Arthritis: avoidance and treatment through proper nutrition

[Rasputin]

At its simplest, arthritis means inflammation of the joints. It can be so painful as to be completely debilitating (I know firsthand--I was bone-on-bone in my left knee for 10 years due to my motorcycle accident).

Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disease wherein the body attacks its own joint surfaces, seeing them mistakenly as invaders. It tends to strike the young more frequently than Osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease in which a particular joint surface or surfaces have been worn down or away through either misuse (rotating the joint outside of its normal operating angles), injury, or impact (running on hard surfaces).

The good news is, both rely on inflammatory processes to produce their chronic pain and the damage which follows, and those inflammatory processes can be slowed, halted or even reversed with the proper diet.

The body has many different metabolic pathways that it follows day-to-day. A small subset of those pathways deal with inflammation (which is not all bad, by the way. It is improper inflammation which leads to chronic problems).

One effect on inflammation is the ratio of Omega-3 vs. Omega 6 or 9 fats in your diet. The Omega-3 PUFAs EPA and DHA are involved in anti-inflammatory processes in the body, and in pre-agricultural times were most likely consumed in ratios of 1-3, 1-2 or even 1-1 Omega-3 to -6 fats. They are found in the meat and whole-fat milk of grassfed ruminants and wild game as well as in wild-caught seafood (especially cold-water fish). As they are PUFAs, they are quite readily oxidized and turn rancid, so care must be taken to get them in the freshest state possible.

The Omega-3 fat ALA is a precursor fat found in plant sources (flax, borage), and is only converted by the body into EPA and DHA in very small amounts. It should not make up the bulk of your O-3 intake for that reason. Try to get 1,500 mg of O-3 fats each day.

Magnesium used to be present in large quantities in the hard water that made up most if not all of the fluid intake of our ancient relatives, and it too is anti-inflammatory. I recommend 400mg of chelated Magnesium taken at night--it helps to overcome constipation and combat insomnia.

Grains are pro-inflammatory, even in those without Celiac symptoms. They inflame the walls of the gut, making them leaky, and allowing proteins to pass into the bloodstream which can cause joint pain and other associated problems. Avoid all grains (even whole!).

Vegetable oils were never part of the Human diet before 100 years ago, for the most part. Soy, Corn, Sunflower, etc. The only three vegetable-based oils I would recommend are olive, coconut, and red palm kernel oil. All your other fats should be animal fats: beef tallow, bacon fat, un-hydrogenated lard, butter/cream, even chicken fat.

Eggs are a good source of fat, and can also be high in O-3s depending on the feed of the chickens. Birds allowed to run free, not be caged, get access to lots of insects to eat which ensures that the yolks of their eggs are full of important nutrition for the body.

Following these suggestions will most likely bring benefit to anyone suffering from chronic pain, not just arthritis.

[Harlan]

Good topic! If you don't mind my asking, do you have any thoughts on Gluc./Chon.?

[Rasputin]

Good topic! If you don't mind my asking, do you have any thoughts on Gluc./Chon.?

I, myself use it. I have seen conflicting reports on how much it tends to help people whose cartilidge is degenerating. However, it hasn't been shown to actually cause any problems in the vast majority of people who take it, and I get it from www.swansonvitamins.com at a reasonable cost, so I feel it is better to err on the side of "Maybe it will help."

[Rasputin]

If you really want to go all out in combating inflammation, Intermittent Fasting has been shown to have benefit as well. There are a number of different approaches to IF, from a 6-8 hour eating window each day (nothing but water outside that time) to eating every other day, but they have shown improvements in inflammation, anti-aging (similar to caloric restriction), weight-loss, and disease prevention.

I, myself, try to restrict my eating to an 8-hour window each day, in addition to eating a low-carb diet. I don't eat past 6pm most nights (unless I have worked out that night) and I don't eat anything the next morning until ~10am.

[Harlan]

That is also a tried and true method to keeping one's weight down (another factor in O.A.).

As for the Gluc/Chon: it didn't seem to help (knees), until a coworker passed along that one needs a ratio of G500/Ch400 for every 50 lbs. That seems to work well. I've experimented with some brand and generic names, and found no difference. However, with deterioration, I am now experimenting with 'megadosing' (daily dose all at once, vs spread out), and have found a marked improvement.



If you really want to go all out in combating inflammation, Intermittent Fasting has been shown to have benefit as well. There are a number of different approaches to IF, from a 6-8 hour eating window each day (nothing but water outside that time) to eating every other day, but they have shown improvements in inflammation, anti-aging (similar to caloric restriction), weight-loss, and disease prevention.

I, myself, try to restrict my eating to an 8-hour window each day, in addition to eating a low-carb diet. I don't eat past 6pm most nights (unless I have worked out that night) and I don't eat anything the next morning until ~10am.

[Rasputin]

You can tell it was early when I wrote the OP. I forgot to mention Vitamin D3.

D3 not only has anti-inflammatory properties, it aids (along with K2) in ensuring that Calcium gets to the parts of the bone which need it the most, as opposed to ending up in the cardiac arteries or other improper locations. For D3, I recommend 1/2 hour of direct sunlight in Summer or more in the other three months, without sunblock, but you can also supplement with D3 if this proves impractical. K2 can be purchased online, although it is not the cheapest of supplements. It is also found in fermented soybean products (natto) and grassfed milkfat.

[Haplo]

Hi.
All useful suggestions. I have started taking Omega 3 and magnessium - not sure what the doses are, I will have to check. I have also started taking Gluc at 1500.

No more grains? Oh dear, I am a lover of sandwiches - easy & quick to make and always tasty - what do I replace them with? Suggestions? Weight is not a contributing factor to my OA (which I really hope will remain in the early stages). I'm 5ft4 and weigh 8 stone 5. I think it is partly hereditary and partly injury based. Perhaps my rather unhealthy diet has also contributed. Although my bloodwork (the doc decided to give me a full work up) came back amazingly good - good enough to make my doctor to think I was health conscious regarding my food intake - I know I ought to address this issue and will do so. I don't eat very much - I keep the calories low so I was interested to read that caloric restriction could be anti-aging - few people believe my age.

[Rasputin]

I don't know what you eat or how much you eat, so I can't make decisions based on that information. I will tell you two things:

When eating a diet high in carbohydrates, it is very easy to be deficient in the nutrients that your body needs to run correctly, since foods which are high in starches or sugars tend to do so at the expense of other nutrients. Starch is used by plants to store energy, not micronutrients, for the future. Sugar is used, generally, to entice animals to eat that part of the plant in the hopes of enlisting their aid in breeding. Neither implies a philanthropic effort on the part of the plant to provide quality nutrition to what is eating it.

Second, the lower-calorie nature of your diet is likely the cause of your slower aging process and good bloodwork. It's not the method of ensuring good health that I would personally endorse, but when your body is scrambling for every calorie it tends to use what you give it very efficiently.

There are numerous breads here in the U.S. which offer higher fiber and protein and lower carbohydrate, if you truly need to continue eating bread. However, I would still recommend you try dispensing with grains altogether for 1-2 weeks and see if your symptoms improve, then make that decision. There have been too many cases of arthritis and analogous pain-related symptoms which disappear completely on a grain-free diet to discount it. When it comes down to it, it's a pretty small change to make if it gives you a pain-free life.

Let's face it: sandwiches are indeed really convenient. They are an edible wrapper that you can fill with all kinds of good food and still not get your hands dirty eating them. They are a tough act to replace. However, if you really think about it, there are things you can try, I suppose.

Off the top of my head, you might try nori (as in the wrap used for sushi), which would seem to me to make a very interesting wrap for cold cuts. Lettuce would probably work alright, if you used parchment paper to wrap the sandwich and give it stability. How about a corned beef, Swiss, and mustard sandwich wrapped in a cabbage leaf? That might be worth trying.

Any other suggestions on sandwiches without bread or grains, guys?

[Abbax8]

Any other suggestions on sandwiches without bread or grains, guys?

Two large slices of Portabello Mushrooms to replace the bread.

Dennis

[DragonMind]

If you really need bread the Pepperidge Farms Carb Style is about your best bet. KFC had an interesting idea...use two chicken breasts as the bun :D

A couple pork chops would be nice too, or a couple ribeyes...dang, now I'm getting hungry.

[Rasputin]

http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Gluten-free-chestnut-flour-could-add-nutritional-value

Might have to look into the nutritional ratios of Chestnut flour. For those suffering from chronic pain, the problem is not just total carbohydrate intake, it is the gluten inflammatory reaction which exacerbates the problem, and low-carb breads made with wheat will still have some gluten in them.

[Rasputin]

Talk about timely commentary:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/wheat-hip.html


The previously widely-held notion that arthritis is simply a wear-and-tear phenomenon due to the mechanical stress of excess weight is proving to be an oversimplification. Arthritis is also part of the carbohydrate-driven, weight-increasing, inflammatory condition of insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome.

Throw into this cytokine storm the fact that glycation, i.e., glucose modification of proteins, also causes cartilage destruction. The cells of human cartilage lack the ability to divide, so the cartilage cells you had at age 18 are the cartilage cells that you will hopefully still have at age 80. However, high blood sugars (glucose) glycate the proteins in cartilage. (Wheat raises blood glucose higher than almost all other foods, higher than a Milky Way bar, higher than a Snickers bar.) The process is irreversible and cumulative. Because cartilage has next to no capacity for repair or regeneration, it becomes brittle. Over years, it essentially crumbles, leading to the "bone on bone" that prompts conversations about total hip and total knee replacement.

So that ciabatta or blueberry muffin in your mouth takes you a step or two closer to joint destruction via heightened inflammation arising from the visceral fat of the wheat belly, worsened by glycation of high blood sugars after carbohydrate consumption.

[Rasputin]

Another option is the tried-and-true Revolution Roll recipe which has been floating around the web for ages.

http://www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/lowcarb-recipe-help-suggestions/549082-original-atkins-diet-revolution-roll-tweaks.html

Basically, it is a bready pastry made from egg and cottage or cream cheese which, when baked, turns out in the form of a usable flatbread. Herbs or other spices can be added to flavor it as you like.

I have made them before, and the texture worked out well for cheeseburgers and other sandwiches, but they do have a slight distinctive eggy smell to them. One supposes you would get used to that, and the addition of garlic powder or other spices can also help.