Eat an anti inflammatory diet

A healthy diet plays a big role when it comes to maintaining healthy joints. While we dont have all the answers yet, were quickly learning that an inflammatory diet is NOT a good thing; whether youre at risk for heart disease, have asthma, or just want to keep your joints healthy. While weve known for quite some time that poor biomechanical alignment, being excessively heavy, and general wear-and-tear can wreak havoc on your joints, were also seeing that joint destruction could very well be systemic too. Positive changes in your diet could be a huge influence on your joint health later in life. Granted, this isnt my area of expertise, so I called in the big guns for this topic. Heres what Tammy Thomas, MS, RD, CSCS and a specialist in the realm of autoimmune disease, had to say on the topicThere are too many scientific articles to cite regarding joint destruction and inflammation. You can do a search on PubMed with joint destruction and inflammation and see the number of hits you get. Researchers know that inflammation plays a definite role in joint destruction. Diet plays a role in inflammation, especially dietary fats. The fats, more specifically the fatty acids, we ingest directly affect our bodys production of eicosanoids (hormone-like substances) and the ratio of pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory prostaglandins. Cutting back on saturated fat, and even omega-6 fatty acids (arachadonic acid), which tend to be pro-inflammatory, while increasing the intake of omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid), which are anti-inflammatory, will help to prevent the occurrence and progression of systemic inflammation associated with mild infection, poor diet, and obesity.