Shilpa

Ravella

Author of Nonfiction

Gastroenterologist & Nutrition Expert

Travels from: Hawaii

“Ravella’s prose is clear, nuanced, and restrained. Readers fascinated by the science behind her assertions will be satisfied, while those more interested in the takeaways can access them easily…” -Kirkus Reviews

Shilpa Ravella is a gastroenterologist and author. She treats a range of general gastrointestinal ailments and has unique experience in managing complex rare diseases, including intestinal failure and intestinal or multiple-organ transplantation. She is an expert in the field of nutrition and is particularly interested in the interactions between food, the microbiome and the immune system.

A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet & Disease (October 11, 2022, W.W. Norton) is her first book. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate, Discover and USA Today, among other publications, and she has appeared as an expert on ABC’s Good Morning America and in print media outlets including Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Food and Wine, Glamour and Women’s Health. Her Ted-Ed lesson, ‘How the Food You Eat Affects Your Gut,’ has garnered over five million views. Ravella earned her B.S. in Biology from MIT and an M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. She lives in New York City and in Hilo, Hawaii, a certified “blue zone.”

Shilpa's Featured Titles

A Silent Fire The Story of Inflammation, Diet, and Disease

W. W. Norton & Company |

October 11, 2022

Nonfiction

A riveting investigation of inflammation—the hidden force at the heart of modern disease—and how we can prevent, treat, or even reverse it.

Inflammation is the body’s ancestral response to its greatest threats, the first line of defense it deploys against injury and foreign pathogens. But as the threats we face have evolved, new science is uncovering how inflammation may also turn against us, simmering underneath the surface of leading killers from heart disease and cancer to depression, aging, and mysterious autoimmune conditions.

In A Silent Fire, gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella investigates hidden inflammation’s emerging role as a common root of modern disease—and how we can control it. We meet the visionary nineteenth-century pathologist who laid the foundation for our modern understanding of inflammation, the eccentric Russian zoologist who discovered one of the cells central to our immune system, and the dedicated researchers advancing the frontiers of medical and nutritional science today. With fascinating case studies, Ravella reveals how we can reform our relationships with food and our microbiomes to benefit our own health and the planet’s.

Synthesizing medical history, cutting-edge research, and innovative clinical practice, Ravella unveils inflammation as one potential basis for a unifying theory of disease. A paradigm-shifting understanding of one of the most mysterious, buzzed-about topics in medicine and nutrition, A Silent Fire shows us how to live not only long but well.

Health & Wellness, Nonfiction

Coming Soon!

October 1, 2000

This author’s NEW BOOK is in the works and coming soon!

Inflammation, Diet, Gut Health and Disease

Dr. Ravella provides an overview of the links between inflammation, disease, diet and the microbiome. She covers the potential of these relationships to affect both human and planetary health, and how we might begin to optimize our lifestyles accordingly.

The Anti-Inflammatory Diet: Myths and Misconceptions

Does the anti-inflammatory diet exist? If so, what does it consist of? Dr. Ravella discusses the power of food to prevent, treat and even reverse inflammation, as well as common myths surrounding the notion of an anti-inflammatory diet.

TedEd | How the food you eat affects your gut

Martin J. Blaser, MD, author of Missing Microbes
“Inflammation is a double-edged sword that heals and destroys; it has already saved your life, but most likely will contribute to ending it.… Shilpa Ravella takes us on a grand tour of the medical science and the personal cases that have advanced our understanding of the whys and ways of this fundamental process.”

Kathleen McAuliffe, author of This Is Your Brain on Parasites
“A must-read for anyone interested in cutting-edge medicine. It is no exaggeration to say that low-level inflammation may be an insidious factor contributing to numerous diseases of aging, and Shilpa Ravella, a gastroenterologist with a writer’s gift for translating complex science into clean, beautiful prose, is the perfect person to tell this gripping tale.”

Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH, Harvard School of Public Health
“A spellbinding tale taking us from the early Greek physicians to the COVID-19 pandemic.… The insights Ravella reveals point to a pathway that can enhance both our personal well-being today and that of the planet we pass on to our grandchildren.”

Shilpa Ravella’s Blog