One of the challenges when examining research on nutrition for arthritis is the impact of healthy eating or unhealthy eating on a person’s body weight. The inflammation observed in arthritis is a combination of inflammation within the joint (from mechanical stress, joint mis-alignment and joint degeneration) and systemic or ‘whole body’ inflammation. This is the reason we see a connection between other whole-body inflammatory states such as cardiovascular disease and arthritis pain.
Weight loss is proposed to have two impacts on arthritis pain. It reduces mechanical injury and stress on the joint and decreases whole-body inflammation.
Having a nutrition pattern that has regular intake of calories that exceeds a body’s needs or use contributes to weight gain as well as systemic inflammation in the body. When patients lose 5-10% of their starting body weight, they report a reduction in osteoarthritis (especially of the knee) and may delay the need for knee replacement.
Most research on weight loss for arthritis involves an active weight loss phase for 12-16 weeks with a specific plan to reach a weight loss goal and then a maintenance plan following the initial phase. This approach improves pain scores for patients and it’s unclear if patients will achieve the same benefits with pain if they slowly lose weight over a longer period of time.
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