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antasvara | 5 months ago

Inflammation is a blunt instrument. It's one of the body's tools to contain and attack a pathogen. Without it, many bacteria and other irritants would wreak havoc on the body.

As allergies and (to an extent) COVID have shown, inflammation can also be dangerous. Too much acute inflammation can cause essential body functions to shut down or function incorrectly.

Point being that inflammation is "good" when the alternative is an infection running rampant in your body. But it's "worse" for your body than the baseline, so chronic inflammation is bad for you (and seems to increase cancer risk).

Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen are good for knocking down inflammation, but they have a suite of side effects unrelated to this function that make them terrible for prolonged use. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that these side effects are way worse than the benefits of reduced chronic inflammation.

More generally, reducing inflammation across the board leaves you open to infection. It's why we don't prescribe steroids long-term in most patients: the downside of reduced immune response vastly outweighs the benefit for generally healthy patients. It's only considered if the condition (like your body attacking an organ transplant) is more dangerous than the reduced immune response.

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mewpmewp2|5 months ago

As far as I understand exercise and working out also causes inflammation in order to repair and/or build your muscle. So taking ibuprofen might hurt your ability to recover etc.

Immune system and inflammation is clearly very important process for humans for many things even beyond illnesses.

Like inflammation is body's way to repair and adapt to the environment.

breadwinner|5 months ago

Would it be accurate to say enteric coated baby aspirin reduces risk of stroke due to its blood thinning properties, but since it is anti-inflammatory, also reduces risk of atherosclerosis and now cancer?