Top Nutrition Advice for Those with Arthritis

1. At the very least, you may improve your overall health by re-evaluating your eating habits and trying to improve your diet to make it more nutritious.

2. Take care to avoid faddish or extreme diets that may leave you open to vitamin deficiencies or other nutrition prob­lems.

3. Question any diet or any advisor who urges you to stop taking your prescribed medications.

4. Don't expect a lot of nutrition advice from your doctors, but do inform them of any significant change in diet that you plan to make.

5. If you are overweight and are troubled by arthritis in your weight-bearing joints, you can likely gain mobility and comfort by losing the extra pounds.

6. If you decide tolose weight, do it slowly, by adopting a more healthful style of eating, rather than following a 'crash' diet for a quick loss.

7. Try to discover your own food sensitivities by eliminating some of the food items voted by participants as the most likely to be irritating. The top five offenders are red meat, sugar, fat, salt, and caffeine.

8. Try eating more of the foods participants find the most ben­eficial. The five top favorites are vegetables, fruits, fish, fowl, and high-fiber foods such as whole-grain breads and brown rice.

9. Choose fresh foods over prepared items that are smoked, canned, or highly processed.

10. Read all you can, think it over carefully, experiment cau­tiously, and observe yourself to prove the value of any dietary measures you take.

Calcium-rich Foods

Not counting the more-milk drinkers, other arthristis sufferers tend to sought out calcium-rich foods to ward off osteoporosis. Those who took prednisone and other steroids were particularly worried about thinning bones as a side effect of the drugs. And arthritis alone can do a fair degree of bone damage at selected sites.

We tend to think of dairy products as the prime providers of calcium, and most of them are, but sardines or salmon (eaten with the bones), and oysters are also rich sources. So are selected vegetables, such as spinach, collard greens, and broccoli.

Water

Whether it comes from the tap or an imported bottle, it is advocated to drink more water because it performs so many vital functions, from aiding digestion to helping the kidneys eliminate the end products of various arthri­tis drugs.