Don’t Inflame Your Heart With Daily Life
When we are older, keeping healthy heart requires more than just the standard, ‘Watch cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar.’ So many people allow damage to build up in their hearts early in life; too many let inflammation from stress and lifestyle choices smolder in their daily lives. This article highlights findings from a study of nearly a half-million British adults in which those with higher inflammation levels developed heart conditions at a 43% increased rate. While the authors expressed repeated interest in how socioeconomic factors affected future heart health, these findings extend far beyond health care inequalities.
Good Short-Term Inflammation
Normally, some short-term inflammation is a very beneficial process. When we are fighting an infection, inflammation helps kill the infection. When we have an injury, whether a simple wound or a more painful fracture, inflammation sets off the process of healing those injuries. The problem arises when the threat continues long term or the inflammation continues after the threat is long gone. In those cases, chronic inflammation ends up causing other harms, even if it is trying to do good.
Chronic Inflammation’s Effects
While noting that other research has linked chronic inflammation with cancer and diabetes, they wanted to know if it also affected heart disease risk over a lifetime. By measuring a marker of inflammation in almost 480,000 individuals, they found that those with the 20% highest levels of the marker had a 43% higher rate of heart attacks than those in the lowest 20%. Further evaluation of the test subjects indicated that those with higher inflammation had remodeling of their heart muscle that was associated with later disease states.
Of course, smoking and obesity were found to be associated with higher inflammation in this group, but those in lower socioeconomic groups and higher psychological distress also had higher inflammation and higher heart damage. While the study is not designed to evaluate for mechanisms and cannot fully rule out other contributing factors, we see a clear connection between inflammation and heart disease. Over the years, higher stress, whether from economic distress or psychological stressors, contributes to inflammation that increases heart disease risk.
What Functional Medicine Has Long Said
This matches up with what those of us in functional medicine have been saying about inflammatory markers like CRP and a whole person approach to health for years. Cholesterol and blood sugar are just a piece of the puzzle. Until we address our patients as more than physical bodies with a cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar marker, we are missing out on the effects of life stress and inflammation on their future heart health.
What We Want For Our Patients
We want our patients to have healthier, more abundant lives—which means less heart disease hindering them from enjoying the wonders of life in families and community. That requires addressing their whole life and keeping their inflammation to a minimum, limiting it to where it helps and turning it off where it doesn’t.
Other Sanctuary Articles on the Effects of Stress:
To learn how we can help you protect your heart visit:
Original Article:
Mattia Corianò, Shamin Tahasildar, Ling Huang, Khaled Rjoob, Majid Vafaeezadeh, Soodeh Kalaie, Jin Zheng, Lara Curran, Parisa Gifani, Marc-Emmanuel Dumas, Declan P O’Regan. Gene–environment interactions shape cytokine-mediated inflammation and cardiovascular risk. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2026; DOI: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwag435
Thanks to Science Daily:
Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Medical Sciences. “Chronic stress may be quietly reshaping your heart.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 September 2026. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260920222354.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Dr. Eric Potter graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and then went on to specialize in internal medicine (adult) and pediatric care, spending significant time and effort in growing his medical understanding while caring for patients from all walks of life.
