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The Impact of Inflammation on Mental and Physical Health
- Stephanie Heinhold, PT
- Dec 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Today I want to unpack how inflammation hijacks our mental and physical health while also offering some wisdom in how we can tame the fire brewing underneath the surface of dis-ease.
What is inflammation?
The Cleveland Clinic defines inflammation as a normal part of your body's response to injuries and invaders (like germs). It promotes healing and helps you feel better.
This is how inflammation should work naturally.
But, inflammation that happens when there's no injury or invader can harm healthy parts of your body and cause a range of chronic diseases. (1)
Inflammation is our body's signal that something is off, or is a threat. It is closely tied to our guts, brains, and hormones through attempting to root out invaders and re-establish harmony. But, when we are under constant stress, have altered gut functioning, or are having shifts in hormonal patterns, the inflammatory system goes on high alert, leaving us in chronic unexplainable pain, feeling fatigued and overwhelmed, and even leading to our brains shutting down when faced with an emotional or psychological trigger.
Research is now showing patterns of blood flow in the brain shifting from the reasoning centers to the stress response centers when we are triggered or living out a traumatic experience. This is inflammation coming in and doing its job by diverting blood flow as an attempt to protect us. However, when we lose blood flow to our reasoning center of the brain, we also lose the capacity to think clearly. This pattern is showing up consistently in the brain scans of those who are experiencing triggers that send them into a post-traumatic stress response.
When we experience this blood flow shift on a chronic basis through active triggers, replaying memories in our minds, feeling shame and overall defeat in our circumstances, or becoming fearful of when the next shoe might drop, we live in a state of chronic inflammation, worry, doubt, fear, and insecurity. We may find ourselves becoming hypervigilant and hyperaware of our surroundings, or we may numb everything and actively disscociate from our reality.
While this is a protective mechanism, it doesn't allow us to live life fully and ultimately leads to further mental and physical challenges down the line if this inflammation and the overall stress response isn't tamped down and addressed.
Now, this is just the blood flow shift in the brain. Imagine your entire body experiencing altered blood flow activity due to consistent interaction with toxins we take in through our bodies. Whether it is pollutants in the air, or the ultra processed foods we are accustomed to eating, inflammation comes in to do its job in ridding our bodies of the perceived threat.
Long term inflammatory reactions can lead to autoimmune disorders, global arthritis, muscular dysfunction, and overall swelling, fatigue, and pain.
One of the key ways we can reset our bodies and minds from the inside out is through understanding and taking action to care for our bodies, douse the fire of chronic inflammation, and reset our nervous system to regain reasoning capacity.
How do we reset our inflammatory system?
There are multiple ways we can reset our system and becoming curious as to the underlying cause can help point us in the right direction.
If you're finding yourself stuck in mental loops of anxiety, fear, insecurity, distrust, or trauma, then taking some time to pause, breathe deeply, and name what you are feeling can halt the cascade of inflammation shifting blood flow, allowing your reasoning capacity to remain active.
Box breathing technique (2): Imagine you are breathing and drawing a line around a box as you go. Breathe in for a count of 4 as you draw the top line, hold your breath for a count of 4 as you draw the line downward. Breathe out for a count of 4 as you draw the lower line, then hold for a count of 4 as you draw the line upward, connecting the box. Repeat for 1-2 minutes and see how you feel
Naming your emotions(3): the moment you name an emotion without labeling it as good or bad, you pull back into your reasoning center of your brain, bringing back clarity and an opportunity to consciously respond
Recognizing old patterns and creating new narratives: Often when we are triggered, we are thrust back to a particular moment in time, a pattern that shows up creating a particular narrative rooted in shame, fear, doubt, and insecurity. When we can identify that pattern and challenge it's narrative through also bringing into consicous awareness times where we have been safe, protected, empowered, and courageous, the blood flow resets, the inflammatory response halts, and we ground back into a new more empowering reality.
What about the body's response to inflammation? Do you find yourself in a state of chronic pain, fatigue, exhaustion, or bodily malfunction? Taking time to understand the ways we can tackle inflammation through the foods we eat can help our guts reset into a state of harmony.
Eat the Rainbow: Becoming aware of what we are eating can help feed our bodies the nutrition they need to work optimally. The next time you're at the grocery store take a moment to pause in the fruit and vegetable section. What do you see? Is there a rainbow of vibrant colors greeting you? Each one of these colors holds a variety of micronutritients that help support our body's functioning on all levels. All of these micronutrients act as scrubbers for our bodies, offering nutrition where it needs to go, and ridding us of toxins that are triggering our inflammatory response.
Through taking time to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables with a variety of colors, we cool the fire of inflammation.
Increase Fiber Intake: Fiber is abundant in whole fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans. Fiber plays a critical role in slowing down the bodies digestion of sugar, allowing it to be used more effectively for muscle activation and brain functioning. Essentially, fiber acts as a gate keeper, preventing excess sugar from triggering the inflammatory response.
The greater focus we place on fueling our bodies with whole, nutrient and fiber dense foods, the greater opportunity we have to give our inflammatory system a break, reseting it to it's natural function, and allowing it to work only occassionally when we might get a cut on our finger, or sprain an ankle.
Flavor food with spices(5): Various herbs and spices are not only powerhouses of flavor, but they also contain micronutritents that counteract inflammation. Some of the best anti-inflammatory spices are cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, capsacin, and black pepper.
Becoming creative in how we add spices can not only help add a variety of flavor to our foods, but can be a key player in reducing the body's inflammatory response.
Motion is Lotion(6): This is a common physical therapy phrase that I have found to be so true over the years. Even if we are in a state of high inflammation and chronic pain, a little movement can go a long way towards resetting that inflammatory response. Movement acts as natural lubrication for our joints and helps our muscles use the sugars we are taking in so they don't alter blood flow throughout the rest of the body.
Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, or a gentle walk can remind our muscles, bones, and joints that they were made for movement. The key is starting small and building up as your body gets used to the movement. And, we don't have to drag ourselves to the gym to feel the positive effects of movement.
Even 10 minutes of tai chi, qi gong or yoga daily can start resetting the inflammatory system through integrating breathwork, mindfulness, and gentle movement together, thus creating a compound effect of benefits.
Conclusion:
As you can see, the inflammatory response plays a critical role in helping us heal from injury, but it can also be the fuel that keeps us stuck in states of bodily and mental dis-ease. Understanding the impact of inflammation on our overall well-being can be the catalyst for making simple yet powerful changes to our daily lives that help reset this system and thus improving our ability to live life to the fullest.
What tool or techinque presented do you think you will experiment with? What else have you had success with in your own journey that I may have missed?
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