10 Ways to Reduce Inflammation

Inflammation is part of your body's natural defenses—when a cut swells up and turns red, that's inflammation at work healing you. But when inflammation becomes chronic, sparked by factors like poor diet and smoking, it can cause a host of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis (including psoriatic arthritis), cancer and even depression. But how can you reduce inflammation in the body? Try these strategies.

1. Try Turmeric

Pictured Recipe: Turmeric Latte

Turmeric is having a moment, thanks largely to curcumin—a compound that gives the sunny spice its anti-inflammatory powers. A 2023 International Journal of Molecular Sciences review of studies using curcumin supplements found that they reduce inflammation in the body. Studies typically use large doses of curcumin, so it may be worth asking your doctor whether taking supplements is right for you. You may not be able to get the same amount of curcumin from food (5 teaspoons ground turmeric or 2 ounces fresh has 500 milligrams of curcumin) as you do in supplements. But the spice's anti-inflammatory potential is still a good reason to sprinkle it liberally on roasted veggies, add it to soups and sip it in smoothies.

2. Eat Your Greens

Pictured Recipe: Tomato, Cucumber & White-Bean Salad with Basil Vinaigrette

Here's yet another reason not to skimp on green leafy vegetables: They are rich in magnesium, a mineral that about half of us don't consume enough of. "I encourage anyone who's susceptible to inflammation to assess their magnesium intake," says Forrest H. Nielsen, Ph.D., a research nutritionist at the USDA's Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center in North Dakota. (Ask your doctor to check your magnesium levels with a blood test.) "There's a lot of evidence that people with high inflammatory markers often have low magnesium levels. Plus, people who have conditions associated with inflammation, like heart disease and diabetes, also tend to have low magnesium levels," Nielsen says.

3. Eat Your Reds, Blues and Purples

Pictured Recipe: Purple Fruit Salad

Speaking of color, green isn't the only one that's good for you. Foods rich in anthocyanins—compounds that provide red, blue and purple fruits and vegetables with their color and contribute to your good health—play a role in controlling inflammation. A study published in 2021 in Molecules concluded that a growing body of evidence suggests anthocyanins from supplements and foods help with inflammation. Include foods such as blackberries, red grapes and shredded red cabbage for more anthocyanins.

4. Grab a Handful of Nuts

Pictured Recipe: Homemade Trail Mix

Noshing on nuts as a snack for part of a meal can help reduce markers in the blood that signal inflammation, according to a 2023 review of the topic in Nutrients. The authors found that tree nuts, such as almonds and walnuts, and peanuts—which are actually legumes that grow underground—supply unsaturated fats, vitamin E, minerals and fiber, all of which have the potential to reduce inflammation.

5. Get Regular Exercise

Excessive weight or obesity—or even just an expanding waistline—contributes to the low-grade inflammation that can be harmful to your health, but you can also have chronic inflammation from being physically inactive without excessive weight or obesity according to a 2020 Sports Medicine and Health Science study. No matter what your weight, it's possible to offset some inflammation in the body with more exercise and physical activity, including regular life activities like yard work and household chores. (Yes, running around your house scooping up Legos counts!) Even a small increase in activity helps tame the flames compared to being totally couch-bound.

6. Keep Stress at Bay

Frequently frazzled? A 2021 study in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity found that people who have a strong emotional reaction to stressful tasks (you bite your nails when you have to make a presentation at work, or get tense when someone presses your buttons) experience a greater increase in circulating interleukin-6 (a marker of inflammation) during times of stress than those who take stressful tasks in stride. While stress harms your body in many ways, Christopher P. Cannon, M.D., a professor at Harvard Medical School, puts it like this: "Stress increases blood pressure and heart rate, making your blood vessels work harder. Essentially, you're pounding on them more often and creating damage. If that damage happens over and over, inflammation persists."

Try it! 3 Ways to Ease Your Stress

7. Try Yoga

Regularly practicing yoga can reduce the markers of inflammation, including C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 according to a 2022 review of the literature published in Brain, Behavior & Immunity - Health. "A central tenet of yoga is that practicing can reduce stress responses," explains Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University College of Medicine. Researchers think that yoga's benefit is that it minimizes stress-related physiological changes.

8. Get Enough Sleep

Your body needs regular, restful sleep to maintain its immune system and so many other functions that support health. A lack of sleep is linked to a greater risk for inflammation, according to a 2021 study in Communications Biology. Inadequate shut-eye can stoke irritability and anger when you're awake, which may negatively affect your interactions with friends, family and coworkers and further increase inflammation levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most adults need at least seven hours of sleep every night, and no more than nine.

9. Enjoy a Massage

A massage isn't just a treat—it can be part of staying healthy and feeling your best. Inflammation in the joints can result in pain and poor quality of life. One 2022 Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice study found that Swedish massage reduced rheumatoid arthritis joint pain immediately and the relief lasted for a month. "Massage may decrease inflammatory substances by [appropriately] increasing the amount of disease-fighting white blood cells in the body," says Mark Hyman Rapaport, M.D. "It may also lower stress hormones. Either way, these results can be seen after just one massage."

10. Drink Green Tea

Pictured Recipe: Soothing Ginger-Lemon Tea

Even if coffee is your beverage of choice, you might not want to bag tea altogether—especially the green variety. Green tea is full of potent antioxidants that can help quell inflammation. A 2022 study published in Current Developments in Nutrition found that consuming the equivalent of five cups of green tea daily reduced inflammation in the gut. Researchers from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock have also found that green tea can inhibit oxidative stress and the potential inflammation that may result from it. "After 24 weeks, people who consumed 500 mg of green tea polyphenols daily—that's about 4 to 6 cups of tea—halved their oxidative stress levels," says Leslie Shen, Ph.D., an associate dean for research and professor of pathology at Texas Tech University School of Medicine.