Inflammation is a blunt instrument. It's one of the body's tools to contain and attack a pathogen. Without it, many bacteria and other irritants would wreak hav

Inflammation is a blunt instrument. It's one of the body's tools to contain and attack a pathogen. Without it, many bacteria and other irritants would wreak havoc on the body. As allergies and (to an extent) COVID have shown, inflammation can also be dangerous. Too much acute inflammation can cause essential body functions to shut down or function incorrectly. Point being that inflammation is "good" when the alternative is an infection running rampant in your body. But it's "worse" for your body than the baseline, so chronic inflammation is bad for you (and seems to increase cancer risk). Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen are good for knocking down inflammation, but they have a suite of side effects unrelated to this function that make them terrible for prolonged use. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that these side effects are way worse than the benefits of reduced chronic inflammation. More generally, reducing inflammation across the board leaves you open to infection. It's why we don't prescribe steroids long-term in most patients: the downside of reduced immune response vastly outweighs the benefit for generally healthy patients. It's only considered if the condition (like your body attacking an organ transplant) is more dangerous than the reduced immune response.