Food Sensitivities and Joint Pain

For many, the search for the cause of their joint pain can lead down many dead-end roads filled with frustration and hopelessness. The desire to find the one treatment, pill, exercise, oil, or doctor that can relieve the pain of a degenerative joint will cause many people to seek extraordinary measures for a cure. Research is now expanding our thinking, opening new frontiers of hope to the significant value nutrition plays with joint pain and degeneration. This research is leading us to believe that food sensitivities and leaky gut syndrome are hidden sources of inflammation and damage to the musculoskeletal system.

Gut health and inflammation
Systemic inflammation leads to achy muscles and painful joints. This type of inflammation often originates in the gut where inflammatory mediators are produced. Patients who are obese often have high levels of interleukin-6 and 8, and TNF-alpha. The standard American diet has lead us to 75% of Americans now being classified as overweight or obese. Nearly 72% of Americans report intestinal or digestive symptoms monthly. This leaves only a small minority of 12% of adult Americans considered to be metabolically healthy. This continual onslaught of inflammatory mediators found in the typical American diet can initiate a process of damaging our delicate small intestine resulting in devastating consequences.

Your small intestine is made up of a tube, 22 feet long, that is only an inch in diameter. The lining of this tube is about as thick as a piece of paper with a surface area equivalent to a basketball court. When working properly the cells in this lining can open just enough to let micronutrients enter into the bloodstream, while keeping larger pieces of indigestible material out. The permeability of these cells is closely regulated by a protein called zonulin.

When your small intestine becomes stressed by pathogenic bacteria and/or gluten, the body will overproduce zonulin. The increased zonulin allows for the body to clear these unwanted inhabitants but this action also has deleterious repercussions. When the gut becomes more permeable, large food molecules, bacteria, toxins, and other substances can escape the small intestine and enter the bloodstream activating the immune system, resulting in increased inflammation. The longer high levels of zonulin are present, the longer the gut is more permeable.

This cascade of increasing gut permeability has been given the name “Leaky Gut Syndrome” and is now being widely researched to being linked to many chronic disorders such as:

Celiac’s disease
type-1 diabetes
thyroid disease
depression
gastrointestinal symptoms
fatigue
brain fog
muscle pain
joint degeneration

Joint pain and gut health
Leaky gut syndrome is now linked to a group of enzymes that degrade collagen leading to joint arthritis and intervertebral disc degeneration. This leads some researchers to believe that leaky gut syndrome may be the underlying disease state for most arthritic conditions. Certainly, people are inflamed for other reasons, including age, but a major cause of inflammation remains to be obesity and poor dietary intake. One mechanism of joint and disc degeneration may be that bacteria and inflammatory metabolites are entering the bloodstream from the leaky gut and translocating to the disc or cartilage of the spinal joints. Some studies have shown that 50% of people suffering from psoriatic arthritis and other inflammatory arthritic conditions also have gut inflammation.

Nutritional changes can help
Lifestyle changes that reduce the intake of foods containing gluten have been shown to reduce joint pain. Likewise, reducing the use of antibiotics, acid blockers, and NSAIDs have been shown to improve the lining of the small intestine and help it to heal from leaky gut syndrome. This can be furthered by ingesting foods that are fermented and contain healthy gut bacteria. Foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, kefir, pickled vegetables, etc. can all increase the health of the small intestine.

These changes offer hope once again to those that suffer with chronic pain. It is our hope at [Core] Chiropractic to provide you with the best chiropractic care, exercise training, and nutritional advice. There is never a reason to lose hope. Treat your body well and watch yourself become healthier than you have ever been.