Rhea wakes up feeling fine—no diagnosis, no dramatic symptom, nothing worth a doctor’s appointment. Yet her skin flushes too easily, workouts drain her, and sleep never feels truly restorative. Clothes that once felt comfortable feel irritating by evening.
Across clinics and wellness spaces, people who eat well, hydrate, and “do everything right” still report feeling overwhelmed in their own bodies. The explanation gaining traction is not deficiency, but inflammation.
Once just a medical term, chronic low-grade inflammation is now part of the everyday vocabulary of ageing, fatigue, hormonal shifts, and skin sensitivity. Researchers link inflammation to about 60 per cent of adult mortality and estimate it affects nearly half the global adult population through its role in chronic diseases—heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, and certain cancers.
Beauty has already adjusted. A decade of harsh exfoliants and high-acid routines has given way to barrier repair, microbiome support, peptides, and ceramides. “Patients become obsessed with fixing what they can see—pigmentation, acne, fine lines—without realising that inflammation is often the real story underneath,” says dermatologist Dr Akriti Gupta. Anti-ageing, she says, has shifted: “It’s no longer about pushing the skin harder. It’s about teaching it to feel safe again.”
Fitness is moving in the same direction. High-intensity workouts that once signalled discipline now leave people sore, wired, or slow to recover. Pilates, zone-2 cardio, and hormone-sensitive strength routines are rising—not to burn more, but to repair better. “Inflammation is not productivity, it’s distress,” says aesthetic physician Dr Karuna Malhotra.
Sleep has undergone its own elevation—blue-light discipline, magnesium sprays, circadian lighting, and structured wind-down routines reflect a collective awareness that overstimulation has consequences.
Anti-inflammation has become less of a diet trend and more of a lifestyle logic. In a world trained to do more, ageing well may now begin with knowing when to do less.