We Spend Over $20 Billion A Year On Anti-Aging. But Are We Missing the Most Important Step?
Introducing inflammaging: the word that changes everything about how we understand the meno-journey.
Part One of Two
A Word You Need to Know
There is a word your doctor has probably never said to you.
“Inflammaging.”
And it may be the single most important word for understanding what is actually happening in your body during the meno-journey.
Inflammaging is a blend of the words inflammation and aging. It was coined in 2000 by Italian immunologist Professor Claudio Franceschi of the University of Bologna.
It describes the chronic, low-grade, sterile systemic inflammation that develops with advancing age, characterized by a persistent, smoldering elevation of pro-inflammatory markers in the body, even without obvious infection or injury.
Unlike the acute inflammation you feel when you cut your finger or catch a cold, which arrives fast, does its job, and resolves, inflammaging is quiet. Invisible. Continuous.
And according to a growing body of peer-reviewed research, one of the most significant drivers of age-related disease progression we have yet identified.
Here is why it matters so specifically for women in perimenopause, post-menopause, and every stage of the meno-journey in between.
Estrogen, which has been doing powerful anti-inflammatory work in virtually every system of your body throughout your reproductive years, begins to decline during the meno-journey. As it withdraws, so does its protective anti-inflammatory effect.
The result is a measurable and significant increase in systemic inflammation, arriving precisely at the moment most women are already navigating one of the most physiologically complex passages of their lives.
In other words, the meno-journey does not just bring hormonal shifts. It accelerates inflammaging.
And this matters enormously. Because so many of the experiences that women in midlife are told to simply accept as inevitable, the joint aches, the brain fog, the fatigue that sleep doesn't touch, the skin changes, the weight shifts, the sleep disruption, are not just aging.
They are measurable, documented expressions of this inflammatory process. Which means they are not random. They are connected. And they are far more responsive to the right support than most of us have ever been told.
Here is something worth sitting with for a moment.
American women spend over $20 billion every year on anti-aging products, treatments, and procedures designed to address the visible signs of aging from the outside in. Billions on creams, serums, injectables, and interventions aimed at the surface of what is happening.
And yet most of us have never been told about one of the most powerful steps we can take to support aging with vitality, strength, and energy from the inside out. Not a cream. Not a procedure. A fundamental biological process that is accelerating in our bodies right now, that has a name, that has a growing body of peer-reviewed research behind it, and that is far more responsive to targeted support than we have ever been led to believe.
That process is inflammaging. And addressing it is where genuine, lasting change begins.
Research published in Frontiers in Aging in 2025, analyzing twenty years of academic literature on inflammaging, confirmed that this field has experienced sustained and accelerating growth, with scientists increasingly identifying chronic low-grade inflammation as a root cause not just of aging itself, but of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, cognitive decline, autoimmune conditions, and more.
I didn't know this word five years ago. But looking back now, I recognize with complete clarity that these were the clear signs of inflammaging I was living with.
For several years, I felt inflammation in my body in ways I didn't yet have language for.
Joint discomfort that felt like swelling from the inside, in my knees, my hips, my hands, places that had never given me trouble before.
Puffiness throughout my body, particularly around my midsection, that persisted in spite of the fact that I was exercising and eating as health-consciously as I had for decades.
Climbing stairs suddenly became something my knees and hips had opinions about.
Brain fog so thick and so relentless that it genuinely frightened me.
Skin so dry that no amount of lotion seemed to touch it.
And nobody had prepared me for any of it.
I was, like most women of my generation, navigating something enormous in relative silence and with almost no useful information.
I eventually started HRT, and I want to be clear: it helped. Profoundly, in certain ways. My hot flashes virtually disappeared almost immediately. And a strange, heavy apathy that had settled over me, the kind I had never experienced in my entire life before the meno-journey, lifted. For those things I remain genuinely grateful.
But the joint aches persisted. The brain fog persisted. The sleep disruption persisted. The systemic sense that something was running through my body, quietly and continuously, doing its work below the surface of anything the hormonal intervention had addressed, persisted.
And it was that persistence that led my husband to insist I consider something different.
For context, my husband is a multi-award-winning product formulator and co-founder of Papa & Barkley, one of the most trusted and decorated cannabinoid companies in the country. He understood, from years of deep professional expertise, that meaningful doses of CBD had documented anti-inflammatory and sleep-supporting properties specifically relevant to what I was experiencing.
He began formulating specifically for what I was experiencing. Not for a market. Not for a brand. For me.
The impact on my health and wellbeing was so profound, so measurable, and so life-changing, that I felt compelled to make what had worked for me available to every woman navigating this passage.
The clear signs of what was happening to me have a name now.
That name is inflammaging.
And you deserve to know about it so you can do something about it too.
Why Menopause Is an Inflammatory Event
Now that you have the word, let's look at what the research actually shows about how this process unfolds in the body.
Because the data is both clarifying and, frankly, startling.
Research confirms that as estrogen begins its decline during perimenopause, inflammatory markers begin to rise measurably. Studies show that hormonal changes during perimenopause are directly linked to accelerated progression of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.
Cardiovascular risk begins to climb as estrogen's protective effect on the blood vessel walls withdraws.
Bone loss accelerates as inflammatory signaling disrupts normal bone turnover.
Brain fog and cognitive changes emerge as neuroinflammation increases without estrogen's protective modulation.
And as the meno-journey progresses, the data becomes even more striking.
Research published in PubMed in 2025 confirms that postmenopausal women show significantly higher levels of key inflammatory markers including C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, and TNF-α compared to their premenopausal counterparts.
A 2025 study published in Aging Cell by De Maeyer and colleagues found that postmenopausal women have measurably higher levels of inflammatory monocytes, the immune cells most directly associated with driving systemic inflammation. The loss of estrogen, the researchers concluded, is a direct driver of inflammaging in women.
The downstream consequences are significant and measurable.
A 2025 study found that early menopause is associated with a 27% higher risk of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions, including abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, and low good cholesterol, that together significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Research shows that while fewer than 14% of premenopausal women have metabolic syndrome, that number climbs to as high as 60% in postmenopausal women.
This is not a list of separate, unrelated symptoms.
It is a single, underlying process expressing itself across multiple systems simultaneously.
And once you see it that way, everything changes. Because you stop treating each symptom as a separate inconvenience to manage and start addressing the root cause.
What Inflammaging Actually Does to You
Once you understand that the meno-journey removes estrogen's protective anti-inflammatory shield, the symptoms most women are experiencing suddenly make a different kind of sense.
They are not random. They are not simply getting older. They are the measurable, documented downstream effects of chronic low-grade inflammation expressing itself across every system of the body simultaneously.
Here is what the research shows.
Your Skin
Estrogen normally suppresses the production of enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases, or MMPs, that break down collagen and elastin.
When estrogen declines, MMP activity increases, accelerating collagen degradation. Research published in Frontiers in Immunology in 2025 confirms that inflammaging drives continuous breakdown of the structural proteins that keep skin firm, dense, and resilient.
The numbers are striking. Studies show that women lose approximately 30% of their skin collagen in the first five years after menopause, a rate far exceeding the gradual collagen loss of normal chronological aging. The result is skin that feels thinner, drier, and more reactive than it once was, and that takes longer to recover from stress and irritation.
This is not vanity. It is your skin's immune system telling you something about what is happening systemically.
Your Brain
Estrogen has a direct neuroprotective effect, modulating the activity of microglia, the brain's immune cells, and reducing neuroinflammation. As estrogen declines, this protection is withdrawn, and inflammatory signaling in brain tissue increases.
The consequences are ones most midlife women know intimately: brain fog, memory lapses, difficulty concentrating, and a general sense of cognitive cloudiness that feels alarming and is rarely adequately explained.
Research from 2025 found that earlier menopause is linked to lower gray matter volume in the brain and poorer cognitive performance, particularly among women with reduced cardiovascular function.
And a landmark 2025 study from Karolinska Institutet, examining 27,500 adults, found that poor sleep quality is directly linked to accelerated brain aging through systemic inflammation as the mediating mechanism.
In other words, inflammaging and disrupted sleep are not separate problems. They are a compounding cycle. Each one accelerates the other.
This connection between inflammation, sleep, and cognitive clarity became central to everything I eventually formulated at CLEA Midlife.
Your Heart
Estrogen helps protect the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, keeping them flexible and reducing vascular inflammation. Its decline correlates directly with increased cardiovascular risk, endothelial dysfunction, and rising levels of CRP and IL-6, the two primary inflammatory markers associated with heart disease.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in postmenopausal women. Inflammaging is a significant and underacknowledged contributing factor.
Your Joints
Estrogen has natural anti-inflammatory effects in joint tissue. When it declines, inflammatory signaling in joints increases, which is why so many women notice joint discomfort, stiffness, and achiness during the meno-journey that they never experienced before.
Research confirms that 70% of women report musculoskeletal symptoms during perimenopause and menopause. This is not coincidence. It is inflammaging, expressing itself in the joints.
Your Metabolism
Chronic inflammation reduces insulin sensitivity, promotes fat storage, particularly the visceral belly fat that accumulates around the middle during the meno-journey, and increases diabetes risk.
As noted in the previous section, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome jumps dramatically at menopause, driven in significant part by the inflammatory cascade that follows estrogen's decline.
Your Immune System
Perhaps most concerning of all, inflammaging disrupts immune regulation in ways that increase the risk of autoimmune conditions. Research from 2025 linked hormonal changes during perimenopause to accelerated progression of rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.
Approximately 80% of autoimmune disease sufferers are women. The chronic inflammation of the meno-journey is not separate from that statistic. It is part of its explanation.
The Through Line
Every one of these experiences, the skin changes, the brain fog, the joint pain, the weight shifts, the cardiovascular risk, the immune disruption, shares a common root.
Inflammaging.
Which means that addressing inflammation is not one thing among many you can do for your health during the meno-journey. It is the most foundational thing.
And knowing that changes everything.
The Sleep Connection: Why This Matters More Than You Think
If there is one thread that runs through everything discussed so far and amplifies every single aspect of inflammaging, it is sleep.
Or more precisely, the lack of it.
Most women in the meno-journey know this experience intimately. You lie awake at 3am, mind racing, body too warm, unable to get back to the deep, restorative sleep your body desperately needs. You wake exhausted. You push through the day. And then you do it again.
What most women are not told is that this is not just an inconvenient symptom of the meno-journey. It is one of its most significant drivers of inflammaging.
The research is unambiguous.
A 2025 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Sleep Research, examining 35 studies and 887 participants, found that multiple nights of partial sleep deprivation, defined as sleep reduced to approximately 4.5 hours per night for three or more consecutive nights, significantly elevated two of the primary markers of inflammaging: interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein.
In other words, poor sleep does not just make you feel worse. It measurably increases systemic inflammation.
And a landmark 2025 study from Karolinska Institutet, examining 27,500 adults, found that poor sleep quality is directly linked to accelerated brain aging, with systemic inflammation identified as the mediating mechanism.
The brain of a poor sleeper is measurably older than that of a good sleeper of the same chronological age.
Let that land for a moment.
The sleep disruption of the meno-journey is not separate from the inflammaging of the meno-journey. They are the same story, telling itself in two different languages simultaneously.
Here is the cycle most women find themselves in without ever having it named for them.
Declining estrogen disrupts sleep architecture, making it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and reach the deep restorative slow-wave sleep the body needs most.
Chronic sleep deprivation elevates inflammatory markers, which further disrupts hormonal regulation and nervous system function. Increased inflammation makes sleep even harder to achieve. And around it goes.
Research published in Frontiers in Aging in 2025 adds another layer: sleep disruption impairs mitochondrial function, reduces antioxidant defenses, elevates reactive oxygen species, and triggers further inflammation, creating what researchers describe as a damaging feedback loop at the cellular level.
This is not a willpower problem. It is not a stress management problem. It is a physiological cycle with a biological explanation, and it deserves a biological response.
Addressing sleep during the meno-journey is not a lifestyle recommendation.
It is inflammaging intervention.
Coming in Part Two
Now that you know what inflammaging is, where it comes from, and what it is doing to your body, the most important question becomes: what can you actually do about it?
In Part Two, I cover exactly that. The most evidence-supported lifestyle interventions available to you right now.
The missing piece that most conversations about women's health leave out entirely. And the tool that has been withheld from women for far too long, not because it does not work, but because of decades of stigma that had nothing to do with science.
Part Two is coming soon. And I think it is the part you have been waiting for.
So much love, Anea xo
Research References
Inflammaging: Definition and Origin
Franceschi, C. et al. (2000). Inflamm-aging: An Evolutionary Perspective on Immunosenescence. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 908, 244–254.
Jiang, B. et al. (2025). Global Research Trends in Inflammaging from 2005 to 2024: A Bibliometric Analysis. Frontiers in Aging. DOI: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1554186
Ferrucci, L. & Fabbri, E. (2018). Inflammageing: Chronic Inflammation in Ageing, Cardiovascular Disease, and Frailty. Nature Reviews Cardiology. PMC6146930
Anti-Aging Market Data
Towards Healthcare (2026). U.S. Anti-Aging Market Surges with Skincare and Injectables. U.S. anti-aging market valued at approximately $20.21 billion in 2024.
Estrogen, Menopause, and Inflammation
Moscucci, F. et al. (2025). Inflammaging and Cardiovascular Risk in Old Women. PubMed. DOI: 10.1007/s40292-025-00758-1
De Maeyer, R. et al. (2025). Age-Associated Inflammatory Monocytes Are Increased in Menopausal Females and Reversed by Hormone Replacement Therapy. Aging Cell, Wiley. DOI: 10.1111/acel.70249
Metabolic Syndrome and Menopause
Raman, V. et al. (2023). Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome and Its Association With Menopausal Symptoms in Post-Menopausal Women: A Scoping Review. Cureus. PMC10267665
Inflammaging and the Skin
Frontiers in Immunology (2025). Inflammaging: Triggers, Molecular Mechanisms, Immunological Consequences, Sex Differences, and Cutaneous Manifestations. DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1704203
Inflammaging and the Brain
Miao, Y. et al. (2025). Poor Sleep Health Is Associated with Older Brain Age: The Role of Systemic Inflammation. eBioMedicine / Karolinska Institutet. DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.105941
Sleep and Inflammaging
Burgess, H. et al. (2025). Effects of Experimental Sleep Deprivation on Peripheral Inflammation: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Human Studies. Journal of Sleep Research. PMC12856123
Frontiers in Aging (2025). Unraveling the Interplay Between Sleep, Redox Metabolism, and Aging: Implications for Brain Health and Longevity. DOI: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1605070
Singh, K.K. et al. (2025). Sleep and Immune System Crosstalk: Implications for Inflammatory Homeostasis and Disease Pathogenesis. SAGE Journals. DOI: 10.1177/09727531241275347
