Like anyone who has, or knows someone who has, rheumatoid arthritis, it can prevent the patient from leading a normal life. It is a condition of unknown cause that can range in intensity from a brief, self-limited illness to a long-term illness that progressively worsens. Initially, the treatments are light, with the aim of remedying the stiffness and inflammation of the joints. In chronic cases, the inflammation can worsen, requiring a wide range of treatments including steroids, joint replacement, and OK bone fusion. The body’s joints can become deformed and strength decreases, leaving the victim unable to even open a bottle of milk or turn on a faucet. You have good days and you have bad days.
“You are what you eat” is a cliché, but very true. Certain foods are thought to exacerbate rheumatoid arthritis, for example dairy products. Rheumatoid arthritis occurs mainly in developed countries where much of the diet is animal and dairy products mentioned above. Even if someone is only mildly allergic to dairy, this can cause antioxidant levels to drop, producing antibodies in response and these, for whatever reason, attack the joints. So keeping a food diary can help identify what triggers bad days.
So if food seems to be the trigger, reducing dairy and increasing antioxidants in your diet may help. But how do you get more antioxidants? The tastiest ways are probably eating plenty of fresh vegetables and drinking a few cups of green tea every day. Why is green tea better than ‘regular’ tea? The tea most Westerners are used to is black tea. While it is better for you than coffee, it is not as beneficial as green tea. The reason? Black tea has been fermented; green tea has not, leaving key chemicals intact.
But what evidence is there that green tea can actually benefit arthritis sufferers? Studies in mice suggest that the antioxidants in green tea may have a powerful effect in reducing the incidence and severity of rheumatoid arthritis. Polyphenols (antioxidants found in green tea) possess much more potent antioxidant activity than known antioxidants such as vitamin C and vitamin E. A research team at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, has focused on the effect of these polyphenols on rheumatoid arthritis. The mice studied by the Cleveland researchers were fed either plain water or water enriched with green tea polyphenols. The doses were equivalent to those of a human drinking 3 to 4 cups of green tea per day. The mice were then each injected with collagen, making them vulnerable to a condition very similar to human rheumatoid arthritis. The study indicated that mice given green tea polyphenols “were significantly less susceptible to developing collagen-induced arthritis, and if they did develop arthritis, the disease was late-onset and mild compared with mice not given green tea polyphenols.” “. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1999;96:4524-4529).
There are other benefits, too: Another study in the US showed that drinking at least one cup of green tea a day can reduce the risk of heart attack by 44%. This health benefit is thought to come from flavonoids, a type of antioxidant found in all types of tea. Flavonoids are believed to neutralize the effect of free radicals, highly reactive molecules that travel through the body and cause harmful chemical reactions in cells, including those in the tissues of the heart. Earlier Dutch research of more than 800 men between the ages of 65 and 84 showed that drinking even more tea, three to four cups a day, lowered the risk of death from coronary heart disease by 58%. In 1991 there were only 153 studies on tea, while in 1998 there were 625 articles published. In a Japanese study, unsweetened tea was found to be good for teeth and gums. The tea contains tannin fluoride which appears to help prevent plaque. “An increase of just one cup a day could prove invaluable in the fight against gum disease,” said the British Dental Health Foundation.
