Is your body doing the slow (invisible) burn that fires up cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and brain drain — and even increases wrinkles and hurts your sex life? You can’t really feel inflammation until its damage is obvious, but the answer could be yes if you’ve got a wide waistline, a stressed-out schedule, a taste for fast and processed foods or a neglected container of dental floss in your bathroom cabinet.
If you’re mumbling, “Yikes, that’s me!” don’t panic … yet. The pay-attention-to-this news: You get a do-over! It’s true that inflammation makes cancer-stopping genes (you have ’em) impotent, leading to the development of new cancer; plus, it fuels existing small cancers and the buildup of heart-menacing plaque in artery walls. But you can turn off inflammation, and that’s key to controlling those gene switches, beating cancer and dodging heart disease.
