Food vs inflammation

This weeks question -

Can what I eat affect how I feel? I feel a lot more inflammation at certain times and less at others.

My answer -

This one is a bit off topic for me, as it deals more with nutrition and dietetics than physical therapy, but really they go hand in hand. Especially in patients with autoimmune conditions - which seems to be a growing number - what they eat can severely affect joint inflammation and therefore exercise performance/pain with exercise/etc.

Two ways to go about dealing with this are -

1. Find a registered dietician - compared with a nutritionist, RD's have a significant amount more training and generally access to more testing. While they may be more expensive to work with, the value is important in finding out if there is a dietary cause to part or all of your inflammation and dealing with it.

2. If that is not in the cards for you right now, trying an elimination diet like the AIP diet or Whole 30, then slowly adding back in some foods and monitoring how you feel is a good way to self-asses for any food sensitivities. There are some food groups that are not covered by either of these elimination diets, and therefore working with a practitioner during or after these protocols may help to identify gaps that you were unable to identify yourself.

Have a question you want answered? Email us at info@perfecttenpt.com