How diet can affect wrist pain
Your diet will affect you in two ways: mental and physical. If you don’t have the proper nutrition you will be more prone to suffer stress. So, it’s important you get the correct nutrition. Unfortunately that’s a bit harder than it sounds because most of our food is mass produced and is full of chemicals and lacking in vitamins.
At the base level it is easiest to take supplements. At the other end of the scale you can eat everything organically, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol and so on.
Vitamin Supplements
It’s unlikely you’re getting enough vitamins in your diet, so a high quality vitamin supplement is important. Cheap supermarket-bought vitamins generally use compounds that are less bio-available – your body just doesn’t absorb them, so you end up urinating them out, which is a waste of your money.
You should try to change your diet at least for a couple of months to give your wrists the best possible chance and help them heal more quickly.
Glucosamine and chondroitin
Glucosamine keeps the ‘stuff’ in your joints healthy – the cartilage. Oral glucosamine is commonly used for the treatment of osteoarthritis and it helps to rebuild cartilage and treat arthritis. Chondroitin is often used in conjunction, and animal studies suggest that chondroitin may increase its efficacy. Both components are part of cartilage, so the body has the materials to work with when healing joints.
The great thing about glucosamine is that it reduces inflammation, so if your wrists are sore and/or swollen, glucosamine will help reduce this.
Just be aware that glucosamine is derived from shellfish shells. The allergens that cause people to have a reaction to shellfish are in the flesh, not the shell, but if you have a shellfish allergy it would be best if you tread carefully.
In the USA glucosamine is classed as a food supplement; in Europe it’s classed as a medical drug!
Manganese
This helps in the process of building cartilage. Adding manganese into your diet will help the glucosamine in your body, speeding up and increasing the productivity of this. The following foods contain manganese.
- Beans
- Whole grain breads
- Whole grain cereals
- Milk
- Seafood
- Dark leafy vegetables
- Nuts
Including more beneficial oils and fatty acids: Omega-3
A common belief is that fats and cholesterol are bad, but that is wrong: you need both to produce a healthy body, but you need good fats (not trans-fats, for example).
You can only get Omega-3 through food or supplement as your body does not produce this. If Omega-3 is not included in your diet, then you will not have any of it in your system. Omega-3 provides an anti-inflammatory effect which helps with pain and swelling. The following foods contain high levels of Omega-3 fatty acids.
- Salmon
- Cod
- Cod liver oil
- Flax seeds
- Walnuts
- Egg yolk
- Trout
- Sardines
Eliminating toxins
OK, I understand that you probably won’t totally eliminate toxins, but let me explain what each one does and then you can figure out if you want to temporarily or permanently live without them, and I’ll put it simply:
Smoking: contains hundreds of chemicals that tax your body’s immune system.
Alcohol: deprives your body of minerals, causes your joints to lose water (which makes them more painful), deposits crystals of uric acid in your muscles (making your wrists worse), and taxes your adrenal glands meaning you don’t cope with stress as well.
Coffee: more than two cups a day is detrimental to bone health, and it also taxes your adrenal glands
Changing your whole diet!!
It’s not in the scope of this document to tell you how to change your diet, but in broad terms here’s how you should eat. On your plate you should have:
¼ protein (meat, fish, eggs, nuts, etc)
¼ unrefined carbohydrate (brown rice, wholemeal bread, potatoes [in moderation], etc)
½ vegetables – mix them up and try to eat vegetables of different colours so you get all the antioxidants you need.
Then, for your sanity, one small treat once a day…small, remember! By small I mean either a cup of coffee, a soft drink, a couple of small blocks of chocolate, etc. This way you won’t feel like you’re punishing yourself so much.
Don’t buy into the rubbish that the media prints about certain foods containing beneficial antioxidants therefore they’re good for you (red wine and chocolate are the usually mentioned foods). As an example, you could add as many vitamins as you want to cyanide, but however much you add, cyanide is still poisonous. Red wine and chocolate (on the whole) are still not good for you, unfortunately!
Also, avoid diets of extremes such as Atkins – they are not balanced.
If you want dietary advice to lose weight, feel like you’ve got more energy, and improve your health, visit a dietician, or try this link: