Top Foods To Aid Joint Pain

Foods To Stop Inflammation

Surfing With Joint Pain Sucks… Stop It!.. Help your joint pain with food!

Is your chronic joint pain from inflammation? Are your chronic injuries not healing? Maybe you’re inflamed man!!!! Let’s get into foods to help joint pain.

Everybody is going to deal with some joint injury at some point in life. Creaky achy joints are a nightmare to anyone trying to surf… I know firsthand how a pissy shoulder feels in the water, and it’s terribly terribly frustrating.

So while a lot of us will have some acute joint injury, from a fall, or a shoulder getting ripped out of socket, or some ACL tear, many of us will also have to deal with some chronic nagging joint pain issues, so do yourself a favor and learn how to manage these problems before they really take their toll on your life and your surfing…. besides, dealing with them is gonna force you to clean up your diet!!

Got Thrashed and Hurt Your Shoulder?

Acute injuries follow the time-honored protocol or RICE. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation… and then some time to heal all the damaged tissues. But chronic joint pain arising from systemic inflammation is a bit different of a beast, so I want to give you some things you can work on to deal with your chronic inflammatory aches.

Note* while these recommendations are more geared towards dealing with systemic inflammation control and helping to reduce joint pain from those inflammatory processes, all the below mentioned tips are also great at helping to speed recovery from acute injuries… so take some notes.

Why are you inflamed in the first place?

 Systemic inflammation is highly correlated with your diet, and the health of your digestive tract.

So if you’re eating like shit all the time, not getting hydrated, destroying your intestinal lining with alcohol and pain killers, and eating sugar-laden flour based foods, you’re doing a great job at guaranteeing some joint pain problems…. and down the road a list of other health issues. Our modern diet promotes inflammation.

That’s it. Nothing to discuss. Lifestyle and dietary habits of the modern-day human lend themselves to promoting inflammation of the body and wrecking the health of your digestive tract, and when that goes on long enough, the joints will become problematic… and when that happens, your surfing is going to suffer.

First Step In Stopping Chronic Joint Pain

So the first step in reducing chronic inflammation is getting rid of foods that promote the inflammatory processes, and eliminating the foods that could potentially damage the digestive tract.

This boils down to not eating like shit, and starting to consume a diet of real whole foods. I’ve written about this so much in the past… a few links to get my food recommendations

Surfer Nutrition – The Basics

Surfer Nutrition – How To Clean Up Your Diet

Foods to Avoid:

• trans-saturated fats – come on… you should know this
• vegetable oils (olive oil is ok, but not to be used for cooking)
• deep fried foods
• soda
• grain fed meats
• sugar
• most grains
• flour based products
• fast food
• alcohol

I’m not going to spend time telling you why each one of the above mentioned foods is bad for you, as I see that as redundant, but the take home message is that those foods aren’t good for you body, aren’t good for your tummy, and play some role in exciting the inflammatory processes. If you’ve got chronic joint pain it’s time to make some dietary changes…. and that list is a good place to start.

Foods That Kill Inflammation and Help with Joint Pain

Food can be one of the quickest roads to health.. this should be heavily understood at this point by anyone who has been following this blog.

What you put in your mouth is one of the primary factors in your overall health and well-being. With that being said, there are food choices that can help positively impact systemic inflammation. And have properties similar to those of the major pain relievers and anti-inflammatories, and they’re natural!

• Turmeric, ginger, oregano – these little spice powerhouses have so many studies showing their benefit in mitigating inflammation that they should absolutely be included in your diet on a consistent basis if you’ve got some systemic inflammation… learn to cook with them!
• Pineapple– contains a substance called bromelain that is an enzyme which can help stop inflammation. This compound is actually widely used in many arthritis medications.
• Papaya – contains a digestive enzyme called papain which helps to reduce inflammation and help your digestion (which is probably wrecked from crappy food and pain killers)
• Kiwi– a cheap and excellent source of vitamin C (along with pineapple and papaya), and gives you lot’s of anti-oxidants which are necessary to offset systemic inflammation
• Grass fed beef– quality raised meat has a very beneficial ration of omega3 to omega6 which is very beneficial to halting the inflammatory cascade your painful little joints are going through.
• Salmon– similarly as with grass fed beef, cold-water fish tend to have a higher concentration of omega3 fatty acids
• Bone Broths– learn how to make these!!! they are so ridiculously simple to make, and deliver so much nutrition and healing properties that I insist every one of my clients start making and consuming them. Bone broths offer up easily digestible nutrients and minerals, a list of amino acids, gelatin and collagen structures, help to heal your stomach, and are just damn good…. so make them
• Veggies– come on, grow the fuc% up and eat your veggies.
• Sleep!  Sleep is essential for all your bodily systems to function optimally, and has a direct effect on your mental and physical health. It is during sleep that your recovery and repair processes take place. If you’re not getting adequate, deep sleep, you’re not healing and recovering as well as you could be.
  

  Get some sleep. This can have far reaching benefits besides helping to heal that chronic joint inflammation.

There you go… start learning how to incorporate these foods into your diet, get healthier, cut out the garbage you’re eating, heal your digestive tract. And stop hurting in the surf. And eat foods that help with joint pain.
Eat clean, provide your body with nutrients it needs to do what you want in life…. and go get pitted!!!!

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