Inflammation

Inflammation is the process of recruiting immune cells to tissues in the body for the purpose of destroying pathogens, toxic compounds, and facilitating healing after damage. Inflammed tissue is generally red and hot due to swelling with blood and increased heat production that facilitates the immune response. This is a beneficial and vital biological process, but when it's excessive or prolonged, it plays a role in a wide variety of of diseases of aging and disorders through damaging tissue or disrupting important biological functions.

Excessive inflammation plays a part in cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, cancers, depression, and more. Oftentimes the influx of cytokines (signaling molecules that tell immune cells what to do) have broad roles, and interfere with the normal functioning of cells, originally for the purpose of combating the threat, but when inflammation is too common and too potent, cellular function is impaired too frequently, leading to broader issues (such as the suppression of glucose uptake by inflammatory cytokines, which plays a part in insulin resistance). Additionally, the collateral damage done by immune cells' chemical weapons, or through purposeful degradation of extracellular matrixes or aptopsis.

Foods and supplements that regulate or prevent excessive inflammation may do so through being regulators of immune cells, influencing the production of immune regulators, or preventing inflammatory stimuli in the first place,

This outcome contains a broad assessment of inflammation, oftentimes referring to multiple inflammatory markers. For specific information on particular inflammatory markers, refer to the entries for those, as they may be more accurate.

The Human Effect Matrix looks at human studies (it excludes animal and in vitro studies) to tell you what supplements affect inflammation.

Grade	Level of Evidence [show legend]
	Robust research conducted with repeated double-blind clinical trials
	Multiple studies where at least two are double-blind and placebo controlled
	Single double-blind study or multiple cohort studies
	Uncontrolled or observational studies only

Level of Evidence ? The amount of high quality evidence. The more evidence, the more we can trust the results.	Supplement	Magnitude of effect ? The direction and size of the supplement's impact on each outcome. Some supplements can have an increasing effect, others have a decreasing effect, and others have no effect.	Consistency of research results ? Scientific research does not always agree. HIGH or VERY HIGH means that most of the scientific research agrees.	Notes
	Fish Oil	Minor	Moderate See all 17 studies	Highly mixed and unreliable influences on circulating inflammatory cytokines (although, due to immunosuppression on cellular adhesion factors, the overall effect may still be antiinflammatory)
	Curcumin	Notable	Very High See all 6 studies	There appears to be a decrease in disease states or conditions characterized by inflammation associated with curcumin ingestion, does not appear to be too discriminatory in which inflammatory states it benefits
	Ginger	Minor	Very High See all 4 studies	Inflammatory parameters seem to be reduced following ginger consumption
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	Serrapeptase
	Coenzyme Q10
	Conjugated Linoleic Acid
	Vitamin C
	Japanese Knotweed
	Alpha-Lipoic Acid
	L-Carnitine
	Melatonin
	Panax ginseng
	Spirulina
	Stinging Nettle
	Benfotiamine
	Glutamine
	Olive leaf extract
	Phosphatidylserine
	Pycnogenol
	Quercetin
	Salvia hispanica
	Sea Buckthorn
	Theaflavins
	Vitamin D
	Whey Protein
	Boron
	Bromelain
	Coffee
	Hibiscus sabdariffa
	Astaxanthin