Exercise and inflammation: a partnership in the training effect

Inflammation generally gets a bad rap. What with all that pain, heat, and swelling, it is tempting to enthusiastically declare inflammation as something that should be avoided unconditionally.

While persistent, uncontrolled inflammation often does contribute to a decline in health and tissue function, transient inflammation (such as the kind that results from exercise) is essential to appropriate adaptation of tissues to stress. 

Any of us who knows the struggle of running frantically for the bus after lingering too long with the hairdryer can attest to the inflammation resulting from exercise! The difference here compared with the 'bad' inflammation (such as that associated with arthritis) is that exercise-induced inflammation is transient. It moves in, breaks down tissue damaged from the bout of exercise, helps replace it with new, healthy (and often stronger) tissue, and moves out. 

Resolution of exercise-induced inflammation occurs because of a group of compounds called 'resolvins.' Without resolvins, inflammation persists and can become damaging. But without inflammation, we don't get the improvements in tissues fro exercise. 

Indeed, if we apply the same strategies to inhibit inflammation from exdercise as we do with OA (for example, with bute), what we find is that tissues do not adapt properly to the stress of exercise. Muscles take longer to get stronger, extraction of oxygen from muscles takes longer to improve in efficiency, and bones take longer to increase density. In short, the training effect is delayed. 

So before exercising your innate impulse to blunt the inflammation associated with exercise, remember that in doing so, you might be holding your horse back from getting maximum benefit from your training sessions.