The invisible war most blood tests miss

Recovery that used to take a day now takes three. The tiredness that settles in after a hard week is slower to lift than it was a decade ago. These shifts feel like the natural cost of a full life — and in one sense they are. But there is a precise biological name for the mechanism driving them: inflammaging.

Inflammaging is not an illness. It is a chronic, sterile, low-grade inflammation that accumulates across decades in the complete absence of infection, produced by the innate immune system losing its ability to switch fully off. The result is a body running warmer than it should at the cellular level — not feverish, but persistently activated.

Part of what sustains this low flame is the behaviour of senescent cells: ageing cells that have stopped dividing but refuse to die quietly. Instead, they release a cocktail of inflammatory signals — cytokines, chemokines, and matrix metalloproteinases — known collectively as the Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype, or SASP. This secretory output maintains the background burn year after year, without announcing itself clearly in a standard blood panel. The signals are indirect: slower repair, creeping stiffness, fatigue that sleep does not resolve.

Professor Paul Lee names this process The Invisible War in Pillar 2 – Chemistry of Regeneration by Design, his foundational framework for proactive health optimisation. It is a structural battle the body wages silently across midlife and beyond. The leverage point is that what lands on your plate each day is one of the most modifiable inputs to this process — and one of the most consistently underused.

Why colour on your plate is a chemistry signal

Pigment is not decoration. The colours in plant foods are the visible signatures of polyphenols — a broad family of compounds including flavonoids, phenolic acids, and carotenoids — and each colour band maps to a distinct set of molecules doing specific chemical work inside the body.

Professor Paul Lee's organising principle in Practical Regeneration is precise and practical: Colour = antioxidants. The mechanism runs through oxidative stress and through NF-κB — the molecular switch that, when left permanently on, keeps the inflammatory cascade running. Polyphenols are among the dietary agents best placed to interrupt that switch.

Curcumin, from turmeric, directly inhibits NF-κB signalling — making it one of the more mechanistically specific entries on any anti-inflammatory plate. Gingerols, from ginger, work along overlapping prostaglandin pathways and are associated with calming inflammatory mediators. Broccoli's sulforaphane activates the Nrf2 detoxification pathway, supporting the body's own clearance of oxidative by-products. Catechins in green tea are associated with combating oxidative stress at the cellular level, while beta-carotene — the compound behind the orange of sweet potato and carrot — acts as a broad antioxidant across tissues. Berries supply anthocyanins, associated with vascular and cellular resilience.

The point is not to memorise compound names. It is to recognise that a visually varied plate is a chemistry decision — each colour representing a distinct mode of action. That is precisely why 'eat the rainbow' becomes useful only once this mechanism is underneath it.

The fat ratio that changes the inflammatory balance

Most people who try to eat better for inflammation reach for more oily fish. That is a sound instinct — but only part of the picture, and arguably not the first move to make.

The mechanism that governs how much anti-inflammatory work omega-3 fatty acids actually do is enzymatic competition. EPA and DHA (from oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, and sardines) and ALA (from walnuts, chia, and flaxseed) share the same metabolic enzymes as omega-6 fatty acids. When omega-6 — concentrated in ultra-processed seed oils — dominates the diet, it occupies those pathways and suppresses omega-3 activity even when intake looks adequate on paper. The ratio between the two fats determines the inflammatory tone of metabolism more reliably than the absolute omega-3 figure alone.

The practical implication runs in two directions: reduce first, then add. Cutting ultra-processed seed oils — the primary source of excess dietary omega-6 — shifts the enzymatic balance before a single extra portion of fish is eaten. Then EPA- and DHA-rich sources (salmon, sardines, mackerel) and ALA sources (walnuts, chia, flaxseed) can do their full work.

Professor Paul Lee's meal template makes this concrete: grilled salmon dressed with olive oil at lunch, with mixed nuts as a mid-morning addition. Olive oil earns its place on two grounds — its monounsaturated base does not compete with omega-3 enzymatic pathways, and its polyphenol content brings an additional antioxidant load alongside the fat quality. It is a pairing chosen by design, not convention.

Fibre, gut bacteria and the immune connection

Dietary fibre's reputation is mostly digestive — transit, regularity, satiety. The immune dimension is less discussed, but it is arguably the more consequential reason to prioritise it on an anti-inflammatory plate.

When gut bacteria ferment fibre, they produce short-chain fatty acids — butyrate, propionate, and acetate — that act as chemical signals to immune cells and as primary fuel for the cells lining the intestinal wall. That lining is a physical and immunological barrier. When it holds, inflammatory signals remain contained. When it degrades — as it does on low-fibre diets that deprive beneficial bacteria of their substrate — those signals enter systemic circulation and compound the inflammatory load already building with age.

Resistant starch is a particularly potent SCFA precursor. It reaches the colon undigested, where the most productive fermenting bacteria convert it into butyrate above all. Cooked-and-cooled potatoes, lentils, and green bananas are its most accessible sources — ordinary foods doing specific structural work in the gut.

Lee's 14-day gut protocol, set out in the book, builds these inputs progressively: resistant starch alongside fermented foods (yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi) for microbial diversity, with meals aligned to daylight hours to support the microbiome's own circadian rhythms. When meals are eaten matters alongside what they contain.

Polyphenols — the plant pigments carrying antioxidant activity — earn a second role at this intersection: combined with fibre, they slow glucose absorption, damping the post-meal spikes that activate the same inflammatory signalling pathways the plate as a whole is working to quiet.

Diet as compound interest over decades

Epigenetics offers an under-appreciated reason to care about what is on the plate at 45, not 65. A gene linked to inflammation may stay active longer than it should — not because it is broken, but because the cellular environment is signalling that it should remain on. Sustained dietary change alters that environment: the same gene encounters different molecular conditions and begins to respond differently. The plate does not rewrite the genetic code; it changes the instructions the code receives.

Professor Paul Lee frames this temporal dimension through the Time pillar of Regeneration by Design: consistent action taken early compounds in a way that reactive intervention cannot match. The metaphor he uses in the book is compound interest — small, repeated dietary inputs accumulate biological returns across years and decades, while delay steadily narrows the repair budget available in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Starting now matters precisely because the body that would benefit most from decades of consistent input is the one running today.

That long arc raises a practical question: how does anyone know the inputs are actually registering? Blood chemistry is where dietary choices eventually leave their mark. Regen PhD's 32-biomarker panel — drawn at Harley Street and reviewed by a physician — includes inflammation markers across six biological systems, giving a concrete read on how the diet is shifting biochemical conditions over time. For the reader investing in the long game, it is how progress becomes legible rather than assumed.

Building the plate this week

Three changes are enough to start. Fill half the plate with colour — vegetables chosen from opposite ends of the spectrum to maximise polyphenol variety. Build the protein portion around oily fish or legumes, with olive oil as the fat base. Add one high-fibre carbohydrate: cooled lentils, sweet potato, or green banana. The structure is set.

For most readers, two swaps carry the most immediate leverage: replacing ultra-processed seed oils with olive oil corrects the omega-6 excess that tilts the inflammatory balance, and adding one resistant starch source per day begins feeding the bacterial populations that produce the gut's own anti-inflammatory signals.

Where the habit drifts — and it will — the EARN principle from Practical Regeneration offers a practical reset. Experiment with one change (a different oil, a new vegetable at lunch); Adjust if it doesn't hold; Reflect on what shifts in the days that follow (energy two hours after eating, how quickly joints settle after exercise); Notice the pattern over a week. Lee's framework treats each meal as a design iteration, not a pass-or-fail test — food as Chemistry input to the body's regenerative system, revisable and improvable.

Every iteration deposits a little more into the repair account the body draws on in its fifties, sixties, and seventies. Start now.

This article provides general wellness and healthspan information based on Professor Paul Lee's published work. It is not intended as advice for any specific medical condition. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional if you have health concerns.

1. [1] Inflammaging. https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=59830296 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=59830296
2. [2] Omega-3 fatty acid. https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=22594 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=22594
3. [3] Green tea. https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=262676 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=262676
4. [4] Fatty acid ratio in food. https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=38375564 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=38375564
5. [5] Polyphenol. https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=362892 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=362892