For the first time in a long time, concerns about inflation are intensifying as the economy strengthens. Even rate changes could be on the table as former Federal Reserve chair and current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that interest rates might need to rise.

As Bank of America pointed out in a recent research note, mentions of inflation on earnings calls are up 800% year over year. Higher prices of raw materials is pushing up the cost of food at the grocery store too.

This level of change may be unfamiliar to some investors.

"If you think about the past 10, 15, 20 years, most of the talk about potential falling markets has been because of too little growth, right, or a more deflationary type environment," Brent Schutte, Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company’s chief investment strategist, told Yahoo Finance Live. "Now I think the other side of the distribution is in play. The big question over the coming quarters is, do we get too much growth? Do we get too much inflation?"

According to Schutte, investors need to hedge for inflation, again, potentially for the first time in decades.

“So, you need to own things like commodities, which are going up in price quite a bit because of the rebuilding that's going on of the economy, and you need to be doing things like [Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities],” he said. “And so now it's, to me, more of a question of hedging the upside of too much, not the downside. And I think that's an area that investors need to pay heed to.”

As Nicholas Colas pointed out in the DataTrek newsletter Thursday, commodity price inflation's heat (e.g., 53% spike in plywood, 75% in cold rolled steel, and 43% in copper – all in April 2021 vs. April 2020) actually isn't uncommon and not a part of the consumer inflation metric and hasn't been so since the 90s.

“U.S. consumer inflation is not as tied to commodity prices as it once was,” Colas wrote. The wild swings that grab headlines around plywood and 2x4s may look scary, he said, but “what usually goes unmentioned is that these commodities are predisposed to wild swings.”

Still, commodities are a hot place to look for inflation defense. In a note from JPMorgan, analysts concur with Schutte’s strategy, recommending the commodities route — as well as stocks.

[Read more: P&G is raising prices in September — here's why]

“One should shorten duration and reallocate from bonds to commodities and equities,” the note said. “Commodity indices (such as S&P GSCI (GD=F)) are perhaps the most direct inflation hedge.”