Inflammation

Why Does Inflammation Seem to Underlie All Sickness?

It’s a culprit in diseases ranging from arthritis to depression

Markham Heid

Oct 17 · 4 min readW

Writing in 1889, the Swiss pathologist Ernst Ziegler observed that “a brief and precise definition of inflammation is altogether impossible.” Even back then, experts like Ziegler recognized that inflammation manifests in different ways, and that its activity can be both helpful and harmful.

Doctors today have a better understanding of inflammation and its role in illness. But their best attempts to define inflammation still lack the precision Ziegler found elusive more than a century ago.

According to the authors of a 2015 British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) study, inflammation is the immune system’s primary weapon in the “elimination of toxic agents and the repair of damaged tissues.” But when inflammation persists or switches on inappropriately, they write, it can act as a foe rather than a friend. Hardly a week goes by in which researchers fail to discover new links between inappropriate inflammation and a common disease or disorder.