Aging & Inflammation

Aging well is largely about managing inflammation. You will likely feel better and have more energy if your baseline levels of inflammation are lower, and will likely struggle more with aches, pains and low energy when your baseline levels of inflammation are higher. Managing inflammation is essential to aging well, and requires more than anti-inflammatory supplements and down time.

Reducing baseline levels of inflammation requires the strategic application of inflammation. Known as hormesis, regular applications of inflammation can lower baseline levels of inflammation. To some small extent, that which doesn’t kill you may well make you stronger. The trick is getting the dose just right, as the dose of inflammation either makes the poison or the medicine.

Yes, this is an eBike. I adjust the level of assist to maintain the just-right challenge.

Exercise, particularly cardio, is inflammatory. This is among the many reasons why doing cardio is an essential element in aging well. In the absence of cardio, your system in a sense forgets how to manage inflammation, and baseline levels of inflammation tend to increase as the years go by. When maintaining a regular regimen of cardio, however, your system keeps relearning how to bounce back better, which is powerfully anti-inflammatory.

The trick is getting the inflammatory dose just right. Too much cardio, either in volume or intensity, can fan the flames of inflammation. Too little cardio, in volume or intensity, can fan the flames of inflammation. Much like Baby Bear’s oatmeal, just right is just right.

For many of the clients that I work with, their walks, bike rides or paddles just aren’t enough of a stimulus to induce the hormetic benefits. To age optimally, we need to continually do some hard stuff. If your workouts are consistently within a zone that feels completely comfortable, your levels of baseline inflammation are likely creeping upwards. To maximize the time that you invest in physical activity, periodically doing some hard stuff is the ticket.

Recently, I ramped up both the intensity and volume of my cardio workouts in preparation for doing something hard. Personally, I find renewed motivation to work out when I’m preparing for an event or an activity, and over the past few months, I’ve been preparing for an overnight bike trip. For some of you, 7+ hours per day on the bike may not seem like much of a challenge, though for me, I anticipate that long back-to-back days on the bike will be hard. At first glance, it may seem like spending most of a weekend on a bike is a pretty foolish thing for someone nearly 60 years of age to embark upon, though from what I know about inflammation, over the long haul, this tour and the training leading up to it will most likely reduce baseline levels of inflammation.

To paraphrase the old adage, we don’t stop doing X, Y or Z because we get old, we get old because we stop doing X, Y or Z. Yes, it can be harder to muster the gumption to push yourself into doing hard things now and then, though the benefits can be significant. The dose makes the medicine… and the trick is finding the just-right dose to extract the maximum benefit from the time that you invest in your wellbeing.