AT A GLANCE:

• “Inflammaging” is the chronic, low-grade inflammation that accelerates aging beneath the surface. It can disrupt collagen production, weaken hair follicles, and speed up visible signs of aging.

• Everyday stressors like poor sleep, processed foods, hormones, UV exposure, and pollution all contribute.

• Anti-inflammatory nutrition, targeted lifestyle habits, and regenerative therapies all help restore balance.

Aging is often described as a slow, inevitable decline. But beneath what we see on the surface—fine lines, thinning hair, stray grays—is a quieter, more influential force: inflammation.

This isn’t the kind of inflammation that happens when you twist your ankle or wear something that irritates your skin. It’s a low, chronic, background hum of stress inside your cells that gradually wears down their ability to repair, renew, and stay resilient. Scientists call this phenomenon inflammaging, and it’s now considered one of the most significant drivers of accelerated aging.¹

Inflammaging is directly linked to how our skin looks, how our hair grows, how quickly we build (or lose) collagen, and how well our cells bounce back from daily stressors.

But the good news is that we can impact it: What you eat, how you sleep, how you manage stress, and how supported your cells are can all make a profound difference in how quickly or slowly inflammaging progresses.

What Is “Inflammaging?”

Most of aging is driven by tiny, repeated stress signals your cells receive every day. Inflammaging is the slow, quiet accumulation of those signals: things like oxidative stress, hormonal fluctuations, blood sugar swings, environmental toxins, poor sleep, UV exposure, processed foods, and even emotional stress.²

Individually, none of these create chaos. But together, they keep your cells in a low-grade fight-or-flight mode that never fully switches off.

Over time, this constant background stress weakens your body’s natural repair pathways. Skin regenerates more slowly. Hair follicles become more fragile. Collagen breaks down faster than it’s produced. And all of this accelerates visible and biological aging long before you necessarily “feel” old. It might not even reflect the number on your driver’s license!

How Inflammaging Shows Up on Your Skin

Skin is one of the first places inflammaging becomes visible because it’s already on the front lines: exposed to sunlight, pollution, changes in hormones, and environmental shifts.

When cellular inflammation rises:

• Collagen degrades more quickly
• Elastin becomes less functional
• Hydration levels drop
• The moisture barrier weakens
• Cell turnover slows
• Fine lines and dullness appear earlier

And even great topical products can only do so much when your cells are being taxed from the inside out.³

How Inflammaging Contributes to Hair Thinning and Shedding

Did you know that hair follicles are micro-organs with their own microbiomes? They’re highly sensitive to their environment—and when inflammation is elevated, they react quickly.

Chronic cellular stress can:

• Shorten the growth phase of the follicle
• Push more hairs into shedding mode
• Reduce the amount of blood flow and nutrients delivered to the scalp
• Shrink the follicle over time
• Make hair more reactive to hormones and stress spikes

This is why you might notice more hair in your shower drain during periods of high stress, hormonal change, or poor sleep.⁴

What Triggers Inflammaging in the First Place?

This is where things get interesting, because inflammaging rarely comes from one big trigger. It’s the stacking of small, everyday stressors—and your cells can’t catch a break.

Common contributors can include:

• Highly processed, high-sugar foods
• Poor sleep or irregular sleep patterns
• Chronic stress and cortisol spikes
• Hormonal changes (like perimenopause, menopause, and postpartum)
• UV damage
• Consistent alcohol use
• Sedentary lifestyle
• Chronic infections or gut imbalance
• Pollution

By the way: You don’t need to live “perfectly” and eliminate all of these stressors altogether to “age well.” Life happens! You just need to reduce the cumulative load so your cells can get a breather—and repair.

How To Reduce Cellular Inflammation

You don’t need to overhaul your life or adopt an extreme regimen. You can meaningfully reduce inflammaging with simple, sustainable habits.

Eat the Rainbow

This isn’t a “diet” so much as a shift toward foods rich in antioxidants and healthy fats:

• Colorful produce (berries, greens, tomatoes)
• Omega-3s (salmon, sardines, walnuts, chia)
• Herbs + spices (turmeric, ginger, rosemary)
• Legumes
• Whole grains

These foods are shown to help buffer oxidative stress, which is one of inflammaging’s biggest drivers.

Support Your Nervous System Daily

Your stress levels directly influence your inflammation levels. Even five minutes of intentional downshifting can help—rituals like:

• Breathwork
• Walking outside
• Mindfulness or prayer
• Light stretching
• Journaling

Build and Maintain Muscle

Muscle is one of the strongest anti-inflammatory organs in the body. Strength training improves insulin sensitivity, reduces chronic inflammation, and balances hormones—all crucial for slower aging. (Even 20 minutes twice a week helps.)

Sleep Like It Matters

Because it does. When you sleep, your body clears inflammatory markers and repairs cellular damage. Even small improvements like consistent bedtimes, a cooler, darker room, and reducing screentime can have an outsized impact.

Support Your Moisture Barrier

A strong barrier reduces reactive inflammation. Think:

• ceramides
• niacinamide
• gentle retinoids
• peptides
• sunscreen
  

Tap Into Your Body’s Natural Anti-Inflammaging System

The most potent anti-aging ingredient is already inside you. Regenerative approaches like secretome therapies harness the signaling molecules your stem cells naturally produce—the same ones that guide healing, collagen formation, and tissue renewal.

Instead of simply calming inflammation, these signals help your cells remember how to function more youthfully. This is where inflammaging meets regeneration: not just reducing damage, but reactivating the pathways that keep your skin, hair, and tissues resilient.

Secretome helps address inflammaging by:

• Encouraging cell regeneration and proliferation
• Balancing your body’s natural inflammation response
• Increasing the speed of wound healing via growth factors
• Maintaining cellular balance and a healthy concentration of beneficial molecules

By preserving your stem cells at their healthiest, most responsive state and transforming them into personalized secretome formulations, companies like Acorn give you access to the regenerative signals your cells rely on to repair. It’s a way to tap into your own biology’s anti-inflammaging potential, today and years from now.

The Bottom Line

Inflammaging is simply a biological response; your cells reacting to the world you live in and the stressors you encounter every day. The good news is that those stressors are modifiable, and your biology responds quickly when you give it a supportive environment.

By lowering chronic inflammation and strengthening your repair pathways, you give your skin, your hair, and your overall health the chance to age more efficiently.

FAQ

Q: What is “inflammaging,” in simple terms?
A: Inflammaging is the slow, steady, low-grade inflammation that builds up over time and makes your cells less efficient at repairing themselves. You may not feel it, but it shows up as dull skin, thinning hair, fatigue, or slower recovery.

Q: Is inflammation always bad?
A: Not at all. Inflammation is part of your body’s natural defense system. The issue is chronic inflammation—the kind that never fully switches off. That’s what accelerates aging and impacts skin, hair, and overall vitality.

Q: Can stress really exacerbate aging?
A: Yes. Elevated cortisol increases inflammation, destabilizes blood sugar, and disrupts sleep, all of which accelerate cellular aging.The flip side of this is that even small, stress-relieving habits can have a measurable impact on inflammatory markers.

Q: Can chronic inflammation contribute to hair loss?
A: Yes. Hair follicles are highly sensitive to inflammation. Even mild chronic inflammation can shorten the growth cycle, slow regrowth, or increase shedding over time.

Q: How do regenerative therapies help with aging?
A: Regenerative approaches work by sending healthier signals to your cells, encouraging them to repair, renew, and regenerate more effectively. Secretome therapies, in particular, support collagen production, tissue health, and more resilient skin and hair.

Further Reading:

1. Xia, S., Zhang, X., Zheng, S., Khanabdali, R., Kalionis, B., Wu, J., Wan, W., & Tai, X. (2016). An Update on Inflamm-Aging: Mechanisms, Prevention, and Treatment. Journal of immunology research, 2016, 8426874. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/8426874 
2. Yegorov, Y. E., Poznyak, A. V., Nikiforov, N. G., Sobenin, I. A., & Orekhov, A. N. (2020). The Link between Chronic Stress and Accelerated Aging. Biomedicines, 8(7), 198. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines8070198
3. Papaccio, F., D Arino, A., Caputo, S., & Bellei, B. (2022). Focus on the Contribution of Oxidative Stress in Skin Aging. Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland), 11(6), 1121. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox11061121
4. Peyravian, N., Deo, S., Daunert, S., & Jimenez, J. J. (2020). The Inflammatory Aspect of Male and Female Pattern Hair Loss. Journal of inflammation research, 13, 879–881. https://doi.org/10.2147/JIR.S275785

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This article has been medically reviewed by:

Amatullah Fatehi | MSc, Director of Product Development and Innovation

Amatullah Fatehi is a regenerative medicine scientist with expertise in cell physiology and stem cell biology. She led the development of Acorn’s hair-follicle-derived secretome product and oversees key research and product innovation initiatives.