One blood number tracks it. hs-CRP, the high-sensitivity version of C-reactive protein, integrates a lot of underlying inflammation into a single figure from a standard draw. The working brackets: under 1 mg/L is low risk, 1 to 3 intermediate, above 3 high ¹.

The inflammation itself does damage, not just the cholesterol travelling with it. Blocking it with an antibody cut cardiac events 15% in heart-attack survivors with no change in LDL ²; cheap generic colchicine reproduced it ³. High CRP and IL-6 also carry two to three times the frailty risk, faster muscle and grip loss, and about 2.6 times the mortality over five years ⁴, ⁵, ⁶. People who reach 100 in Sardinia and Okinawa often carry inflammation closer to a thirty-year-old's ⁷.

Where the fire comes from. The deep, organ-wrapped visceral fat around your middle behaves like an inflammation-producing organ, leaking IL-6 all day ⁸. Short sleep, untreated gum disease, and chronic loneliness feed the same signal ⁹, ¹⁰. The drivers are almost exactly the levers.

Get the number, then pull the levers that move it.

The arc. Weeks to months: the background-tired hum lifts, minor colds clear faster, the mood floor rises quietly ¹⁴. Years: muscle mass and grip hold longer, frailty and cognitive decline come slower, cardiac events fall ⁵, ¹⁵, ¹⁶. This is the future where the trip with the grandchildren still happens and you stand up from a chair at seventy without planning it.

Pregnancy, oestrogen therapy, autoimmune disease, recent surgery, or active infection all move CRP for other reasons — it isn't an inflammaging readout then ¹⁹. South and East Asian readers hit high CRP at lower BMI, so track waist circumference instead.