Ageing, Inflammation, and Why Your Nervous System Might Be Working Against You (and How to Help It)

Most of us accept ageing as this fixed, unstoppable thing. You get older, things ache more, energy dips, sleep gets patchy, stress feels heavier, and the body just… doesn’t bounce back like it used to. That’s the story we’re used to hearing. But science has been quietly reframing that story over the last decade, and it turns out ageing isn’t just about the number of candles on your cake. A big part of how we age comes down to what’s happening inside our bodies day after day, year after year — especially when it comes to inflammation and stress.

There’s now a lot of evidence showing that chronic low-level inflammation plays a huge role in how quickly we seem to age and how vulnerable we become to long-term health issues. This isn’t the helpful kind of inflammation you get when you cut your finger or fight off a bug. This is the background “hum” of inflammation that sticks around when the body feels under pressure for too long. Over time, that background inflammation quietly wears down tissues, stresses the immune system, disrupts sleep, and increases the risk of things like heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, autoimmune conditions and cognitive decline. In other words, the body starts ageing faster than it needs to.

What’s really interesting is how much of this inflammatory load is driven not just by what we eat or how much we move, but by what’s happening in our nervous system. Long-term stress, constant worry, feeling under pressure, never really switching off, carrying emotional weight for years — all of that keeps the body in a subtle but persistent state of “something’s not safe”. Even when there’s no immediate danger, the body behaves as if there is. Hormones like cortisol stay elevated, sleep becomes lighter, digestion and repair take a back seat, and inflammation quietly ticks along in the background.

A lot of people don’t even realise they’re living like this. It just feels normal to be switched on all the time. Busy mind. Tense shoulders. Poor sleep. A low-level sense of urgency that never quite goes away. But biologically, that constant alertness is exhausting for the body. It’s like driving with your foot half on the brake for years. You still move forward, but everything wears out faster.

The good news is, you don’t need to overhaul your entire life to start nudging your body out of that constant stress state. Small things done regularly really do add up. Something as simple as a few slow, deep breaths a couple of times a day can begin to tell your nervous system that it’s safe to soften. A short daily walk without headphones can give your mind a chance to settle instead of constantly being fed information. Letting yourself have even ten minutes of quiet with no task attached can feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s often exactly what an overloaded nervous system needs. Getting outside when you can, even briefly, helps more than people expect. And if sleep is patchy, simple habits like dimming lights in the evening, putting your phone down earlier than feels natural, and having a consistent bedtime routine can gently shift things in the right direction over time.

Food and movement matter too, but not in an all-or-nothing way. Eating in a more plant-forward way, adding in things like oats, beans, berries, nuts, seeds and olive oil, and gently cutting back on ultra-processed food gives the body better raw materials to manage inflammation. Moving regularly doesn’t have to mean intense workouts — walking, light strength work, stretching, anything that gets the body moving in a way that feels kind rather than punishing helps regulate inflammation and stress hormones. Even small, consistent changes here can make a noticeable difference to how the body feels over months and years.

Sleep is one of the biggest levers people underestimate. Even one or two better nights a week can help bring inflammatory levels down a notch. If your mind tends to race at night, try giving it something gentle to focus on rather than telling it to “switch off” — a simple body scan, slow counting with the breath, or imagining a calm, familiar place can sometimes be enough to interrupt the stress loop. It’s not about forcing sleep, just creating the conditions where sleep has a better chance to happen.

This is where hypnotherapy fits in naturally for some people. Not as a replacement for any of these everyday habits, but as a way of helping the nervous system learn how to leave that constant alert state more easily. When someone experiences deep relaxation in hypnosis, the body shifts into a mode where repair and regulation are more possible. Over time, that can make it easier to cope with stress, sleep more deeply, and carry less emotional tension. It’s not magic, but it can be a powerful support for people who feel stuck in stress mode and can’t seem to switch off no matter how many “relaxation tips” they try.

There’s also an emotional layer to all of this that often gets overlooked. Long-term emotional strain, old hurts, unresolved grief, or just years of feeling under pressure don’t disappear on their own. They tend to live on in the body as tension and reactivity. Talking, journalling, therapy, or simply giving yourself permission to acknowledge that things have been hard can all help release some of that load. You don’t have to fix your whole emotional history to benefit — even small shifts in how you relate to your own stress can lighten the biological burden on your body.

None of this is about being perfect or turning self-care into another thing to feel guilty about. It’s about gently creating more moments in your day where your body gets to feel safe enough to soften. The more often that happens, the less time your system spends bathing in stress chemistry, and the less fuel there is for chronic inflammation to quietly do its damage.

Hypnotherapy is one tool in that wider picture. It won’t stop ageing, and it doesn’t replace medical care, but it can help create the internal conditions that support healthier ageing — calmer nervous system, better sleep, less emotional strain, and more capacity to stick with habits that genuinely support your health.

Ageing will still happen. But how heavy it feels, how quickly the body seems to wear down, and how much life there is in your years is far more flexible than we’re often led to believe. Sometimes it’s not about fighting ageing at all — it’s about learning how to give your body more chances to rest, repair, and recover along the way.