Growing taller is what everyone does up until their early 20s, while personal growth is something that ideally will go on all through life. Both types of growth will be seen as positives, either by those getting taller or becoming a better person at any age. Growth will involve expansion, but the expansion that people will be displeased will be an expanding waistline. That’s not always connected to overeating, so people want to know what else might be factoring into their expansiveness. They may be asking why does inflammation cause weight gain. 

The extent to which inflammation is going to play a role in gaining weight will depend on where that inflammation is happening. Any tissue in the body can become inflamed, and the place where that’s most problematic is in the brain. Brain inflammation isn’t going to be a part of why a person is getting heavier although it’s going to have their mind focused on it a lot of the time. Especially if they’re concerned about their appearance and their ability to move normally as they need to every day. So what can we understand about does inflammation make you gain weight? 

It has to do with the role of insulin in the body, and how this hormone determines how much blood sugar goes into cells for energy and how much of it is allowed to remain and go into the bloodstream. This is probably starting to sound like a discussion of diabetes, but there’s a reason why diabetics tend to gain a lot of weight. This may not be connected to why does inflammation cause weight gain but it’s got the exact same physiological workings behind it.  

More Means More 

Chronic inflammation and weight gain go hand and hand and there’s a cyclical relationship that will go on between them. We’ll explain. Ongoing inflammation anywhere in the body increases insulin resistance. The insulin your body makes isn’t as effective at redirecting blood sugar as it used to be. Leptin resistance also increases, and this compounds the problem as hunger isn’t regulated the way it should be too. This combination of elevated blood sugar levels and increased food intake because of leptin resistance provides the explanation for why does inflammation cause weight gain.  

However, if you are gaining weight and your portions sizes have stayed the same and you’re not gorging on fatty foods then it may be that we need to approach why does inflammation cause weight gain from a different angle. The focus now moves to the thyroid gland in your neck and the possibility of hypothyroidism causing inflammation. When this happens it actually slows down your metabolism because the thyroid isn’t producing thyroid hormone to the extent it needs to. So unexplained weight gain may be a reason to be tested for an underactive thyroid gland.