ARTHRITIS AND INTERMITTENT FASTING
Intermittent fasting has a ton of health benefits to offer. A big one that gets mentioned a lot is its ability to bring down the level of inflammation in your body.
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LESS INFLAMMATION?
It's been shown in some studies that intermittent fasting reduces the levels of inflammatory process markers in your body, thereby indicating a lower level of inflammation in people who follow a regular fasting diet.
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But how does this translate to a reduction in aches and pains?
TYPES OF ARTHRITIS
Let's first look at the different types of arthritis you can have in the joints in your body.
They can be divided into two large groups - inflammatory arthritis, and non-inflammatory arthritis.
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Inflammatory arthritis occurs because of the antibodies in your blood attacking its own tissue (this is known as an AUTOIMMUNE reaction). You have this kind of arthritis in autoimmune conditions, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis or Psoriatic Arthritis.
Non-inflammatory arthritis conditions refer to degenerative arthritis - when your daily activities causes some wear and tear of the cartilage in your joints, with subsequent arthritis and swelling. This tends to happen with overuse of your joints, such as in people who carry a lot of heavy loads repetitively, or obese people, since there is more mechanical load passing through their joints.
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FASTING IS GOOD FOR INFLAMMATORY ARTHRITIS
Medical studies do indicate a reduction in the blood levels of inflammatory markers in patients who do regular fasts as part of their diet.
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This study from Italy looked at how patients with Psoriatic Arthritis improved with intermittent fasting (during the month of Ramadan). They found improvements in serum markers of inflammation in patients' blood, as well as improvement in the
arthritis condition itself.
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Another study looked at patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Spondyloarthritis, two kinds of inflammatory arthritis. They also found that intermittent fasting during the month of Ramadan had a beneficial effect on the patients included, with
improvements in disease activity and blood test markers.
A review of available medical studies by another group of researchers confirmed these findings, with these researchers concluding that intermittent fasting has beneficial effects on patients with inflammatory arthritis.
HOW ABOUT DEGENERATIVE ARTHRITIS?
Osteoarthritis is also known as degenerative arthritis. It refers to wear and tear in your joints, and is especially common in the knee joints because of their load-bearing nature - we use our knees everyday, through most of the day.
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It has been shown that intermittent fasting also improves symptoms in patients with osteoarthritis.
This research paper indicates that this is because intermittent fasting helps patients manage their weight better, and therefore reduces the mechanical load on their knee joints. This helps them manage their knee osteoarthritis better.
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Another study looking at intermittent fasting in an animal model (rats) found that fasting reduced the level of inflammatory markers in the blood. What was new and interesting is that microscopic examination of cartilage samples from these rats
showed that intermittent fasting coupled with a high-protein diet actually helped the cartilage recover, with new Collagen production within the cartilage layers.
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WRAP IT UP!
Intermittent fasting can help with both inflammatory and non-inflammatory kinds of arthritis. You should really consider giving it a try today - just check out our article on how to get started!