Best Diet for Rheumatoid Arthritis to Reduce Inflammation Naturally

Introduction to RA Diet Tips 0:00

Most people, when they think of controlling inflammation due to rheumatoid arthritis with diet, means eating nothing but vegetables and water. But what if I told you that adding more of the right food could actually be the key to soothe your pain due rheuomatoids? Let's look at the simple yet practical dietary changes that actually works for you. Hi Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior, this is Dr. Nanda Subedi, your rheumatologist coach as well as a practicing rheumeatologists here at Empower Arthefitis and Rhematology Center here in Cary, North Carolina.

Today, I am giving you some important practical tips on how you better eat with rheuma to arthritis. Before I go deeper, please accept our gift, the Holistic Rheumatoid Arthritis Guidebook, which we wrote just for you to better understand about rheumatitis, as well as a recipe of an anti-inflammatory smoothie packed with anti inflammatory component made naturally. and also support in our mission for the channel where we want to reach as many people with rheumatoid arthritis as possible and you can support us by liking, subscribing and commenting in the video and giving us some feedback on how we can improve, how can we better serve you through this channel.

Now let's start with what is the role of diet in rheumatoid arthritis, the power of the diet. Many of you are aware that rheuma arthritis is an autoimmune and systemic inflammation and that affects the entire body.

Why Diet Matters in Rheumatoid Arthritis 1:35

Don't think of RA just as a joint disease, it affects multiple other organs including your skin, your blood vessels and your heart and lungs. That's why we need to have a holistic way of managing your rheumatoid arthritis and diet become a powerful holistic tool in managing RA. So the diet that you eat, the food that eat significantly impact your body's level of inflammation. One key fact that I need you to understand is diet is an adjunct to your supporting your immune system and your medical treatment.

it's not a replacement for your medication. Many of my patients, they do try replacing their medication just with the diet. They do get some short-term relief, but they are not able to sustain those. That's why we need to combine these dietary changes along with your medications. And if you combine them together, it becomes a powerful tool to control inflammation. The American College of Rheumatology, that usually help us guide on how do we best manage rheumatoid arthritis, now also include dietary changes in their official guideline, which tells us the power, the importance of understanding diet and rheuatoide arthritis.

When we think of diet, and RHE, one of the most important questions that will come up in your mind is, what type of Diet I should eat? If you look at the American College of Rheumatology guideline, the number one recommendation on diet and RA is using Mediterranean diet, which is considered to be the gold standard. So following the Mediterranean Diet could help you understand better what to eat. This form of diet emphasizes on vegetables, fruits and whole grain. It also includes healthy fats. that comes from nuts, seeds and olive oil.

So these healthy fats are naturally anti-inflammatory. And this dietary pattern, the Mediterranean diet also contains low-fat dairy products. and fatty fish. It emphasizes on limiting added sugar, extra sodium and refined carbohydrates. I know many of you might enjoy that white bread but that refined whitebread may not be good for your RA. So try to substitute that refined carb like the white bread with whole grain or whole wheat type of bread. And also try limit the highly processed foods and also saturated fats.

Mediterranean Diet as the Gold Standard 4:10

So saturated fat and highly process food has a lot of chemicals that are inflammatory. and they also contain a lot of saturated fats that increase your risk of heart disease. As you are aware, rheumatoid arthritis is an important risk factor for heart diseases. So we need to do our best to minimize that risk and that is done by changing your diet, minimizing your highly processed food as well as those saturated fat. Now you might wonder, why a Mediterranean diet? What is the evidence, what is science tells us about Mediterranean and rheumatoid arthritis?

Based on the available literature, this type of diet, the Mediterranean Diet has found to be helpful in reducing the joint pain and the stiffness. Even as a clue of decreased inflammation, they are also known to decrease the disease activity and the inflammation marker such as C reactive protein and sedimentation rate. Those are the two important markers that help us monitor inflammation and activity of rheumatoid arthritis. So if you follow this diet, it is known to decrease those inflammatory chemicals.

And the studies also show that people who follow these dietary patterns, the Mediterranean diet, have improved function with less pain and better quality of life. And you know, our goal with treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is to reduce your pain, your stiffness, and your fatigue that significantly impact your quality of life. That's why adding these dietary modifications or changing your diet to a Mediterranean diet will help you overall improve your life quality. Now here are the few key components of a Mediterranean diet and the number one being extra virgin olive oil which is the primary source of fat in this dietary pattern and extra-virgin olive is natural anti-inflammatory.

So substitute other type of fat with extra virgin olive oil and at least try to do two servings of fatty fish per week. That will help you give the omega-3 fatty acid, which is anti-inflammatory. And it also incorporate abundant amount of colorful fruits and vegetables. those colorful fruits and berries has a lot of natural anti-inflammatory component so they will help you control your RA inflammation. Now let me also summarize what are the foods that fight inflammation and number one in the list is omega-3 fatty acid and the sources include fatty fish which include salmon, mackerel and sardines.

So at least do two servings per week. The plant sources of omega-3 fatty acid includes your nuts, the chia seed and the flax seed.

Anti-Inflammatory Foods and Supplements 7:10

They also contain a lot of fiber, which is also considered to be good for controlling inflammation. And the overall goal of getting the omega 3 fatty acids is up to 2 grams per day. And always check with your primary doctor as well as your rheumatologist on the safety of this medication if you are taking any other medication because of possible drug interactions. And the second one are those anti-oxidant superstars. Those berries, those colorful berries such as blueberries, strawberries and raspberries.

they contain natural anti-inflammatory compounds. The next category on the anti inflammatory superstar include leafy greens such as spinach and kale. They contain Natural Anti-Inflammatory as well as high amount of fibers which are natural Anti Inflamatory. And the next source of antioxidant includes the cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Now the third category of food includes spices and drinks. I have talked about these spices in further detail in my earlier video, which you can refer to when I talk about five important spices.

And these spaces includes turmeric, ginger and green tea. These contains natural anti-inflammatory that will help fight inflammation and in particular green teas also helpful to improve your sleep too. So it will have your asleep as well as control inflammation due to RA. In addition to these dietary supplements or dietary changes, you can also add some supplements that you do to help fight against inflammation and that includes vitamin D supplement, fish oil supplement particularly if you are not taking enough fish or if are a vegetarian and you're not consuming fish.

And the third key supplement are the probiotics which help regulate your gut. These probiotics, either you can take naturally, such as yogurt, or you add some supplement probiotic, which you buy over the counter to give your gut what it needs to control the inflammation. All of you rheumatoid arthritis warriors, thank you so much for joining us today and thank so you for watching our video. If you like the video, please give us a thumbs up and comment below where we understand how you are doing with the videos and what type of video you liked and also accept our gift that includes a free copy of our Holistic Rheumataid Arthritis Guidebook.

which is written for you to understand more about holistic way of managing RA including the dietary changes where we go much more detail in the book and then also accept our anti-inflammatory smoothie recipe which you can find in description below. We talk about food that you should increase but we should also understand more about what are the food that you need to decrease or you to avoid in your day-to-day life. And those food we call pro-inflammatory food and I briefly talked on them earlier and i have highlighted them into three different categories.

The number one being processed and red meat. This processed red has high amount of saturated fat and they are also considered to be inflammatory. So try to limit them to at least less than one per week. And the next category is added sugar and the refined carbohydrates. They cause a sugar spike causing high blood sugar level, which does not support your immune system. Because more inflammation. So try to minimize these high sugar content food and then the refine carbohydrates the third become excessive extra sodium as well as highly processed foods.

They are also considered to be pro-inflammatory and increase your RA activity. Some of you RA warriors might also have felt that if you eat certain type of food your rA might flare and we call them trigger foods It is highly variable

Foods to Limit and Trigger Foods 10:50

so it's not universal that one type of food might trigger you and other may not trigger rheumatoid arthritis flare. So I recommend to create a food diary where you can understand what might be the trigger food for you, and you eliminate those diet. So you do not need to elevate everything based on other people's experience. So try to understand your body and then change your diet based your on your own body, not based in somebody else. Sometimes also working with your dietician who can also guide you what are the good food for your health.

Also use a dietician as your coach on how you eat and how to modify your diets. Because everybody has different ways of reacting to a different type of food. Now, we talk about so many different things, but the questions come up, how do I use those information in my day to day life? How do we make it more practical? And the first step is start small. Add just one anti-inflammatory food before focusing on many others and before you start restricting your diet. So start Small. And number two is plan ahead.

Meal planning and preparation are essential for long term success. So always plan your meal, particularly over the weekend. You can plan you meal for the coming week so that you have prepared well on what we need to eat, what way to avoid and also budget friendly. And the third point is you can also get these anti-inflammatory food as lower price or cheaper price. So you don't need spend too much money on this, such as using frozen fish, canned sardines and seasonal produce that can buy at a lower cost.

So anti-inflammatory diet doesn't have to be with a higher cost. You can even find those at lower budget. And the number four is teaming up with your team. Team includes your rheumatologist and your registered dietician who can guide you how you plan your meal. So use those resources if you have. And the fifth but very important point is be patient. Unlike medications, which works very fast, they will make you feel better faster. But dietary changes take long term commitment. So you had to be consistent.

So don't just give up if you are not feeling well when you make those dietary changes. Be consistent and then continue monitoring and follow up with your doctors regarding how you're feeling. Now when we go to the internet and start looking at what are the diet good for you for rheumatoid arthritis. So you will see a lot of fact and there are a lots of myths and fiction too. Here are some of the four facts and fictions related with rheuma arthritis and diet.

Practical Meal Planning Strategies 13:40

Number one being totally vegan diet or totally vegetarian diet. The current guideline or current science does not support that every RA patient need to be vegan. There is some benefit in some clinical trial, but the effect has been very variable to different patients. So individualized treatment is a better way of doing whether vegan or not vegan and the number two become the elimination diet As I discussed earlier, some of you are a warrior might know the trigger food. If you know, the triggered food, you can eliminate those type of food and that you do by journaling your food intake.

But the challenge with the elimination diet is sustaining long term. It's hard to sustain elimination and diet. And the third one is fasting. The research has shown that fasting could be temporarily helpful for managing rheumatoid arthritis, but the long-term sustainability is hard. You cannot fast for long. Your body do need food and it can also cause some other nutritional deficiencies. So just be careful with fasting. And the fourth one is the gluten free diet. Some of my RA warriors do tell me that gluten tend to flare their rheumatoid arthritis.

If that's the case, then you can minimize gluten use or you an eliminate. But the current evidence does not support universal gluten-free diet for rheuomatoide arthritis patients. unless you have celiac disease or some of you might have non-celiac gluten sensitivity which means when you take gluten containing diet your stomach doesn't tolerate. You get bloating, you get fatigue, You might also get other symptoms for gluten insensitivity. If that's the case that might make also sense to eliminate gluten but every one of You do not need to be gluten free.

Myths About RA Diets and Key Takeaways 15:30

Now here are the key takeaways on your path to less inflammation by using dietary changes. And here the three important key take aways. Number one being follow a Mediterranean diet, which is evidence-based approach of managing RA with diet. And also focus on the diet or food that has high amount of omega-3 fatty acids that includes fish and then colorful fruits and vegetables, as well as nuts. And use diet as a supplement. It's an adjunct to your medical treatment, but it could be a powerful tool in combination with your medication.

So don't use food as substitute for your medicine. One key that I mentioned earlier, consistency is the key. So changing dietary pattern is long term gain. It may not make you feel better quicker, but long-term, it does help control your rheumatoid arthritis as well as also decrease your risk of heart disease, which is a major problem in rheuropathy. So use diet as a tool for controlling inflammation, as will as decreasing your risks of longterm chronic condition like heart. Thank you all of you Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior for watching this video.

I hope it helps you learn more about the diet and rheumatitis and I also hope there are some practical tips that you can use from the talk today. If you want to learn about these type of content please like and subscribe to our channel and share this with other RA warriors who are also suffering with RA and are in confusion. And I'll come up with similar video in the next time.