Have you ever wondered why some people in their 80s seem as energetic as their 60s while others struggle at XNUMX? The answer may be new to you. A newly published international study has found that chronic inflammation, or what doctors call “inflammaging,” isn’t nearly as inevitable as we thought. In fact, it appears to be more a product of our modern lifestyle than of age itself.
Researchers compared populations from four continents and the results are surprising. Shall we look at them together? Come on.
When age doesn't hurt
Alan Cohen and his team at Columbia University analyzed blood samples from nearly 3000 people from four very different populations. On one side, Italians from Chianti and Singaporeans, representing industrialized societies. On the other, Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon and the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia, indigenous communities who still live according to ancient traditions.
The result? In modern societies, inflammation steadily increases with age, fueling heart disease, diabetes, and cognitive decline. But in indigenous populations, this link disappears entirely.
Tsimane elders have inflammation levels that fluctuate based on current infections, not chronological age. “Inflammaging may not be a direct product of aging, but a response to industrialized conditions”, explains Cohen in the research published in Nature Aging.
The “Russian Roulette” of Infections
Sixty-six percent of Tsimane live with at least one intestinal parasite, and over 66% of Orang Asli have active infections. They should be more inflamed than we are, right? Instead, the opposite is true. Their inflammation is acute and targeted against real threats, not the sort of perpetual toxic fog that accompanies our urban aging.
This factor confirms something fundamental to us: Our immune system was born to fight real enemies, not to wear ourselves out against ghosts created by our lifestyle. As the Columbia researchers themselves explain:, we are witnessing an “evolutionary mismatch between our immune systems and the environments we now live in.”
Inflammation, the roots of the phenomenon
The term inflammaging was coined by Claudio Franceschi of the University of Bologna, who first observed this lethal link between inflammation and aging. His research hypothesizes that the “molecular junk” produced by our damaged cells accumulates over time, chronically activating the immune system.
But the real problem, it turns out, isn’t cellular debris: it’s that we live in environments that confuse our defenses. Polluted air, high calorie diets, sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress and poor exposure to microbes during childhood may have created the perfect storm for the chronic, “progressive” inflammation we are seeing.
Beyond Inflammaging
Traditional biomarkers such as C-reactive protein and pro-inflammatory cytokines tell different stories depending on where you live. What to a Milanese is a sign of pathological aging, to a Tsimane is simply the immune system doing its job.
Cohen is categorical on this:
“It’s a warning. Don’t follow the latest dietary fads to reduce inflammation. We don’t understand the biology enough to micromanage it.”
The solution, in other words, would not lie in superfoods or anti-inflammatory supplements, but in radically rethinking our relationship with the environment.
The future without inflammation
Columbia's discovery could revolutionize the way we approach diseases of aging. Instead of accepting inflammation as inevitable, we might learn to recreate (but don't ask me how) the conditions that allow Orang Asli to age without inflammation.
As the most recent studies suggest, the future of longevity lies not in fighting age, but in distinguishing biological from environmental aging. Perhaps the real discovery is that we age badly, not that aging is intrinsically harmful.
The next time you meet an energetic 80-year-old, don't ask what his genes are. Ask what kind of world he lived in.
