September is Arthritis Awareness month, so lets talk specifically about Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). RA impacts mainly small joints such as in the fingers, toes, ankles, wrists, shoulders as well as hips, and the pain is usually symmetrical e.g. fingers on both hands and toes in both feet. The joints are swollen and maybe even deformed a bit if the arthritis has been around for a while. The joints are stiff, especially first thing in the morning, giving you a slow start to the day.
 
RA is an autoimmune condition; meaning that the body is attacking itself. It creates inflammation that over time can lead to the progressive destruction of joints. Because of this, RA is associated with large amounts of pain. The pain may never go away, but there are natural ways to diminish it to improve quality of life.
 
Dietary factors have been known to contribute to RA, so what better way to help improve from this condition than to make dietary modifications? The food rules when it comes to RA are:

1. Identify Food Sensitivities. This is where individualized treatment takes place, as everyone is different in what foods are affecting his or her health. It is important to recognize your food sensitivities and refrain from eating them as much as possible.

2. Adopt a Vegetarian diet as much as possible. Excess consumption of animal products, excluding fish, can contribute significantly to the inflammation process involved with RA. Fish on the other hand has the opposite effect and can reduce the amount of inflammation within the body.

3. Avoid Nightshade Vegetables. It might sound odd that you are being told not to eat your vegetables, but in people who suffer from RA they tend to fare better when they avoid certain ones. The nightshade family consists of: tomatoes, potatoes, chili pepper, bell pepper and eggplant. This list of vegetables can really trigger the inflammation and pain in someone with arthritis.

RA is a condition that can improve with dietary modifications, so it is important to evaluate what you are eating and how it can be improved for an overall better quality of life.

There's no doubt about it: what we eat, and how much we eat, has a direct impact on our physical health. But did you know that those same choices also influence mood, mental alertness, memory, and emotional wellbeing? Food can act as medicine, have a neutral effect, or it can be a poison to the body and mind.
When food acts as poison, it creates inflammation, which alters the body's balance of nutrients, hormones, and neurotransmitters. This directly affects your body's ability to manage and heal from stress or illness.
While some body-mind effects are due to naturally occurring nutrient content in food, much is due to hidden additives. Below, are four common culprits. If you're experiencing symptoms that interfere with your quality of living, talk with your natural health practitioner about the role these or other foods may play in your health.

Foods that Impact Body-Mind Wellbeing:

Caffeine: The most socially accepted psychoactive substance in the world, caffeine is used to boost alertness, enhance performance, and even treat apnea in premature infants. Caffeine is frequently added to other foods, so be mindful of total consumption. Too much caffeine (500-600 mg daily) interferes with sleep quality, which affects energy, concentration, and memory. Caffeine can aggravate other health conditions, cause digestive disturbances, and worsen menstrual symptoms and anxiety.

Food Dye: Those brightly colored, processed and packaged foods come with a rainbow of health risks. Listed on ingredient labels as "Blue 2," or "Citrus Red," food dye has been documented to contain cancer-causing agents (e.g., benzidine). They're also associated with allergic reactions and hyperactivity in children. Dyes are sometimes used to enhance skin color of fruits and veggies. A number of dyes have been banned from use in foods and cosmetics around the world.

Sugars: Increased sugar consumption (as much as 30% over the last three decades for American adults), is linked to decreased intake of essential nutrients and associated with obesity, diabetes, inflammatory disease, joint pain and even schizophrenia. Too much dietary sugar can result in blood sugar fluctuations, causing mood swings, anxiety, irritability, headaches, and increased depression. Sugars that can act as poison include High Fructose Corn Syrup, table sugar, artificial and "natural" sweeteners.

MSG: Monosodium glutamate is a flavor enhancer common in packaged and prepared foods. Although the FDA considers MSG "generally safe," some individuals experience a complex of physical and mental symptoms after eating MSG-containing foods. Symptoms vary but can include headache, sweating, nausea, chest pain, heart palpitations, and overstimulation of the central nervous system which can lead to alterations in sleep, mood, and immunity.
Becoming aware of your food choices, why you make them, and how you feel mentally and physically is an important first step in understanding your personal body-mind food connection. Your practitioner may ask you to keep a mind-body food journal to provide a clear picture of how your food choices affect your health.

A typical day begins with you pressing the snooze button three times because you just can’t get out of bed; your body feels so lethargic that you liken yourself to a sack of potatoes.  When you do finally roll out of bed and somehow make it to work you have a difficult time concentrating because its as though a heavy fog has settled itself over your brain.  After lunch you waddle yourself back to your desk because you are as bloated as a balloon about to burst. After work you consider going to the gym, but on top of the fatigue, fog and bloating, your joints are also aching, so you tell yourself maybe some other time. Just when you thought that you couldn’t feel any worse, a headache sets in making you retire to bed early so that you can rest up enough to deal with your symptoms again tomorrow.
 
If this sounds like you, you might be experiencing food sensitivities.  Food sensitivities are different from true food allergies however in both kinds of reactions the immune system releases cells called antibodies; allergies releases IgE antibodies (immunoglobulin E) and sensitivities release IgG antibodies (immunoglobulin G).

Allergies:
 
IgE allergies happen almost immediately upon exposure to the allergen/antigen (i.e. foods that cause antibodies to be released), and require a medical response as they can cause a range of life threatening symptoms. Common examples include peanuts, bee stings and reactions to certain antibiotics.

Sensitivities:
 
Food sensitivities on the other hand are a delayed response anywhere from hours to days after the exposure to the allergen.  This can make uncovering the allergen culprit more difficult to pinpoint.  The symptoms from food sensitivities will be different for everyone, and can include the following:

• Digestive: gas, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, heart burn
• Fatigue or loss of energy
• Headaches and migraines
• Hormonal: fertility issues, PMS, menstrual cramps
• Mood: anxiety, depression, mood swings, poor concentration
• Muscle and joint pain
• Skin: acne, eczema, psoriasis
  
• etc.
  

 
How do you determine if your symptoms are related to what you are eating?
 
Our bodies runs off of the fuel that we supply them, in other words, the foods we eat.  We can be eating all the “good” foods but even those “good” foods could have ill-effects if we are one of the “lucky ones” to have a sensitivity to it.  So here is my checklist to determine if my patients are experiencing food sensitivities and how to help them:

• Finding the Food Culprits: I have my patients track everything they are eating for a period of time as well as any symptoms that occur.  This gives us a baseline of their diet habits relative to how they are feeling.  From there I can spot patterns and make recommendations towards dietary changes. Note – if you see me as a patient expect your diet to be tweaked! In addition, I can also perform a Food Sensitivity Panel that tests for those IgG Food reactions.  This is a great way to get quick answers and ultimately faster results, as we know exactly what foods to stay away from.
• Take a Break: Here we eliminate the culprit foods so that your body can take a break and begin the recovery process.
• Heal: While taking a break from food offenders there are also some supplements that I recommend that work to heal the gut.  Food sensitivities create a lot of inflammation and damage to the lining of the intestinal wall so we want to work to diminish this and give our bodies a fighting chance.
  
• Reintroduce: Yum! You get to start eating those foods again that you have been craving.  Introducing foods one-by-one gives us a pretty good understanding of how your body reacts to specific foods and whether or not it wants you to be eating them!
  
• Support: With a tailored diet and supplement protocol, stress management and lifestyle counseling, it is quite possible that you may not react to the same foods again. This entire process is so that you can feel better and live the life you want.  You will feel empowered to make the right food choices to properly fuel your body!
  

If you suspect that you have a food sensitivity that could be contributing to your ill health, feel free to contact me.  I offer complimentary 15-minute consultations. 780-482-7617