What if just one lifestyle change could help you avoid getting cancer or diabetes or heart disease or high blood pressure? This one change could cut your risk of chronic disease and add years to your life. Well the simple solution to so many of these problems is to eat a healthy diet. In other words, one centered around whole plant Foods, welcome to the nutrition facts podcast. I'm your host. Dr. Michael Greger.
Beggar today on the podcast. We look at the best way to control Osteo and rheumatoid arthritis, and we start with a look at what happens when topical. Olive oil is pitted against an ibuprofen, type drug.
50 million Americans suffer from arthritis and osteoarthritis of the knees, the most common form, making the leading, cause of disability, several inflammatory Pathways underlie the onset and progression of the disease. So, various anti-inflammatory foods have been put to the test, strawberries decrease, the level circulating, the blood of an inflammatory mediators are known as tumor necrosis Factor, but that doesn't necessarily translate into clinical Improvement for example, drinking cherry.
A juice can lower a sign of inflammation, known as C-reactive protein, but it failed to help with the disease. But wait, it says provided symptom relief. Yeah, it did. But no better than Placebo meaning drinking. It was essentially no better than doing. Nothing. Cherise may help with another kind of arthritis called gout, but they failed when it came to osteoarthritis the same with pomegranate juice. No significant Improvement in symptoms, but then again, no,
Improvement in inflammatory mediators either. So, perhaps there's no surprise. But strawberries did, decrease inflammation. Let's see if they actually help in a randomized, double-blind, crossover, trial, and dietary strawberries were indeed found to have a significant analgesic effect causing a significant decrease in pain. There are tumor necrosis Factor inhibitor drugs on the market. Now available for the low low cost of only about forty thousand dollars a year.
Year. For that. Kind of money. You'd want some really juicy side effects and they do not disappoint like this, especially fatal lymphoma. I think I'll stick with the strawberries. One of the reasons we suspected berries, might help is that if you give people the equivalent of either a cup of blueberries or two cups a day of strawberries and then drip, their blood onto cells in a Petri dish. You can see a significant blending of inflammation, compared to those who got Placebo, berries and nuts.
That the attenuation of inflammation got better with time. So apparently the longer you eat berries, the better are threatening other foods that have been tested in this way. Researchers in France, harvested cartilage from knee replacement surgeries and then exposed them to concentrate to the blood of volunteers who took a whopping dose of a grape seed and all of extract and saw a significant drop of induced inflammation. There haven't been any human studies putting grape seeds for the test for arthritis, but in all of extract was shown to decrease.
Spain and improve daily activities and osteoarthritis sufferers. So does this mean adding olive oil to one's diet? May help know because I used freeze-dried all of vegetation water. That's basically what's left over after you extract the oil from the olives. It's all the water soluble components. In other words. It's all the stuff that's in the olive that's missing from olive oil. If you give people actual olives, doesn't large green, olives a day. You can see it before versus after drop in and
Laboratory mediator, what if you look only at the oil, a systematic review and meta-analysis on the anti-inflammatory benefits of olive oil found there does not appear to be any but wait, what about papers? That describe remarkable anti-inflammatory effects to Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Here's their evidence on rodents in people extra virgin olive oil, may be no better than butter when it comes to inflammation.
And worse than even coconut oil. So should we just stick to all of them? Sadly? It doesn't always a day could take up. Nearly half your sodium limit for the entire day. When put to the test. Extra virgin olive oil did not appear to help with fibromyalgia symptoms either, but it did work better than canola oil and alleviating symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any studies putting olive oil intake to the test for arthritis. But, wait, are you ready for this?
It appears to work topically, a double-blind randomized, clinical trial of topical virgin, olive oil, versus a gel, containing an ibuprofen type drug for osteoarthritis of the knee, just a gram of oil, which would be like, less than a quarter teaspoon three times a day. So that would cost less than three cents a day and it worked, topical Ava was significantly better than the drug in reducing pain, the study only lasted a month. So maybe the, although would have continued to
Work better and better over time. What about the effectiveness of olive oil in controlling morning inflammatory pain of fingers, and knees among women. With rheumatoid arthritis. The researchers went all out, comparing the use of extra virgin olive oil, to just rubbing on nothing to rubbing on that Ibuprofen type. Gel and evidently the decrease in the disease, activity score. In the olive oil
group beat out the other.
In our next story, pomegranates are put to the test for
Lost diabetes, COPD prostate, cancer osteoarthritis,
and rheumatoid arthritis
in a landmark case that made it all the way up to the US court of appeals. Before being denied review by the Supreme Court Palm. Wonderful. The pomegranate juice company versus the Federal Trade Commission, a panel of Judges conclude. The many Palms ads made misleading or false claims, touting, medical studies ostensibly showing that a pomegranate products could help treat various ailments, including heart disease, prostate cancer, and her
erectile dysfunction, and the First Amendment does not protect deceptive and misleading. Advertisements striking, a blow to its billionaire owners. The Court ruled that at least one randomized, clinical trial could be required to substantiate any claims of treating or preventing disease.
If you look at the medical literature at the benefits of pomegranates in general, from the medicinal effects of pomegranate, but if you dig a Little Deeper, you see, this is based on studies like this anti-obesity effects of pomegranate leaf extract in a mouse model. First of all, who eats pomegranate leaves and second of all, who's a mouse. And if you do have a fat pet mouse, maybe just feed them less lard.
This pomegranate consumption affect weight in humans. If you look at all the randomized, controlled clinical trials, meaning, human trials, pomegranates have no significant effect on body weight, BMI belly, fat or even body fat percentage, and those randomized to Pomegranate product consumption. Well, what about for the prevention treatment of cardiovascular diseases, researchers reviewed, 25, clinical trials, looking at cholesterol, blood pressure, artery function after us like plaque formation and
Function and even in the best studies. They did not find significant indications of benefit. Here's a study on pomegranate juice and erectile dysfunction who was funded by the Palm company and yet it failed as well. No benefit for diabetes markers, and no benefit for chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, like, emphysema. They were banking on the antioxidant activity, pomegranate juice to help, but that's antioxidant activity in vitro meeting in a
Test tube or petri dish to my surprise, a meta analysis of data from 11 randomized. Controlled trials did not support convincing evidence of pomegranate intake. Having a significant increase in effect on total antioxidant capacity of your bloodstream because some of the most potent antioxidants. Don't even seem to be absorbed into the human body. No wonder pomegranate supplementation didn't seem to affect oxidative stress and tissue samples taken from prostate cancer patients, but of course, what we care about is whether it affects
X the cancer itself. The strongest evidence for the anti-cancer activity of pomegranates is said to come from studies on prostate cancer. Unfortunately, early promising results, were not confirmed when they were actually put to the test. For example, daily pomegranate, intake was found in a randomized, controlled trials have no impact on PSA levels. A marker of tumor progression and indeed our randomized, double blind, Placebo, controlled trial. Found essentially. No difference when it came to prostate cancer disease, progression.
There were banking on the anti-inflammatory activity pomegranate juice to help. But again, that have been demonstrated the in vitro, in people, a meta analysis, based on five randomized, controlled trial published in 2016 conclude that pomegranate juice did not have a significant effect on C-reactive protein levels of a key marker of inflammation. If you look at the forest plot, though, you'll see all five trials, tended towards lower C-reactive protein levels, such that the data combined almost
Each statistical significance and indeed an updated man analysis published in 2020. Based on seven studies did indeed get tipped over into significance. Found a significant drop in to other inflammatory markers as well. Huh? Okay. Well, maybe pomegranate juice could help in the control of inflammatory diseases after all. But you don't know until you put it to the test osteoarthritis, involves the degeneration of the cushioning cartilage within joints.
Particularly the knees. If you take some human, osteoarthritic cartilage samples. And he'd rip, on a pomegranate extract. You can show cartilage, protective effects, add some inflammation and Carlos breakdown triples, but then add more and more of this pomegranate extract and you can calm things down. But again, that's in a Petri dish. How do we know that when we eat pomegranates, the Active Components actually get into our bloodstream? So they can find their way into our joints, cartilage, protecting components.
Found to be bioavailable. Well, at least in rabbits raising the possibility that pomegranates could be of safe and non-toxic treatment with no side effects as opposed to the drugs currently in use, but is it effective? Clinical trials are in progress? And so many questions will be answered right now. The first, and only clinical trial today, time pomegranate. Juice in osteoarthritis, not a placebo controlled trial instead randomizing people to pomegranate.
Juice or nothing at all those drinking. The juice did report less stiffness and impairment of physical function, but not significantly, better than just doing nothing. Shoot. But just, as I was about to give up on pomegranates, I saw this study consumption of a pomegranate, extract, suppresses joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis, but, no, it was just the Palm not so wonderful company. Inducing joint damage in a mouse says,
Model of rheumatoid arthritis. Come on. What about this? Open labeled study, where the patient's knew what they were getting eight people with active rheumatoid. Arthritis, took some pomegranate extract every day and the six who stuck with it, reported fewer tender joints, but as we learned from the osteoarthritis study, if you don't have a control group, you've no sense at all. What role? If any the treatment actually plays. So, finally we come to this, a randomized. Double-blind placebo-controlled, trial it
It's about time half of the subject, unknowingly got some pomegranate extract, the other have unknown. They got the equivalent of a sugar pill, and significant Improvement in the number of swollen joints. Tend to joint pain, intensity a disease activity score, a health assessment, questionnaire and morning stiffness, compared to Placebo. So if you have rheumatoid arthritis, I would indeed recommend you. Start eating pomegranates might not just pop pomegranate, pills after all was a pomegranate extract that alleviated disease activity.
What one good reason to stick to the fruit? Is that when 19 pomegranate supplements were actually tested in a laboratory, most didn't actually appear to have any pomegranate in them at all. Only six out of 19 appeared to be
authentic.
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Others. See any graphs charts Graphics images are studies. Mentioned here. Please go to the nutrition facts podcast, landing page there. You'll find all the detailed information. You need plus links to all the sources. We cite to each of these topics. My latest two books are how to survive a pandemic available on eBook. Audiobook, warp actual book and the how not to diet cookbook with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious.
Meals.
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