How Does Nutrition Impact Inflammatory Disease Development?

New treatment approach many help control inflammation.

An unresolved inflammatory response is likely to be involved from the early stages of disease development, a recent study indicates.

Controlling inflammation is crucial to human health and a key preventative and therapeutic target for future treatments. A team of experts explain how nutrition influences inflammatory processes and helps reduce chronic disease risks in the study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Inflammation is a natural part of host defense for those combatting diseases. However, elevated unresolved chronic inflammation is a core disturbance across an array of chronic diseases.

Therefore, it seems that prevention or control of low-grade inflammation is a likely target effect for healthy food or food ingredients. In the latest study published by the ILSI Europe Obesity and Diabetes Task Force, experts offer new approaches to capture inflammatory status in humans that help determine the impact diet can have in positively modulating inflammation.

While inflammation is essential in metabolic regulation, unresolved low-grade chronic inflammation is a pathological feature covering a wide range of chronic conditions, including metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases, according to researchers.

For example, individuals with a deficiency or excess of certain micronutrients may lead to an ineffective or excessive inflammatory response. Studies have shown that high consumption of fat and glucose may cause post-prandial inflammation (manifesting itself after the consumption of a meal), which may lead to the development of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Diets rich in fat and simple sugars and low in specific micronutrients, such as the Western-style diet, are linked to the increased presence of diseases with strong immunogical and autoimmune components, which can include allergies, food allergies, atopic dermatitis and obesity.