Inflammation is the enemy when you’re getting arthritis.
Any food proven to induce inflammation is best avoided unless you have a debilitating flare-up later to compensate for it.
But that isn’t just rice. The sly culprits behind inflammation too can be your normal drinks.
And because drinks don’t need much digestion, they can cause a more rapid reaction than what you eat. That really is a pain, literally.
It can also help you to determine more easily what it was that caused the flare-up, though.
Not all arthritis sufferers experience these drinks the same way, but it’s important that you experiment with each of them in turn to find out what works for your arthritis and what doesn’t.
Energy Drinks
Energy drinks are at the top of the list, since they don’t have anything good. The caffeine is at such an high amount that it is connected to seizures and heart attacks.
Attach the amount of sugar contained in sodas in multiple cases, and you have a drink that is not suitable for everyone to drink.
In arthritis, both sugar and caffeine can lead to inflammation, caffeine, specifically, was found to cause gout attacks.
Energy drinks are also highly acidic and some research has shown that highly acidic drinks can strip the bones of essential calcium and accelerate joint deterioration.
Tap Water
Staying hydrated, particularly with arthritis, really is important. Water helps lubricate the joints, and essentially supports any cycle in your body.
But tap water can contain a whole host of chemicals depending on where you live, that can irritate your tissues and cause inflammation.
Fluoride is an extremely popular example of an inflammatory compound which is present in drinking water.
The rates do not concern most people but in people with arthritis, they can potentially cause a flare-up.
So make sure what you’re drinking is clean and clear, use a filtering pitcher or a faucet extension.
Tonic Water with Quinine
Once upon a time, Quinine was a common arthritis medication but the truth is that it just doesn’t work.
When it comes to arthritis, the quantity you can find in tonic water simply has no therapeutic effect.
In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stepped in to restrict the legal quantity of quinine that can be added to tonic water because it can cause side effects ranging from dizziness to kidney damage and bleeding issues in large quantities.
Regular Soda
People with arthritis will be avoiding soda for the same reasons as energy drinks. We fill themselves with sugar, caffeine and acid.
Inflammation is pretty much sure to be triggered by soda.
This ingredient mixture can also cause many other bodily ills, including weight gain.
Getting overweight affects the arthritis pain level indirectly, as it causes tender joints to feel more at strain than they should.
Diet Soda
Sorry, even if you are trying to relieve arthritis pain, switching to diet soda won’t make the difference.
Artificial sweeteners come with their own side effects, and just as likely as refined white sugar or high fructose corn syrup to cause inflammation.
Artificial sweeteners are compounds that change healthy bacteria in the stomach.
This means the body is struggling to metabolize glucose and releasing inflammatory cytokines in response.
The healthy bacteria in your gut will usually release anti-inflammatory compounds to compensate for this, but not if you destroyed all of it with fake sugar.
Beer
Alcohol may be distressing for a variety of reasons. Firstly, when the liver breaks down the fructose it contains, it allows the body to release chemicals called purines.
Purines then metabolize into uric acid which is the culprit behind gout.
In humans susceptible to it, beer also contains gluten, which is extremely inflammatory. All of these reason make beer a non friendly drink for someone with Arthritis.
Alcohol
A few glasses of wine or a mixed cocktail are usually all right but be careful to control your alcohol intakes.
If you imbibe to the point of drunkenness, though, you are setting off a chain reaction that can lead to quite a bit of joint pain.
Hangovers are caused by dehydration and inflammation, two factors that are throwing people with arthritis into a big loop.
Fruit Juices
Fruit juice is usually bad as it contains a lot of sugar with none of the nutrition you will get from eating the entire fruit.
Fiber reduces sugar absorption, which will regulate the blood sugar levels.
Coffee
Coffee is a drink which has pro and con sides. It includes, on one hand, antioxidant polyphenols that greatly reduce inflammation and mitigate free radical damage to your cells.
And on the other hand , it contains caffeine which is pretty acidic; coffee is also often served with lots of sugar and cream which are non friendly component in someone that suffers from Arthritis.
Milk & Other Dairy Products
Some people with arthritis can find that a form of protein, called casein, may cause inflammation in milk and milk products.
In fact, some forms of arthritis, cause the body to produce antibodies to casein on the erroneous assumption that it is a harmful foreign substance.
These antibodies then cause inflammation that will already disrupt tender joints.
Fermented dairy products contain less casein and can therefore be tolerated more.
This is an environment that needs testing, because you may find that dairy does not bother your arthritis.
Tomato Juice
Tomatoes have long been marked as harmful for arthritis sufferers. It is because they contain solanine, which is an inflammatory material.
Solanine is also extremely poisonous, but what you can find in a tomato is usually harmless. There has in fact been no empirical link between flare-ups of solanine and arthritis.
Corticosteroids are widely used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, allowing greater sodium retention.
While this is our best advice about the drinks, you are the best person to know what your body tolerates and what doesn’t.
Take the time to experiment one by one with these drinks to decide which ones are triggers for you; keeping a food journal can be very useful in tracking the results.
