Arthritis is a common cause of disability in the world, and many of its sufferers are young. Conventional medicine tends to treat arthritis with strong, gut-damaging, and immune-suppressing pain medications, but this only temporarily relieves the symptoms without ever addressing the root causes of the disease.
Research throughout the last decade, however, has been focused on healing arthritis without harsh medications. Conquer your arthritis and the related pain by following 3 simple steps. Here are the main tenants of taking care of your arthritis problem for good.
1. Consider The Gut
No matter what kind of arthritis you have (there are dozens of different diagnoses), it is made worse by inflammation. And where does the inflammation originate? You guessed it – in the gut.
Many studies confirm that the root cause of arthritis most likely lurks in your digestive system.1 So, if you want to heal the joints, you must first heal the gut. Some benefit by adding a daily dose of probiotics to remove microbes that might be the cause of the symptoms. But, some others might require a more intensive plan. Either way, the key is to start paying attention to your gut health.
The cheapest and easiest way to identify the foods that trigger inflammation is an elimination diet.
We all react differently to food. Many with arthritis suffer from a leaky gut, wherein the lining of the gut is damaged, leading to an inflammatory response. This inflammatory response varies depending on the food you eat because, over time, you become sensitized to some foods and not others.
Elimination diets ensure that you choose foods that work best for your body. Here’s how you can go about it:
- Start by removing the foods that are the most common culprits, such as gluten, dairy, corn, soy, eggs, and sugar.
- Monitor your progress for 3 weeks. If you feel better, one or more of these foods likely contributed to your ailments.
- After 3 weeks, reintroduce each food, one at a time.
- Continue monitoring your symptoms as you introduce these foods. This way, you can identify the problem foods.
In addition to adding probiotics and removing trigger foods, add prebiotic foods to your diet, as well. Prebiotics are foods like asparagus, onions, and even bananas that can feed the good bacteria in our bodies and help develop a healthy ratio of them.
Another great option to include in your diet is ghee, a staple used to treat indigestion, ulcers, and constipation in ancient Indian tradition. Ghee contains the short-chain fatty acid butyrate, which reduces inflammation and heals your gut.
2. Choose Foods That Fight Inflammation
Think back to the last time you splurged on pizza night. Or maybe when you had a few glasses of wine on a night out. How did you feel the next day? Or the day after that? Did you feel more pain than usual, which made it harder to function and complete even the most basic of tasks, like brushing your hair or making lunch? This is because there’s a strong connection between your diet, the gut microbiome, and arthritis.
To combat arthritic pain, choose foods that fight inflammation, not fuel it. Here are a few guiding principles to help you:
- Increase fiber, micronutrients, and phytonutrients intake. Or, in less-scary terms, eat more vegetables and fruits and choose organic produce when possible.
- Reduce your daily dose of refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and refined grains.
- Improve the quality of fat by removing refined oils and hydrogenated fats.
- Improve the quality of the animal protein you eat by choosing 100% grass-fed and finished beef, free-range chicken, and sustainably farmed, low-mercury fish.
- Limit salt, food dyes, and preservatives (which happens naturally when you limit processed foods).
3. Practice Mind-Body-Spirit Exercises
Stress is an inevitable part of our daily lives. We rush, sit in traffic, and keep ourselves up at night over obligations and deadlines. Regardless of the cause, if you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, you might notice that when your stress levels rise, so does your pain.
Like diets, stress can lead to a damaged gut, inflammation, and chronic disease and also heighten immune responses. So, it’s no surprise that to treat arthritis naturally, you must take time to relieve stress by practicing daily stress-reduction activities. De-stressing can balance your hormones and improve autoimmune conditions, your quality of life, and your energy levels.
Meditation, soft belly breathing, yoga, tai chi, and long walks through nature are all fabulous ways to reset your mind, ease stressors, and reduce pain. Developing a sleep routine that allows you to rest as much as you need and exercising are two other tools that can lead to sustained improvement.
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