Inflammation – The Link Between Obesity and Disease
It’s not news that humans are getting bigger. Obesity has a prevalence in the United States of 42%, with health effects costing over $173 billion in 2019 alone.
It’s estimated that half of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2030.
Obesity is defined as having a BMI (body mass index) over 30, while overweight is a BMI above 25.
While there are certainly issues with BMI as a tool, it doesn’t tell the whole story about an individual’s health; it’s the measurement most often used in research.
BMI is calculated by dividing your body weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared.
- Formula: weight (kg) / [height (m)]2
BMI can also be calculated by dividing your weight in pounds by your height in inches squared, then multiplying the answer by 703.
- Formula: weight (lb) / [height (in)]2 x 703
The research is clear that obesity is a risk factor for chronic disease, disability, and premature death.
But what ties excess body weight to these poor health outcomes? One of the answers is inflammation.
This article will address:
- Sources of inflammation
- The connection between inflammation and obesity
- The gut microbiome’s role
- Diet and lifestyle tools that address the root causes of weight gain
What Is Inflammation?
Fundamentally inflammation is a normal process of the immune system.
It’s how the immune system responds to an injury or pathogen and mounts a response. Say, for example, you step on a nail. The tissue damage will produce the classic signs of acute inflammation: redness, pain, heat, and swelling.
The problem, however, is when inflammation becomes chronic. It might not be as apparent and visible after stepping on a nail, but low levels throughout the body are an underlying factor to fuel chronic disease.
What Came First? Obesity Or Inflammation?
As we explore the relationship between excess body fat and inflammation, you might be surprised to learn that it’s a two-way street. Obesity drives inflammation, but inflammation also drives obesity and makes it harder to lose weight.
Excess weight, especially adipose tissue (fat) around the midsection, promotes chronic, low-grade, systemic inflammation.
This inflammation is the fuel to the fire of metabolic disease, including:
- Metabolic syndrome
- Diabetes
- Cardiovascular disease
- Neurodegenerative disease
- Fatty liver disease
- Cancer
The American lifestyle is the main contributor to obesity. In our culture, it’s common to eat ultra-processed and packaged food.
Processed foods are inflammatory because of refined carbohydrates, added sugars, and oxidized vegetable oils without providing adequate essential nutrients.
In addition to producing inflammation, these foods send signals to the body to store fat.
It’s not just the diet aspect of the American lifestyle that promotes inflammation and obesity. We are also busy, stressed, sedentary, and exposed to thousands of chemical toxins.
These factors also contribute to weight gain, altered metabolism, and the inflammation that makes it harder to lose weight.
Excess fat storage itself is a primary source of inflammation. The adipose tissue creates a cascade of pro-inflammatory cytokines and hormones that promote inflammation.
As fat accumulates, the inflammation affects the entire body, including the metabolic organs. For example, in the ovaries it can even affect fertility.
The Gut Microbiome Connection
The gut microbiome is composed of the trillions of organisms living in the digestive tract. Interestingly, studies have shown that there are significant differences between the microbiomes of lean and overweight people.
A poor diet and obesity also correlate with cognitive impairment and an increased risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
At first, we might think of nutrient deficiencies or blood sugar imbalances as the reasons why a poor diet affects the brain, which are certainly contributing factors.
However, emerging research sheds light on how the diet affects the microbiome, affecting the brain via the gut-brain axis.
A standard American inflammatory diet changes the composition of the gut microbiome and increases inflammation.
This causes an increase in inflammatory signaling at the brain, which can lead to a leaky blood-brain barrier.
Certainly, the weight gain caused by a poor diet impacts the brain directly, but the diet’s impact on the microbiome may have the most significant impact and explain brain-related changes.
We see this distinction in that someone can be in a normal BMI category, but still have cognitive impairment driven by microbiome imbalances (dysbiosis).
While we can draw the arrows from poor diet to inflammation to a decline in brain function, the whole picture might not be precisely this straightforward.
There are many pathways by which the microbiome (and the metabolic changes associated with obesity) affect brain health, including hormones, neurotransmitters, cardiovascular health, insulin sensitivity, and more.
For example, there are ways that a poor diet induces insulin resistance that are independent of the gut microbiome.
But we also can’t ignore how diet changes the gut microbiome, increases inflammation, and drives insulin resistance from the gut level.
There are so many connections, and the connections are where Functional Medicine really shines! We see all body systems as interconnected. So, you don’t need a weight loss doctor to lose weight, you need to get to the root causes.
Addressing inflammation and gut microbiome balance is an excellent place to start.
How To Reduce Inflammation And Lose Weight
When it comes to weight loss, the first-place people turn is often to manipulating food and exercise from a calorie perspective. But this approach fails to appreciate why the body is holding on to weight in the first place.
You’ll likely be much more successful by working on reducing inflammation.
In addition, it may help to expand your perspective about weight.
Make the goal about something bigger than the number on the scale. It’s about moving the needle on the underlying mechanisms that lead to disease.
From this perspective weight loss might be a nice side effect, that you don’t have to force.
It starts with the gut.
And the best way to change the microbiome landscape is by changing the diet.
Here’s how:
1. Choose whole, unprocessed, ancestral foods higher in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory compounds. The Every Life Well Paleo Protocol is an effective and practical starting point.
2. Reduce or eliminate added sugars, additives, preservatives, vegetable oils, and other low-quality ingredients and toxins in food. These drive inflammation and negatively affect the microbiome.
3. Avoid foods you are sensitive to. Gluten and dairy are inflammatory for most people.
4. Increase omega-3 fats. Include wild-caught, cold-water fish such as wild salmon.
5. Increase Paleo-approved plant foods, including fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs, spices, seaweed, and tubers. Try to eat 40 unique plant foods each week. Diversity in the diet promotes diversity of beneficial organisms in the gut.
6. Include microbiome supportive foods, including fermented foods (sauerkraut, kimchi, coconut yogurt, apple cider vinegar) and foods containing prebiotics to feed beneficial bacteria. These include onions, garlic, asparagus, artichokes, chicory, and sunchokes.
In addition to diet change, consider additional Functional Medicine support:
- Consider microbiome testing. Work with a Functional Medicine provider for specialized testing that looks at your microbiome health. Then, you can take specific and personalized action steps to rebalance the microbiome. You can self-order the GI MAP, our favorite functional stool test, here.
- Live a gut-healthy lifestyle. These habits support a healthy microbiome, reduce inflammation, and aid in healthy weight loss:
- Exercise and movement
- Stress reduction
- Mindfulness and meditation
- Quality sleep
- Decreasing exposures to toxins
- Connecting with nature
- Add powerful antioxidant + omega supplements – Liposomal Curcumin, Liposomal Vitamin C, Liposomal CoQ10 PQQ, Omega Balance
While investing in food quality is critical for addressing inflammation and associated excess body weight, many of the other lifestyle tools here are low-cost or free.
These habits support health and have the added benefit of improving quality of life and happiness.
If you are curious about weight loss, consider a new approach.
Instead of focusing on the weight alone, dig deeper to understand what factors signaled the body to hold on to extra weight. Address those factors.
This approach restores balance and function within the body, while preventing disease.
References
- https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5409636/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790820/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2749322/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30999278/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294624/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4992602/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2913796/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32171891/
- https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.00041.2015?rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org
