5 habits that cause chronic inflammation

Here are five daily habits that cause chronic inflammation and might secretly be harming your health! We know we sound dramatic with this one, but it’s the one time it’s actually worth it to be dramatic.

Your diet isn’t the only thing you should pay attention to when you’re dealing with an inflammatory condition. What and how you eat is important because food can provide nutrients that will help you go through for example stress – e.g. we need more vitamin C and other nutrients when we’re stressed. But it’s not everything.

These inflammatory habits are common; it’s actually more uncommon not to practice them in our day-to-day lives, than to do so.

We know, for us, we do almost every single one of them when we don’t pay attention, especially when we're working on a project or want to get a big task done. And after a few weeks, or even days, the aches, pains and the bloating are back to remind us: “You’re not getting younger, get it together and practice what you preach.”

And so here we are, finally writing this post about habits that cause inflammation that we started outlining in May 2023. Because we knew that diet, while important, isn’t the only cause for chronic inflammation. Eating isn’t the only thing we do (hopefully).

1. Sitting For Long Periods Of Time

We bet you’ve already heard that sitting is the new smoking. It is a true health hazard and it is one of the worst, most common habits that cause inflammation.

Sadly, seated is our default state these days. We sit at work, we sit when we drive to work and then, to relax in the evening, we sit in front of a screen at night. Best case scenario, you read a book, while, well, sitting.

According to guidelines, we’re supposed to do 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week. Okay, we can do it. Check.

But here’s what everyone skips over: that’s on top of our light intensity daily activities like walking slowly, standing and lifting light objects. We don’t know about you, but our life as it is doesn’t involve a lot of those. That is, if we don’t make them a priority.

Sitting for long periods of time has been known to be detrimental to human health since the 17th century. Probably even earlier than that. A sedentary lifestyle is linked to insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cancer. But also several other chronic inflammatory diseases (and even infectious diseases) in older adults like Alzheimer’s or chronic respiratory disease.

Living a sedentary life has been shown to directly cause low-grade inflammation in several studies, demonstrated by an increase in pro-inflammatory factors like CRP and IL-6.

What To Do Instead

Start moving! Do a reliable you can.

We know not everyone is able to stand or walk all the time, but just be more aware of it. When you’re more aware, you’ll welcome opportunities to move more.

• Make being more on your feet a priority! With this in mind, you’ll be looking forward to doing things around the house, cleaning, cooking and even going to the store. Small changes accumulate!
• Go out for long walks! Some research with over a million participants shows that you need to do at least an hour of moderate activity a day to negate the negative effects of prolonged sitting (not TV viewing time, though – no cure for that one!).
• If you don’t already – start exercising. Regular physical activity has an anti-inflammatory effect, as it reduces inflammatory markers like IL-6 and increases the production of anti-inflammatory markers like IL-10. More than that, regular movement helps you build muscle, which quite like fat is an endocrine organ. Except it has the exact opposite effects to fat, as it overall reduces insulin resistance and inflammation long-term.
• Set an alarm to stand up and walk every 50-60 minutes if you have a “sitting job”. This little habit seems to reduce inflammation and to help preserve the muscle mass in older adults and to have positive effects on your blood glucose as well.
• Choose your leisurely activities wisely. Don’t sit to watch a movie in the evening. TV watching time is actually linked to a significant increase in all-cause mortality, but especially type 2 diabetes.

2. Overeating / Late Eating

Overeating as well as late night eating are also among the habits that can cause inflammation. From gastrointestinal disorders like GERD and microbiome dysbiosis to diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, eating too much and especially late at night can be linked to a variety of diseases all connected to increased inflammation in the body.

In general, the act of consuming food causes an inflammatory response in the cells.

So this excess intake of nutrients is thought to be the beginning of chronic inflammation which is typical for people who are obese.

Moreover, overeating regularly or eating late in the evening (after 10 pm) often leads to gaining visceral / or belly fat. This fat, in turn, is an endocrine organ and can generate pro-inflammatory cytokines. This then often leads to metabolic syndrome and chronic inflammation in general.

Late-night eating furthermore disrupts the circadian clock, which is important for keeping us healthy. When that clock is wrong, you risk all kinds of ailments and metabolic disorders.

How To Improve

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but intermittent fasting, especially with finishing your last meal at least 3-4 hours before bed, has always worked great for us.

Another thing that works well is adding more raw vegetables to our meals! This bulks them up, and you end up getting a TON of nutrients and feeling satiated and full without overconsuming calories.

Add to those habits some natural daily movement and you’ll be on the right track within a week. The first few days will be hard, but push through, and you’ll be so proud of yourself for doing it.

3. Staying In A Toxic Relationship

We actually deeply dislike the combination of the words toxic and either people or relationships. But in the case of hostile relationships – that description might be accurate.

Hostile marital relationships are proven to be bad for your health and can even reduce the rate of wound healing. You do not want slow wound healing if you already have an inflammatory condition. Because that’s what chronic inflammation is in the end – healing, but unfinished.

How To Improve

You want to surround yourself with people who support and love you and bring more positive emotions into your life. Those relationships are healing and can contribute so much to your health. When we bond with others we produce a peptide hormone called oxytocin, which has anti-inflammatory effects in the human body.

4. Saying No To Sleep

We've always been fascinated by Wolverine’s superpower to heal fast. At one point in life we realized that actually we all have that superpower within us. Well, not if we’re not getting enough sleep. Depriving yourself of sleep regularly is one of the most dangerous habits that can cause inflammation.

Sleep is a major way the body heals itself. That’s probably the reason why sleep is the one thing people can’t go without for longer than 11 days (apparently that’s the world record).

It also makes sense that people who don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.

Sleep deprivation affects negatively your cognitive health, metabolism, endocrine, immune and inflammatory systems.

What To Do

Well, according to statistics around 30% of people don’t get as much sleep as they need regularly.. Why do you think that is?

Is it that we’re watching movies on our phones before we go to sleep? Spending too much time indoors? Not getting enough melatonin pills into our systems? Getting stressed over work?

Whenever we cannot sleep it’s usually because we're spending too much time indoors, in front of the computer and eating late (mostly to stay awake so we can watch something stupid). So, here are a few things that help us:

• Getting up before sunrise – living with the light will help reset your circadian rhythm, which in turn will help improve sleep.
• Exercise including walking outside for at least an hour a day
• Having our last meal latest at 7pm
• And stop working on the computer by 6-7pm
• Getting up and going to bed at the same time (make sure you get at least 7-8 hours of sleep).

We've found for myself we get the most restful sleep after a day mostly spent in nature. So lately we try to do that every day for 2-3 hours a day – we do walking, gardening, playing sports…whatever we can. And we can recommend it – if you can’t sleep spend more time outside.

5. Making Our Lives Way Too Convenient

One of the main reasons chronic inflammation is on the rise all over the world right now is that over the last century, we’ve made it our goal to oversimplify our lives. To the point where it’s no longer good for us. Don’t get us wrong, we don’t want to wash our clothes in the river like our grandma used to do when we were a kid. We're grateful for running water, electricity and even the internet. We do not want every single thing in our life to be a struggle.

But all the convenience we have today, comes at a cost. We’re growing further and further apart from each other, we have more food, but it won’t provide enough nutrients, we’re sleeping, but can never get enough rest and on top of that we’re bombarded with new and new chemicals. All of these things – like loneliness, stress, low-nutrient diet are a great step for chronic inflammation. That’s why making our lives too convenient is one of the biggest habits that cause inflammation and it’s so underrated.

You might be as shocked as we were when we found out that every year we’re adding around 2000 new chemicals into the market and to the things we consume on a daily basis. They’re in our food, but also in personal care products, medications, in our clothes, in the air we breathe – everywhere.

And guess what, many of them have been tested for what they do to our bodies, our organs, our cells, but many have not been tested. So that’s one thing. But, what we find especially frustrating is that many of the already tested chemicals we use on a daily basis are proven to change inflammation pathways in our cells. This in turn leads to chronic inflammation and related diseases like hormone-related cancers, autoimmune, neurodegenerative, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Guess what? We still use those chemicals.

So what can we do about it?

It’s pretty depressing, right? Like, sometimes it makes us want to cry and it also makes us angry and hopeless and helpless.

But most of the time, we're actually optimistic. That’s why we share the recipes we share and the one or the other blog post on health here. We believe we can find a solution for all of these habits that cause inflammation.

We think it starts by being aware and choosing the right priorities in life. Instead of choosing to work an extra hour/day, we could go out for a walk in the park with the people we love.

Instead of watching TV and getting takeout, we can choose to cook more nutritious food and to walk outside after.

Instead of always needing to buy more, we can choose to be grateful for the things we already have and we can remember that hey, 70 years ago our great-grandparents didn’t have even 10% of the convenience we have right now. It’s always good to put things in perspective.