Chronic (i.e., systemic) inflammation is the root cause of virtually all disease and dysfunction in the body, including cancer, heart disease, and cognitive decline. Chronic inflammation is a sign of the body's efforts to fight off chronic stressors, such as reactive foods (such as gluten, peanuts, and lactose), excessive exercise without recovery time, chronically elevated glucose and insulin levels, and even seasonal allergies. Our bodies are not supposed to be on the defensive 24/7, chronic inflammation can eventually lead to immunosuppression, indigestion, hormonal dysfunction, a wide variety of ailments that end in "inflammatory" (arthritis, colitis, gastritis, sinusitis), as well as major modern killers—cancer, heart disease, and cognitive decline. In contrast, acute inflammation often has its merits in the short term. It helps your muscles to run, jump, lift and sprint; it helps contain and heal regular scrapes, sprained ankles or bee stings.
Those with the lucky genes not to hoard excess fat may also have metabolic dysfunction, excess visceral fat, and an increased risk of disease from an inflammatory lifestyle—especially the intake of toxic seed oils. You may have heard of cases of super fit people dying of sudden heart attacks. This disturbing occurrence is actually quite common, the result of chronic inflammation in their bodies from carb dependence and excessive exercise. Developed over years or decades, chronic inflammation can lead to scarring of the heart muscle, damaging the "circuitry."
Excessive caloric intake and chronically high insulin levels also send genetic signals to your cells to "divide faster." Accelerated cell division is common and necessary during certain growth stages of life, such as pregnancy, infancy, and adolescence (such as a teenager trying to build muscle for high school sports). But accelerated cell division, marked by overstimulation of growth factors such as insulin-like growth factor 1 and mammalian target of rapamycin, leads to accelerated aging. Cells throughout the body die after undergoing a limited number of divisions. We can witness a gradual weakening of the immune response (so-called "immunosenescence") in the gradual deterioration of the cellular functions of the muscles, organs, immune system, and metabolic system as the body ages. The reason why people are more susceptible to diseases than younger people.
Glycation is another disturbing consequence of a high-carbohydrate, high-insulin diet. The brain, cardiovascular system, eyes, kidneys and skin cells are some of the longest-lived and most fragile cells in the human body. Those with diabetes who cannot regulate their blood sugar often have vision and kidney problems. Older ones often have wrinkled skin, dementia and heart disease. Brain cells are most sensitive to oxidation, inflammation, and glycation, and today, troubling increases in cognitive disease rates are also increasingly linked to nutrient-poor, high-insulin diets. Senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in Alzheimer's disease are both caused by glycation. Dementia is fundamentally a metabolic disease, characterized by impaired glucose metabolism in the brain, "with molecular and biochemical properties consistent with diabetes," explains Brown University neuropathologist Professor Suzanne Drummont. The strong association between the two has led Dr. Drummond's team to coin the widely used term "type 3 diabetes" to describe this cognitive decline.
