I bet you can’t answer it, but it’s still an important question to ask: Right now, at this very moment, are you inflammaging?

Let’s hope not, but if you’re middle-aged or older, the answer is most likely yes. To some degree, it’s an inevitable part of aging.

While you can’t stop it, your goal should be to limit it since many age-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s can develop as a result. Moreover, inflammaging accelerates the rate of sarcopenia, the age-related wasting away of muscle mass.

Coined in 2000 by Dr. Claudio Franceschi, MD, at the University of Bologna in Italy, “inflammaging” is a blend of “inflammation” and “aging.” To what degree the inflammation creates the aging and the aging creates the inflammation will probably only be settled decades from now, but the type of inflammation Franceschi warns about is well known.

To understand it, let’s digress and review the type that’s better known, what doctors call acute inflammation. When you twist an ankle, for instance, it’s what produces the heat, redness, swelling, and pain that follows.

It does so because your immune system releases two hormones, bradykinin and histamine, as well as other substances called inflammatory mediators in amounts based on the severity of the sprain. (Seasonal allergies also create this type of inflammation, which is why the compounds that counteract them are known as antihistamines.)

These hormones widen blood vessels, increasing blood flow and allowing immune cells to flood the injured area. But bradykinin and histamine also irritate nerves, which is why a minor ankle twist only produces a slight discomfort, while a major one produces substantial pain.

Your ankle swells next, created by an increase in fluid to the area to facilitate transport of the damaged cells.

Once that’s done and you begin walking and working out normally, you generally regain all flexibility and strength in the area, though it may take weeks. As a result, we’ve come to see this sort of inflammation as a necessary positive.

There’s another type of inflammation, however, that goes hand-in-hand with aging that’s to a large degree unnecessary, and definitely a negative. It’s what Franceschi dubbed inflammaging, a low-grade inflammation brought on not only by age, but also by less-than-stellar eating habits.

Two results of both, carrying extra visceral fat - what some in this politically correct world of ours euphemistically call ”overnutrition” - and having too much “bad” gut bacteria, cause your immune system to react as it does when you sprain an ankle, just not as dramatically.

Fightaging.org explains the problem this way: “If the switch is jammed in the on position, that inflammation produces a growing burden of damage to tissues and organs.” That damage manifests itself in accelerated aging and a greater susceptibility to colds, flu, and disease.

To illustrate how you can limit inflammaging, consider the role insulin plays in your body. Like inflammation, insulin can have a positive or negative effect on your health.

The positive occurs when insulin escorts the glucose that has been created by the digestion of carbohydrates to your muscle cells and signals to the muscles to let the new “shipment” of energy in.

The secretion of insulin becomes a negative, however, when it’s secreted in excess to counteract excessive glucose (blood sugar) that results from consuming too many simple carbohydrates, usually from sugar-sweetened beverages and overly processed foods. The excess insulin removes too much glucose - so much that your blood sugar goes so low that you feel hungry again.

The removal of too much glucose provides too much energy to the muscle cells. They reject the excess, so insulin now takes what the muscle cells wouldn’t accept to the fat stores.

You gain fat.

Even worse, these excessive negative secretions over the long term wear out both the insulin-producing cells in your pancreas and the ones in your muscles designed to accept glucose. This creates type 2 diabetes.

In the same way that poor dietary habits increase your likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes, they increase your chance of inflammaging - aging unnecessarily because the chronic low-grade inflammation from poor eating eventually reduces the effectiveness of your immune and digestive systems.

Any compromise to your immune system makes you more susceptible to colds and the flu - as well as all those diseases whose likelihood already increase with age, such as cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Less-than-optimal function of your digestive system means you’re more likely to pass rather than assimilate the vitamins, minerals and protein in your food, which lessens your health and accelerates sarcopenia, the age-related wasting away of muscle mass.

So once again, a column will conclude with the advice that three out of four adults - and possibly a higher rate of children and adolescents - would benefit from taking.

Increase your ingestion of complex carbs and high-quality protein; reduce your ingestion of simple carbs and bad fats. At every meal. Every day.