On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, "a j read" <u
...@buzter.softnet.co.uk> wrote:
>I am a newby on this newsgroup so please bear with me .
>I have had R/A from 1980. and for the past 6 yrs chronic.
>affecting all major joints + some smaller ones ,I am interested in hearing
>from people who have had relief from flare-ups by adjusting their diet
>i ask this because 9mnths ago i stopped eating bread of any kind and
>now i only get minor flare-ups.So there must be a connection .
While trying to fix a broken link on my RA and diet page I found the below
article. Unfortunately one can not easily deep link to it. The URL was (and
it may or may not work):
http://www.mediconsult.com/mc/mcsite.nsf/conditionnav/arthritis~resea...
And the article was in the middle of a page of many articles. So here it
is:
December 17, 1999
Veggies and Olive Oil May Protect Against Rheumatoid Arthritis
Chalk up more benefits for eating a Mediterranean diet—no, not a new fad,
but the typical diet of people who live in places like southern Italy and
Greece. These folks tend to eat more fish and vegetables and less meat than
other nationalities and lots of olive oil. Previous studies have suggested
this type of diet protects against cancer and heart disease. Now
researchers believe it also protects against rheumatoid arthritis.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and the
University of Athens in Greece studied the lifetime diets of 145 Greek men
and women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 188 control subjects without
it. Participants were asked to recall how often they ate a variety of foods
(more than 100 kinds) from childhood up to when their RA was diagnosed, or
up to the present for controls.
Participants were also asked to what extent they followed the Greek
Orthodox Lent, which requires abstinence from meat and animal products
twice a week and during four longer periods each year, for a total of 180
days. During these periods, people eat mostly fruit, cereals, and
vegetables, and strict adherents refrain from all fats, including olive
oil.
The researchers compared the group that consumed the most olive oil to the
group that consumed the least. Those in the group who consumed the least
olive oil were two and one-half times more likely to get RA than those in
the group that consumed the most olive oil. Similar results emerged for
vegetable consumption: Those who ate the most veggies were significantly
less likely to develop RA. No other food items had any significant
relationship to RA.
Writing in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition," the researchers
point out that no one knows exactly what causes RA, nor why eating certain
foods would affect it. Many researchers think that protective fatty acids
found in deep-water fish like tuna, herring, salmon, and cod help inhibit
the inflammation characteristic of RA. Similar substances are found in
olive oil, so that's one reason it might help prevent the disease. Another
is that olive oil is rich in antioxidants, which protect the body against
cellular damage that can cause chronic illness.
The researchers noted that fish from the relatively shallow Mediterranean
don't have as much protective fatty acid as deep-water fish, and that's
probably why fish consumption wasn't related to RA in this study.
According to the authors, the next step is to figure out how these foods,
especially the olive oil, work to protect the body against disease. They
suggest that somehow the process of metabolizing the oil suppresses
inflammation, but a lot more research is needed to understand why.
© 1999 Mediconsult.com. All rights reserved.
