammatory chemicals. TNF-alpha, a chemical secreted by immune cells, is a cytokine (a substance that comes from immune-system cells). The researchers found high cytokine levels in the fat tissue of rats with type 2 diabetes, and when they bred obese rats that were not able to produce cytokines, diabetes did not develop in the animals. This led to further research that linked TNF-alpha–and, more broadly, inflammation–to insulin resistance. The cytokines activate certain proteins that suppress insulin signaling pathways, which makes the body less responsive to insulin and raises the risk of insulin resistance. A body that is resistant to insulin will produce more insulin, and that can lead to higher blood pressure, increased hunger, and weight gain.