Despite its heroic intentions to protect us against foreign invaders, inflammation also plays a role in many diseases, especially those experienced by older adults. Doctors and researchers around the world and across disease categories have caught on, and they’re working on ways to tame the beast of chronic inflammation.

“More than 90 percent of all noncommunicable diseases of aging are associated with chronic inflammation,” David Furman of Stanford Medical School’s Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection explained upon the release of a study on caffeine consumption and inflammation.