Did you know arthritis is a symptom, and not a disease?
The pain and discomfort come from inflammation in the joints, and the result is what medicine calls “arthritis.”
They call it a disease so they can create a drug for it. The good news is you can reduce this inflammation and relieve the pain naturally.
All you have to do is adopt a delicious diet … the Mediterranean diet.
According to many studies, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil can limit the inflammation that drives rheumatoid arthritis.
One of these studies shows that consuming the monounsaturated fatty acids found in olive oil every day holds back the disease activity that can make arthritis so painful.
The other study, a lab test, demonstrates that by reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol, the Mediterranean diet can limit arthritic cartilage damage.
The ingredient in olive oil that helps get rid of inflammation is called “hydroxytyrosol.” This anti-aging compound has been shown to decrease pain and damage, reduce pain-inducing cox-2, reduce swelling, and improve range of motion and function.
“We now have a much better understanding of the relationship between disease activity in patients with RA (rheumatoid arthritis) and the Mediterranean diet …” says researcher Yoshinari Matsumoto of the Department of Medical Nutrition, Graduate School of Human Life Science, Osaka City University, Japan.
Previous research shows that eating a Mediterranean diet can reduce inflammation in RA, improve your ability to move around and increase your sense of well-being.
“Confirming that daily intake of monounsaturated fatty acids, as a component of the Mediterranean diet, is an independent predictor of remission in patients with RA suggests that monounsaturated fatty acids might actually be suppressing disease activity,” Matsumoto says.
The Mediterranean diet is rich in fruits and vegetables, with dishes full of olive oil and olives themselves. It also mostly excludes processed foods and includes drinking red wine. Beans, poultry and fish are the main protein sources.
