What are the dietary taboos for rheumatoid arthritis?

In fact, there are no absolute dietary taboos for rheumatoid arthritis that are uniform and applicable to everyone. The most important one is not to touch foods that will significantly aggravate joint swelling and pain after eating them. The rest is just a matter of grasping the general principle of "leaving less inflammation burden on the body". There is no need to look at the various "fasting lists" on the Internet and blindly eat foods, and in the end, malnutrition will drag down the immunity.

A while ago, I met a little girl in the outpatient clinic who had just been diagnosed six months ago. She read on the Internet that beef, mutton, and seafood were all fat, and she didn't dare touch a bite. She only ate green vegetables and white porridge. When she came for a follow-up check, her hemoglobin was so low that she couldn't walk without any relief. On the contrary, her joint pain was not much better. When I asked her, I found out that she actually had no reaction at all when she ate shrimp and beef before. It was purely because she scared herself into quitting. The concept of "fat food" is actually quite controversial now. Some people get sick as soon as they eat seafood, while some people eat it every day without any problems. Essentially, different people are sensitive to different food proteins. If you are really unsure, just spend half a month keeping a food diary. If you eat something, the joint pain will become worse the next day and morning stiffness will become longer. Just avoid it next time. You don't have to follow other people's lists.

However, this does not mean that there is no reference at all. There are several types of foods that we generally recommend patients to touch as little as possible in clinical practice. The probability of being tripped up is indeed higher. For example, high-sugar milk tea, refined cakes, and highly processed snacks with a lot of sugar in them. Too much free sugar intake will directly increase the level of inflammatory factors in the body. Many patients report that after eating sweet foods for several days in a row, their joints swell so much that it is difficult to even make a fist. Two years ago, there was a patient who had spicy hot pot and cold beer for three consecutive days during the National Day. His erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein levels, which were originally under stable control, tripled when he came back for a checkup. His joints were so swollen that he even had to have his family help him put on his pants. He simply stuffed his body with too many high-oil, highly irritating, pro-inflammatory foods, which directly aggravated the disease. There are also deep-fried fried dough sticks, fried chicken, and crispy bread that contain a lot of trans fatty acids. These are clearly pro-inflammatory foods. It’s okay to eat them once in a while, but it’s definitely not okay to eat them every day.

Also, try not to drink alcohol, especially for patients who are taking drugs such as methotrexate and leflunomide that need to be metabolized by the liver. Alcohol will not only increase the burden on the liver, but may also affect the efficacy of the drug. There was a big brother who refused to listen and drank two ounces every now and then while taking the drug. In half a year, it was found that the transaminase had tripled. The drug was stopped for a while to protect the liver, and the condition rebounded. In fact, our immune system is like a somewhat sensitive "security guard" after getting rheumatoid. If you eat something that it sees as a "bad guy", it will attack randomly and cause inflammation. As long as you don't touch the things it is sensitive to and provide adequate nutrition with a normal and balanced diet, it will be able to work more steadily. There is no need to impose too many restrictions on yourself.