Health And Fitness News 

Diet And Exercise Tips For Arthritis

Conventional medical science, quite frankly, offers little in the way of long-term serious help for the arthritis sufferer.  This is ironic since there are so many people in the United States alone who are subjected to its aches and pains in some way.

Many of these people are looking towards other, more natural means to alleviate the symptoms and stop the cycle of pain.  There are two options – available to everyone – that should be at the top of your list:  diet and exercise.

Exercise.  While it sounds like the last thing someone with painful knees or other joints really wants to do, it's one of the best things you can do for your body.  Regular exercise is absolutely necessary for keeping healthy joints healthy, relieving stiffness reducing the pain and fatigue associated with arthritis, and improving both your muscle and your bone strength.  It's also an essential tool in weight control.  Being overweight, statistics say, makes you more vulnerable to developing arthritis.

Your personal health care practitioner should encourage you to exercise.  She or a physical therapist can also help you tailor a program that is suited to your individual needs.  Included in these activities should be exercises that can provide greater range of motion for more flexible joints, strength training for muscle tone and low-impact aerobic activity.

The best exercises if you have severe arthritis are water-based activities:  swimming and water aerobics.  The buoyancy of the water puts less of a strain on your joints. These are an excellent methods, additionally, to help build your strength, ease stiff joints and relax your sore muscles.

Other good low-impact activities for those who suffer with joint problems include bicycling – both outdoor biking and using a stationary bike.  You might also want to investigate yoga.  It's slow, gentle movements will, not only help you extend your range of motion, but it'll also help relieve those sore joints.  All without the pounding of running or aerobic exercises.

They say we are what we eat.  Your diet is, without a doubt, the most effective tool you have in constructing a healthy, active lifestyle.  It's only been within the last 25 or so years, that the mainstream medical establishment began noticing this. 

If you plan to lessen your arthritic symptoms by changing your dietary habits, start with water.  Drink more of it.  Drink at least six to eight glasses daily.  This, many health care practitioners agree, flushes toxins from your body.

At the same time, you'll want to carefully switch your diet from processed and packaged foods which are all too prevalent today to a more basic menu.  Increase your intake of green vegetables.  Eat more green, leafy vegetables as well as celery, kale and okra.  Ensure that you eat a wide-range of veggies and other foods, from carrots to avocados, to seaweed and spirulina.  Especially beneficial to the arthritic patient are barley and wheat grass products.  Both of these have anti-inflammatory and detoxifying effects on the body.

And don't forget to include cold-water fish in your new line of menus, too.  Cold-water fish are especially great for those with arthritis, because they possess plenty of Omega-3 fatty acids. 

Just as there are foods that help alleviate your arthritic condition, there are certain foods that are best left uneaten.  These only make the aches and pains of your arthritis worse.  Many of these are from the nightshade family of foods, including tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and peppers. 

Another plant of the nightshade family is tobacco.  If you smoke and have arthritis, try to find a good smoking cessation program and kick the habit.  If you don't smoke, don't even think about starting.

Another category of food that only worsens your pain is called calcium inhibitors.  They include red meat, dairy, eggs and chicken.  But there are other food and drink in this category as well, including alcohol, coffee, refined sugar – and anything made with it – as well as salt.  If it's impossible to totally give up these foods, then at least try to cut back on them as much as possible.  You'll discover that the pain is far less severe when you do.

For more on joint pain during exercise, click here.

Define Your ORAC

ORAC means many things to different people. To a sci-fi buff, it's the computer in Blake 7. To an aboriginal businessman, it's the place to go to register a corporation. But we're interested in another ORAC - the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity of a food. This scale is used to rate a food's antioxidant content. Generally, the higher the ORAC rating of a food, the better it is.

Wikipedia gives a great technical explanation of how the ORAC tests are applied. For the layman (myself included!), it's a bit too technical :-) But they raise some other great points about how the ORAC measurements are used, both in marketing and other areas.

Antioxidants are big business now. Even though health claims have to be carefully validated, many manufacturers simply rely on a consumer's general knowledge to connect the dots. There is a much greater level of awareness of health constituents and their effects, thanks to a more proactive approach from consumers, and plenty of media reporting.

When a food is found to have a high ORAC content, this is often publicized. Foods blessed with this antioxidant potential include: kidney beans, wild and cultivated blueberries (wild are higher), cranberries, prunes, artichoke hearts, apples, raspberries, and even russet potatoes! But not all reporting of ORAC values is created equal!

As the Wikipedia writer notes, ORAC values can be measured in different ways:

* per grams of dry weight
* per grams of wet weight
* ORAC units per serving

For any comparisons between food to be meaningful, both foods must be measured exactly the same way. Otherwise, some very misleading results could be implied. The author goes on to say:

"Under each evaluation, different foods can appear to have higher ORAC values. Although a raisin has no more antioxidant potential than the grape from which it was dried, raisins will appear to have a much higher ORAC value per gram wet weight than grapes due to their reduced water content. Likewise, watermelons large water content can make it appear as though they are very low in antioxidants. To say then that chocolate has "more antioxidant" potential than blueberries is tenuous at best. While ounce per ounce chocolate may have a higher ORAC value, on the comparison of dry weight, we see blueberries have a higher ORAC value." (Wikipedia)

Antioxidants are important for both inner health and beauty. What we eat plays a vital role in keeping our skin wrinkle free, and preventing aging.  This is one of the reasons antioxidants are in the news so much. In a culture concerned with youth and beauty, the lure is irresistible.

Spirulina And Our Brain

When I first started taking spirulina years ago, it was a bit of a wonder supplement, but without much research to back up any claims. Most people reported an increase in energy levels, and it certainly helps with your skin (I find all the green supplements, including green barley, and kelp, help with skin). Unfortunately, the fact that percentage-wise it contained a lot of protein opened it up for some criticism, I think.

Spirulina is in fact a highly concentrated source of protein, but you'd have to consume a heck of a lot of it to come anywhere near using that as a significant source of protein in your daily diet. I think the wrong emphasis was placed on this at one stage. And recent research has uncovered where spirulina really shines - in its' levels of antioxidants.

Scientists from the James A. Haley Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Center for Aging and Brain Repair, Department of Neurosurgery, University of South Florida, the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Department of Pharmacology, University of Colorado Health Science Center published some interesting results on an animal study of spirulina and the brain.

Using a number of tests, controls, and comparisons, the researchers found that older rats fed apple and spirulina improved their neuronal activity to the higher levels enjoyed by younger rats. This, if it can be reproduced in humans, has positive effects in relation to the aging of the brain.

The researchers believe that it is spirulina's antioxidants that are the driver behind this result, with some sources saying that it has 300 times the antioxidant effect of apples.

Other studies have been done on the effect of vegetables (like spinach) on the aging brain. Spinach also has high antioxidant levels, and the studies found a relationship between fruits and vegetables with high levels of antioxidants and improvements in learning motor skills in rats.

Like any study done on animals, the results have to be there for humans before anyone can get really excited. However, it's a promising early result, and certainly adds to the body of knowledge highlighting the importance of fruit and vegetables (and antioxidants) in the diet.

Marketing And The Healing Power Of Food

Using food for healing has generally been the domain of more alternative practitioners. For example, Anne Marie Colbin, who was quite influenced by macrobiotics, wrote a book about using foods for healing. When I studied shiatsu, one of the things we learnt about was the effect of different types of foods on the body. Some were good, some were bad, and in some cases, it depended on the circumstances. And the traditional Chinese systems have a well developed analysis on the different energetic effects of food on the body.

So, it's interesting that food manufacturers are linking the individual research of science in their message to consumers. It's beginning to be not just about individual foods and their constituents, but about the branding of products using them. As a result, a lot of 'anti aging' foods have now entered the market.

For example, in Germany a bread called 'Powerbread' contains amaranth and sprouts. This is to "help slow ageing". (Nutraingredients)

Because of fairly strict laws in most countries (With the exception of some European countries), direct health claims are not often made, and manufacturers rely on the knowledge of consumers when highlighting product ingredients.

Is this a bad thing? Well, it's not necessarily bad, if it means generally healthy choices are made. For example, dark chocolate does have a lot of antioxidants, but it can also contain a lot of calories. Whilst for some people, or as an irregular treat, this is not going to be a problem, if you have a problem with being overweight, this shouldn't be a justification to eating it. And it's always good to remember that there are many sources of antioxidants.

One of the key differences to this modern, marketing approach, and that discussed by Anne Marie Colbin and the traditional Chinese, is that the latter use whole foods as a preference. Whole foods are greater than the sum of a single constituent. They contain fiber, vitamins, minerals, and a range of antioxidants and other phytochemicals, not just one or two. Fresh, whole foods also contain valuable enzymes.

And both Colbin and the Chinese talk of balance. That is, they consider a food in relation to other foods eaten, and a person's circumstances. These modifiers create a far more accurate picture of a food's effect on a personal level, I think.

Of course, the science is great. I certainly love reading about it, and I think it provides great clues as to how and when we should use foods for health aspects we would like to improve. The danger comes perhaps, in over-simplifying things.

Lycopene And Prostate Health

Lycopene looks like a promising antioxidant in cancer prevention, at least for some cancers.

Diet information from a group of 130 prostate cancer patients was compared with information from 274 people who didn't have cancer. Researchers found that as more lycopene and other antioxidants (alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and beta-cryptoxanthin) were found in the diet, the risk of developing prostate cancer was reduced.

When comparing those with the most lycopene in their diet with those having the least, the lycopene eaters had their risk reduced by over 80%!

The research was done by a team at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia.

The other big performer was the carotenoid, beta-cryptoxanthin. It can be found in citrus fruits, papaya, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as yellow animal products like egg yolk and butter.

Other prostate health supplements such as Nettle and Saw Palmetto are popular in preventing prostate cancer.