For Arthritis, Try The Paleo Diet Rather Than Painkillers

A prime reason I originally went on the paleo diet was to quiet the painful arthritis in my hands. And you know what? It worked.

Aching, burning, hurting fingers run in my family. My grandmother suffered swollen, aching joints in her fingers and so did my mother.

And when I was in my 40s, my hands began to hurt, too.

The pain started in the middle finger of my right hand and spread to the knuckles of the other fingers on that hand before appearing in my left hand.

Skepticism
I admit I was skeptical when I first read that the paleo diet could help with arthritis. I didn’t believe that giving up grains, forgoing soy, avoiding milk and dairy products and eating mostly organic meat, fish, fruits and vegetables could make my hands feel better.

But a desperate woman will do desperate things.

To help me stay on the paleo diet, I started preparing most of my own food. Gave up ice cream and popcorn. Said goodbye to pizza.

And my hands started to feel better. It took a while, but the pain in my joints started decreasing until at times, it was almost gone completely. Without the use of painkillers.

Grape help
I’m convinced that the diet is what saved my hands. Plus, research into the effects of diet and nutrients supports the notion that what you eat affects your arthritis.

For instance, a study at Texas Woman’s University shows that regularly eating grapes can ease arthritic pain in your knees. The nutrients in grapes don’t merely make your knees hurt less – they also increase the flexibility of your knee joints and your ability to move around.

The researchers link these benefits to natural chemicals in grapes called polyphenols.

The study discovered that women enjoyed more benefits from grapes than men. Plus, younger people were helped more than older people who had arthritis. During the research, people who were less than 64 years old enjoyed a 70 percent boost in their ability to do what the researchers call “hard activity.” Those over 65 were not helped very much.

“These findings provide promising data that link grape consumption to two very important outcomes for those living with knee osteoarthritis: reduced pain and improvements in joint flexibility,” says researcher Shanil Juma. “More research is needed to better understand the results of the serum biomarkers, as well as the age and gender differences observed.”

Healthy oil
Taking fish oil and eating fatty fish can also help make your joints healthier. Lab tests at Duke University show that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil improve the mobility and function of your limbs.

“Our results suggest that dietary factors play a more significant role than mechanical factors in the link between obesity and osteoarthritis,” says researcher Farshid Guilak, who teaches orthopedic surgery at Duke.

In the tests, researchers compared the effects of saturated fats (from meat), omega-6 fats (from sources like corn and soy oil) with omega-3 fats from fish.

“A healthy diet would include roughly equal ratios of these fats, but we’re way off the scale in the Western diet,” says Guilak. (By the way, a benefit of eating organic, free-range meat, is that they contain more omega-3 fats than most meat sold in supermarkets.)

The Duke tests showed that diets high in saturated or omega-6 fats were linked to worse arthritis while omega-3s fostered better joint mobility.

If you are overweight, your extra pounds make you more vulnerable to arthritis, so the Duke researchers tested whether omega-3 fats could help ease arthritis linked to obesity.

“We found that independent of body weight, dietary fatty acids regulate… wound healing and severity of osteoarthritis following joint injury in obese (lab animals),” notes researcher Chia-Lung Wu, the study’s lead author.

Better hands
As for me, my arthritis is not entirely gone, but it only persists on a regular basis in one finger on my right hand. It doesn’t often hurt very much, so I figure that getting rid of it in the other nine fingers means I’ve made about a 90 percent improvement.

And I still don’t take painkillers.

source: Easyhealthoptions

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