Reducing inflammation in your body comes down to a handful of consistent habits: eating more anti-inflammatory foods, moving regularly, managing stress, sleeping well, and supporting your gut health. None of these work overnight, but together they can measurably lower the inflammatory markers in your blood within weeks to months. Healthy levels of C-reactive protein, one of the most common markers doctors test, sit at 0.8 to 1.0 milligrams per deciliter or lower.
What Chronic Inflammation Actually Is
Acute inflammation is your immune system doing its job: you cut your finger, the area swells, heals, and calms down. Chronic, low-grade inflammation is different. It’s a slow-burn immune response that stays active even when there’s no injury or infection to fight. Over time, this persistent activity damages healthy tissue and contributes to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and other conditions that develop gradually.
The triggers are mostly lifestyle-related. Poor diet, excess body fat (especially around the organs), chronic stress, sedentary living, and disrupted sleep all keep inflammatory signaling turned on. That’s actually good news, because it means you have real leverage over the process.
Shift What You Eat
Diet is the single most studied lever for controlling inflammation, and two dietary patterns consistently lower inflammatory markers in clinical trials: the Mediterranean diet and carbohydrate-restricted eating. Both reduce intake of refined grains, added sugars, and processed foods while increasing vegetables, healthy fats, and fiber. You don’t need to follow either one rigidly. The underlying principles overlap.
The compounds doing the heavy lifting fall into two main categories. The first is omega-3 fatty acids, found in fatty fish like salmon, sardines, and mackerel, as well as walnuts, flaxseeds, and chia seeds. Omega-3s directly interfere with the chemical pathways that produce inflammatory signals. The second category is polyphenols, the plant compounds found in berries, leafy greens, olive oil, green tea, and dark chocolate. Polyphenols inhibit inflammatory processes through multiple pathways at once, which is why eating a variety of colorful plant foods matters more than fixating on any single “superfood.”
Fiber also plays a significant role, partly because of what it does in your gut (more on that below). Aiming for 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day from vegetables, legumes, and whole grains feeds the beneficial bacteria that help keep your intestinal lining intact.
What to Cut Back On
Refined sugar, processed seed oils, and ultra-processed foods are the biggest dietary contributors to chronic inflammation. Sugar-sweetened beverages are a common offender simply because they’re easy to overconsume. While a short-term study found that fructose, glucose, and high-fructose corn syrup didn’t differ from each other in their inflammatory effects, the broader evidence is clear: consistently high sugar intake raises baseline inflammatory markers over time. The issue isn’t one type of sugar being worse than another. It’s the total amount.
Exercise at the Right Intensity
Moderate-intensity exercise, the kind where you can talk but not sing, is the sweet spot for reducing chronic inflammation. Public health guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes per week, and research consistently shows this range improves immune cell function, strengthens your body’s defenses, and lowers inflammatory markers. Brisk walking, cycling, swimming, and light jogging all qualify.
More isn’t always better here. Strenuous, prolonged exercise can temporarily suppress your immune system for anywhere from 3 to 72 hours afterward, during which immune cell counts and function drop in your bloodstream. This doesn’t mean intense training is harmful for everyone, but if your goal is specifically to reduce inflammation, consistent moderate activity outperforms occasional intense sessions. Strength training two to three times per week adds further benefit by improving insulin sensitivity and reducing visceral fat, both of which lower inflammatory signaling.
Your Gut Lining Matters More Than You Think
Your intestinal lining acts as a gatekeeper, letting nutrients through while keeping bacteria and their byproducts contained. When that barrier breaks down, a process sometimes called “leaky gut,” bacterial toxins slip into your bloodstream. Once there, they trigger your immune system to mount an inflammatory response, stimulating the production of the same inflammatory molecules (including C-reactive protein) linked to chronic disease.
Stress is one of the most potent disruptors of this barrier. It alters the composition of your gut microbiome, promotes the growth of harmful bacteria, and weakens the tight junctions between intestinal cells. This creates a feedback loop: stress damages the gut lining, bacterial toxins leak through, systemic inflammation rises, and that inflammation can further compromise gut integrity.
Supporting your gut means eating prebiotic fiber (onions, garlic, asparagus, bananas), consuming fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, or sauerkraut, and managing psychological stress. Avoiding unnecessary antibiotics and excessive alcohol also helps preserve the microbial diversity that keeps your gut lining strong.
Sleep and Stress Are Not Optional
Sleeping fewer than six hours a night reliably increases inflammatory markers. During deep sleep, your body performs critical repair and immune-regulation tasks. Cutting that process short keeps your system in a low-level alert state. Most adults need seven to nine hours, and consistency matters as much as duration. Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time helps regulate the hormonal cycles that control inflammation.
Chronic psychological stress drives inflammation both directly, through stress hormones that activate immune cells, and indirectly, by damaging your gut barrier. Practices that activate your body’s relaxation response, such as deep breathing, meditation, regular physical activity, or simply spending time in nature, reduce stress hormone levels and measurably lower inflammatory markers over time. The specific method matters less than doing something consistently.
Supplements That Have Evidence Behind Them
Curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, is the most studied anti-inflammatory supplement. Clinical trials typically use 500 to 2,000 milligrams per day of a concentrated extract, which is far more than you’d get from cooking with turmeric powder. Curcumin is poorly absorbed on its own, but pairing it with piperine, a compound in black pepper, increases absorption by roughly 2,000%. Most quality curcumin supplements include piperine for this reason.
Omega-3 supplements (fish oil or algae-based for vegetarians) are another well-supported option, particularly if you don’t eat fatty fish at least twice a week. Look for products that list the EPA and DHA content specifically, as these are the two omega-3 forms your body uses to resolve inflammation. A combined dose of 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams of EPA and DHA daily is a commonly used range in research.
Supplements work best as additions to the dietary and lifestyle changes above, not replacements. Taking curcumin while eating a highly processed diet and sleeping five hours a night won’t move the needle much.
How to Know If It’s Working
Your doctor can order a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein test, which measures very small increases in this inflammatory marker and is also used to estimate heart disease risk. A baseline reading gives you a number to compare against after several months of changes. Many people also notice subjective improvements: less joint stiffness, better energy, clearer skin, and improved digestion are all common when systemic inflammation drops.
Give lifestyle changes at least eight to twelve weeks before expecting measurable results. Inflammation builds gradually and resolves gradually. The most effective approach combines several strategies at once, because diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and gut health all feed into the same inflammatory pathways. Improving any one of them helps. Improving all of them compounds the effect.