Most replayed moment: Easy Steps to Reduce Inflammation and Slow Ageing | Professor Janet Lord

Today we’re talking about what causes ageing. Here’s an important term you may not have heard before: inflammaging. It describes the link between chronic inflammation in the body and accelerated ageing. While it’s relatively unknown, this process is one of the most important concepts to understand if we want to live longer, healthier lives. I’m joined by Professor Janet Lord to break down what inflammaging is, why it’s one of the biggest threats to healthy longevity, and the surprisingly simple, science-backed habits we can all use to slow it down. 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily 30+ Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks Better Breakfast Guide Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Here's an important term you may not have heard before, inflammaging. It describes a link between chronic inflammation in the body and accelerated aging. While it's relatively unknown, this process is one of the most important concepts to understand if we want to live longer, healthier lives. I'm joined by Professor Janet Lord to break down what inflammaging is, why it's one of the biggest threats to healthy longevity, and the surprisingly simple, science-backed habits we can all use to slow it down.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Inflammaging, what is that?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Basically, it's an increase in inflammation in the body as you get older, so with age. So it's the two things combined. And most people would think that inflammation, if they've heard of it, they assume it's something that happens when they cut their hand, or if they've got a chronic disease like rheumatoid arthritis, oh, I've got inflammation. But with aging, it's broader than that. So it's a low level, sort of grumbling level of inflammation that goes on for years. So if I measure inflammation in your blood, it's not like that level that you would see in an infection, or if you've got a chronic inflammatory disease like rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It's much lower than that, but you've got it for years and years, grumbling away there.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  And that affects how I age?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  It does, indeed. We didn't know for many years, really, what caused aging, but now we're really beginning to understand the processes in the body that drive aging, that causes to become more prone to diseases like dementia, like cardiovascular disease, like even cancer. And it turns out that inflammation is one of those key processes.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  So inflammation is one of these words that I feel we hear a lot, but I'm probably not the only person who still struggles really to understand what's going on. And I was just thinking about what you just described to me because I managed to smash up my finger yesterday, one way or another, and it's really sore this morning. In my mind, that somehow my finger is inflamed. Is that correct?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  That's correct. No, that's correct.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  So what's going on there and how is that the same or different from this like low, long level inflammation?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, so like everything else in the body, inflammation isn't always bad. It's there for a reason. We've evolved to have inflammation and so its primary focus is to repair damage in the body. So if you cut yourself, you have inflammation and it stimulates repair processes. Its other key function is in combating infections. So inflammation really stimulates your immune system, directs it in the correct way. So is your infection a bacteria or is it a virus? And depending on which it is, you know, the, the immune system will then be educated to, to behave in a particular way.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  And inflammation is important to that, but that's all acute inflammation. It's rapid, it goes away when the problem is resolved. So when your cut has healed itself, when the infection has been cleared, it subsides. This inflamaging is there at a very low level and it's there for years and years. So if you don't turn that inflammation off, then unfortunately it can be damaging. So for example, too much inflammation will actually suppress your immune system.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  What are the signs of aging that can be affected by this inflammation? And the, the way the immune system is not working as well?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  So I'm going to give you two examples. So one thing, as I've said, the, the inflammation can actually suppress your immune systems. So you're more susceptible to infections. And when you actually get an infection, it takes you longer to clear it. So again, most of your viewers will know if you're a 20 or 30 year old and you get flu, you have a week or two in bed, you have a few duvet days, but then you're fine. But if you're 70, 80 years old and you get the flu, there's a good chance you could end up in hospital and even die as a result because you get secondary infections like pneumonia as well. So that's one thing, that's one very visible thing that most of your viewers will know that the older you are, you're in a high risk category.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Coming back to my thinking, isn't that just what it means to be older? You're looking at me as like, no, definitely not, Jonathan.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  It is a marker of aging, so it's something we recognise, but it's not inevitable.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  And so you're saying that this is because the immune system has

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Declined.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Has declined.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yes, it's compromised.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Because of this ongoing level of inflammation?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yes, it's, yes, it's certainly one of the, the key drivers, we think. Other things happen as well that can affect your immune system, but inflammation is looking like a major driver. Another aspect that, again, your viewers will recognise as and think about as an old person is walking more slowly, perhaps less struggling to get out of a chair, you know, groaning every time you get out of the chair. And that is because with age, our muscles, we have less muscle and it's less good quality muscles. It's called sarcopenia. So you lose muscle strength and we know that inflammation is one of the drivers there. So this inflammation actually does lots of things to muscle. It slows down the production of molecules that you need to grow the muscle, they're

• 5:46Speaker 01

  called growth factors. So it suppresses that. It also causes the production in the muscle of hormones, stress hormones. And again, some of your viewers may have heard of one called cortisol. And cortisol breaks muscle down. So it's suppressing the growth of new muscle and it's accelerating the breakdown of existing muscle. So again, inflammation, we know, drives this cortisol production and suppresses these growth factors. It's one of the factors that's causing this frailty.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Janet, that's amazing. I've never heard that before. So you're saying that if my inflammation is higher, it's actually basically like reducing my muscles and like breaking them down and making it hard to build them?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's one of the things that's going to increase the risk of an older adult becoming physically frail.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  So I'd love to talk a bit about what we can do, because I think you're now painting this picture that inflammation is playing a really big role, I think, in how many healthy years we're having to enjoy. But there's one intervention that I know that you've studied really extensively, and I understand that's exercise. I think lots of people listening is like, well, you know, I know that exercise is good for me, but what's that got to do with like my immune system and inflammation? Can you help us to understand, Janet?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  I can. Again, lots of ways. And as you said, we've known for a long time that the more physically active you are, you know, you reduce your risk of a whole range of diseases. You're likely to be longer lived and have a longer healthy lifespan. And it's now becoming clear that this might be because exercise reduces inflammation. And it does it in lots of ways. So if you're being very physically active, you're less likely to have too much adipose tissue, too much fat. So you've reduced one of those sources of that inflammation. By doing that, you've reduced the risk of your vessels being damaged. I told you earlier about inflammation reduces your muscle mass and strength. So you've

• 7:47Speaker 01

  reduced one of the causes of you feeling more frail and less able to function physically. The other thing that your viewers may not be aware of is that muscle itself actually can be anti-inflammatory. I didn't touch on that earlier. But moving muscle produces cytokines that dampen the inflammation down. Particularly, they educate immune cells to be anti-inflammatory. And so the more your muscle is moving, the more it's producing helpful cytokines to dampen the inflammation. And the more you sit, the less of those are being produced. So that's why we know that sedentary time is also important.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  So your viewers might struggle with this one, so.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  To help me to understand that.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  So they're two different factors. So the time you've spent doing exercise is great. It's going to give you all of these benefits, reduce the inflammation, help you to be more anti-inflammatory. But if you then, say you do your forty five minutes of exercise in the morning, you go and walk the dog or you do a little jog, whatever you do for your exercise, and then you sit then for eight or ten hours watching daytime television or you're at work and you're at your desk, you can undo a lot of that. Because the muscle will then not produce that dampening cytokine for that long period of time. So now we know that, yes, you need to be physically active, but also don't be too sedentary.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  If you're sitting, you've got a desk job or you're at home, you're retired now, perhaps every hour, get up and move around, even if it's just for ten minutes.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  I think I'd understood why that might be good for my heart or something. There's all these things like, you know, just having the muscles is good. But here you're describing the way that it's directly sort of like almost orchestrating my immune system.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. It's it's turns out that your muscle is a major regulator of your immune system. It can make it less inflammatory, basically. And so if you're not moving, then say you get an infection, you're much more likely to have this overshoot with your inflammation. As long as you break that sitting time up and then this pro-inflammatory system can't really get established. So you get up, you know, after an hour, move around and then, yeah. Because sometimes, you know, you may not be able to, you know, stand up all day. I had a standing desk at work and so I did stand all day. So think about that one, that's another good one to think about.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  So one thing you're saying is, don't sit for a long time. I need to walk around because then I'm getting all of these benefits from my muscles that are sort of dampening my my inflammation. What about the exercise itself? I guess, how important is that forty five minutes of something more intense? And what do you need to be doing to get the benefit to sort of fight this inflammation?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we sort of class exercise in two broad areas as aerobic. So that's basically anything that raises your heart rate, gets you a little bit out of breath. And that is very good for reducing the inflammation, for helping your heart, helping your lungs, as well as your muscle function itself. And the other type of exercise is what we call resistance exercise. So that's strengthening. This might be band work, or if you go to a gym, lifting weights. Or I always say to people, you don't even need to go to the gym, just go up and downstairs. And then, you know, that's a really good exercise. It's aerobic and it's resistance. But the resistance is more important for the building of strength of your muscle and the muscle mass. So ideally, you need to do both.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  The aerobic, to bring the inflammation down. The evidence is stronger there for aerobic bringing inflammation down. And the resistance to keep your muscles themselves a good size and good function. I always say, you know, worst thing you can do is, an old adult is to go and get a bungalow or live in an apartment with no steps and you'll end up with bungalow legs. So legs with less muscle and less strength.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  That's really interesting. I heard this on speaking to another scientist a little while ago, thinking about, you know, what you should do with your parents. And I definitely was brought up with this idea that, you know, as your parents get older or anyone gets older, like they should take it easy, they shouldn't have to carry their own bags. And he was saying, oh, no, you should make, you know, your parents carry the shopping upstairs. If you really love them. Is that really true?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely true, yes. My mother, when we were looking for a home for her to move into when she was downsizing, she wanted a ground level apartment. We said, no, mum, you're getting one with stairs. You're on the first floor or the second floor. She wasn't pleased about it, but I think she enjoyed it eventually.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  And you feel that basically you're giving her more years of healthy life?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Your ground floor, you're not using those stairs, you're not getting that exercise for your muscles. And it's such a simple thing to do. You know, I always say to people, for no other reason, every day, just going up down your stairs 10 times, just for no reason, just go and do it as your exercise.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  That's it for this week's recap. If you're listening to this, you're already on your way to living healthier through better nutrition. And at Zoe, we're doing everything we can to help you on your way. So we've developed Daily 30, a delicious dietary supplement to add to your meals. Because we're Zoe, we ran a clinical trial testing Daily 30. The results were staggering. It's selling out in the UK and we're working hard to bring it to the US as soon as possible. Sign up to the waitlist at Zoe.com/daily30.