The battle within: our anti-inflammation diet.

What do paper cuts, spicy foods, stubbed toes and intense workouts at the gym have to do with your odds of getting colon cancer, drifting into Alzheimer's or succumbing to a heart attack? A lot more than you might think.

The more scientists learn about these and other serious diseases, the more they are being linked with the long-term effects of inflammation on the body.

The inflammation-disease connection has become a hot research topic. And it's about to explode.

Vital Nuisance

Inflammation is a vital immune response to infection, injury or irritation. It is fire basis of humanity's earliest survival.

It's what causes the redness in that paper cut--the result of extra blood walling off the area and rushing macrophages, histamine and other bacteria-fighting immune factors to the wound.

The same inflammatory process is what makes your throat burn when you decide to impress your friends by chugging the extra-spicy suicide sauce--blood vessels leak fluid, proteins and cells to repair or remove damaged tissues. And fever is yet another form of that inflammatory burning.