5 Foods that can Cause Joint Pain and What to do to Relieve Your Pain Now
Unknown to many, some foods are the culprits of body pains. Certain foods can cause a mild to moderate allergic reaction in your gut that causes inflammation throughout your body. You may feel this inflammation as pain in your muscles or other areas but most often you feel it in your ankles, knees, wrists, elbows and shoulders.
Decrease Your Joint Pain:
As a chiropractor I can tell if you have an imbalance in the joints of your body that is causing you to feel joint pain. I can recommend tips and techniques that help your body feel energized, strong, and pain-free. Often this involves decreasing the levels of inflammation in your body so your joints move properly.
One effective way to decrease your pain is to figure out whether you are eating some of the major inflammation-causing foods we list below and determine if they are affecting you.
Foods that can cause joint pain:
There are foods that cause sensitivities such as mild to moderate acid reflux disease, hives, itching, trouble with breathing and achiness in your joints…often at low levels. We are not talking about major food allergies where you swell up and can’t breathe, but mild symptoms that are often easy to overlook when you’re busy or distracted, but enough to bring you down.
The sensitivities that your body may have to these foods are as unique as your fingerprint. While you might feel symptoms to some of these foods, your friends or relatives are untouched when they eat the same thing.
You may feel low levels of body pain or other disturbing symptoms. Sometimes these symptoms are so mild that you just think your energy is off or your joints are acting up for the day, but underneath it all is chronic inflammation which can lead to pain and issues over time. Studies have even linked chronic inflammation to heart disease. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27435/)
By looking at your food choices and comparing them to how you feel, you can test the levels of inflammation that the following foods may cause you.
Here’s a list of some of the top inflammation causing foods:
• Gluten (wheat products)
• Milk
• Eggs
• Peanuts
• Refined sugar
• Vegetables of the Tuber Family: Potatoes, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, and yams. Unless they are cooked and peeled thoroughly, they can be toxic to your body. They contain glycoalkaloids which can initiate pain and produce headaches or stomach cramping when these vegetables are not prepared correctly.
• Processed foods (which may contain hidden elements of the foods above or other chemicals your body doesn’t handle well)
Test these foods yourself:
You can systematically test your body’s reaction to these foods by keeping a journal and jotting down how you feel up to 12 hours after you eat them. Do this test with one inflammatory food at a time. Some symptoms you may have and want to take note of are: muscle tension, headaches, joint aches, joints are cracking a lot, stomach pain or bloating, skin rashes, a decrease in mood, or an increase in anxiety.
When you notice that one symptom keeps reoccurring after eating a certain food, try eliminating that food for up to two weeks and record how you feel in your journal during that time.
Some of the notes you can make are whether your joints feel strong and less “crack-y” or “achy”, if your moods have improved, if you have more energy, if you feel lean and bloat-free in your stomach, or how your normal aches and pains are now feeling (Are you still having headaches? …swelling in joints? …muscle tension or other pains?).
You can have more happy and pain-free days when you get to the bottom of what’s been dragging you down, deflating your energy, or decreasing the strength and balance of your body. With our help you can stop feeling pain and fatigue because of your achy joints. One easy visit with us can get you on track to clearing your body of joint imbalances so you feel exquisitely pain-free.
Call us at (610)216-0790.
