Can Your Diet Relieve Chronic Pain?

The saying "One is the product of what one eats" has received approval when it comes to increasing or decreasing the risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity, and some cancers. However, it may come as a surprise that research increasingly suggests that your food intake may increase or decrease pain caused by osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, bursitis, and migraine.

It may even affect chronic low back pain because pain, whether acute or chronic, is caused by inflammation, and what you eat and drink can stimulate or inhibit inflammation. Research strongly suggests that your diet may contribute to inflammation throughout your body.

The relationship of diet to pain:

While research shows a relationship between diet and pain, this relationship is not yet fully understood. However, there is a thought that a harmful diet that is high in saturated fat, sugar, and processed foods that lack nutrients may negatively affect your immune system, contributing to chronic inflammation that may cause pain.

Some studies have found that the immune system may respond to an unhealthy diet in a way that resembles its response to infection, that is by activating inflammation. The body produces chemicals such as cytokine, nerve peptides, growth factors, and neurotransmitters in response to your diet, which in turn affect your pain, its location, and severity. 

Nutritional tips to relieve pain:

A review of studies on diet and chronic pain published in (The Journal of Clinical Medicine) found that a healthy diet, such as the "Mediterranean diet" is associated with lower levels of signs of inflammation found in the blood.

The Mediterranean diet is a vegetarian diet rich in whole grain dark green leafy vegetables, nuts, legumes, and fruits. These types of food are rich in nutrients that the immune system needs to function efficiently, and this diet also includes olive oil and fatty fish such as salmon and sardines, which are rich in fatty omega-3 acids which are fats that relieve inflammation.

A plant-based diet isn't a quick fix or a definitive cure for pain, but it can certainly help and will never hurt.

In fact, a plant-based diet provides greater health benefits such as reducing the risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity and some types of cancer. In other words, following a diet that relieves pain caused by inflammation can reduce the risk of many diseases and improve your overall health. 

Help reduce inflammation:

There are many types of food that you should add to your diet and other types that you should limit or avoid altogether.

So, eat more whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, soy, berries, cherries, yellow, orange and red vegetables, broccoli, cabbage, broccoli, onions, garlic, salmon, herring, anchovies, sardines, mackerel, natural yoghourt, spices including cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, rosemary, chilli peppers, tea, dark chocolate.

Eat less fruit juice, sugar-sweetened soft drinks, and sweets such as cakes, biscuits, pastries, donuts, cakes, pudding candy, processed meats such as bacon, sausage, luncheon, and fried foods.