Arthritis, Aging, and Allergies

Do you have discomfort and pains that you just can’t explain by your activities?  Too often these pains are simply written off or labeled as “arthritis.”  If you didn’t have to live with these pains would it be worth it?

Here are some examples of what of what I often hear: 

“Doc, why do my feet hurt so much on Tuesday that it hurt to walk and the rest of the week they are fine?  I didn’t do anything more at work than usual and I didn’t do anything different at home?  I don’t understand why they do this.”

“My lower back is out again.  I didn’t do anything to hurt it; I just woke up one morning with it hurting bad.”

“I feel like I literally fell apart this week!  I didn’t do anything different though.”

As stated above, these pains are often labeled as “arthritis” by both patients and doctors as well as written off as “just getting older.”  The term ‘arthritis’ actually means inflammation in the joint.  There are a number of things that can cause inflammation in a joint. 

One source of inflammation that is often overlooked or downplayed is food intolerance (also called food allergies).  Your diet consists of the food you put in your body.  If it includes foods that your body does not run well on, you will have problems.  This includes foods that you are sensitive to.  These foods are not necessarily bad for everyone and may be considered ‘healthy’ by many.  For example, some patients cannot tolerate eggs and many cannot tolerate wheat.  Avoiding nutritionally void foods such as sugary foods and processed foods is also important for your body to function at its best.

As a chiropractor, I see people with back pain, neck pain and headaches all the time.  I have learned over the years that the way a patient responds to an adjustment tells a lot about what is really going on.  Food intolerances can keep a person from holding an adjustment like expected.

If an adjustment only helps for an hour or so even after multiple adjustments in the past there is likely something else keeping the body from healing completely.  Back pain that does better right after a person gets up off the table and then is hurting just like nothing was ever done within an hour is a sure sign something else is going on. 

Often times the ‘something going on’ is food intolerance.  They can be hard to find because one or more foods are involved and are often laced through a person’s diet to the extent they cannot tell what food is causing the problem.  The most common offenders are grains, sugars (which can include fruit sugars), dairy, and eggs.  While wheat is the most common grain (and allergen), corn and soy are also in the grains group and often overlooked as culprits.

Using a technique such as Nutrition Response Testing can help quickly find food intolerance and help direct which food(s) to start eliminating first to see if that unexplained problem can finally be resolved.