Inflammation is a crucial part of the body's response to tissue damage, infection, foreign matter, and more. In response, the capillaries become more permeable. This allows white blood cells to leave the blood stream and enter the tissues to combat infection and destroy damaged tissue. The inflammatory response is part of a complex set of self-defense and repair mechanisms. Sometimes these go wrong, but without them you'd most certainly be dead.

Inflammation helps fight infection of any kind. You know fever? That's your body heating up to wean off infection.

When you tear a muscle or a tendon, inflammation helps blood to flow into the affected areas, speeding up the healing process.

Inflammation is one of the tools your immune system has to keep you in good health. Too much of it can have bad side-effects though, which is why we need to keep it under control.

Inflammation is your body increasing blood flow, heat and nutrient supplies somewhere. The usual function is to heal something in a specific place (good inflammation), diet, lack of exercise, environment, and other factors can cause inflammation in many places in the body where it isn't needed. This often leads to issues.

Inflammation which is completely normal after a hard gym session