Rheumatoid arthritis is a common disease seen in more commonly women. It presents with pain, stiffness and swelling in the joints of hands, legs or most often both. If diagnosed early, the disease can be well controlled with medications.

When patients are diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis or any other type of arthritis, the first or most common question that comes to their mind is-“what could be the reason?” Has it been caused by some particular type of food and which variety of foods need to be avoided in order to get the disease under control. Many patients would have already made a dietary modification
before visiting the doctors, in accordance with the suggestions given by their family members, neighbours or friends.

Few common myths are –“to avoid vegetables like potato or brinjal, to avoid intake of pulses other than dal, stop drinking milk, avoid cold foods like curd, avoid meat , avoid spicy food !!” Unfortunately, many of these suggestions are myths and not based on facts or science.

There is good research to show that lots of fresh colourful vegetables are good for not only preventing arthritis but may also help control it (as part of a Mediterranean diet).

However the way you cook them or eat them has not been studied well. Dr Harishini recently presented some research on the subject at the European rheumatology conference in MAdrid
Spain.

Dr Harshini from bangalore, along with her colleagues undertook a research project in which she measured the disease activity in 400 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. She looked at the dietary patterns of patients with Rheumatoid arthritis and the influence of individual constituents
like cereals, pulses, fruits, vegetables, oil, milk products, non vegetarian food, on the control of disease. She then compared patients whose disease was controlled with those whose disease was not under control. Special importance was given to the spices in Indian diet as many of these have been found to be beneficial in patients with arthritis.

It was seen that patients whose disease was under control, on average, consumed nearly double the amount of garlic, coriander and ginger compared to patients who had active disease. In addition other spice consumption was also higher among patients whose disease was contollred. Turmeric consumption was around 50% higher and chilli consumption was around
25% higher. It was found that there was no significant difference in arthritis control in patients with reference to the quantity or type of vegetables or fruits consumed. Higher consumption of milk and fish were associated with better disease control.

So next time you think of drinking that spicy rasam or eating that sinful chutney remember that it might actually be helping your rheumatoid arthritis medications work better to control your disease.