Could Fermented Foods Help Your Arthritis? by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Recent research1 has shown that fermented foods not only can improve gut microbiome diversity, but lower the inflammatory response in your body that affects conditions like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). While I was still in active practice, I was passionate about treating people with RA.
In fact, I treated over 3,000 people with this disease, 80% to 85% of whom experienced significant recovery, if not remission. One of the hallmark symptoms of RA is pain in the proximal joints of the hands or feet.
These are the joints that are closer to the palm of your hand as opposed to joints further out in your fingers. RA is also often symmetrical, which means it affects the same joints in both hands or both feet. The condition is far less common than osteoarthritis.
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In joints that are affected by RA, the lining becomes inflamed from an autoimmune and inflammatory response that literally causes your body’s own immune system to attack itself.2 This can trigger chronic pain, loss of balance and deformities.
Unlike osteoarthritis, which damages the cartilage between the bones in your joints,3 RA can also affect other tissues outside of the joints, such as the eyes, heart and lungs.4 Many people with RA experience fatigue, low-grade fever and symptoms that vary from day to day.
In a search of health care claim databases5 from 2004 to 2014, researchers found the prevalence of RA in the U.S. population ranged from 0.41 to 0.54%. This varied substantially in each year and by gender and age. However, the data also revealed that the rate appeared to increase during that period, which affected a conservative estimate of up to 1.36 million adults by 2014.
A later study in 20196 indicated there has been a global rise in prevalence and incidence of RA. At the regional level, it appeared to be highest in the high-income areas of North America, the Caribbean and Western Europe.
The lowest rates were found in Western sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia and Oceania. The most recent, 2021 study7 offers an insight into reducing the inflammatory response and, potentially, the damage caused by RA.
Fermented Foods Lower Levels of Inflammatory Proteins
Researchers from Stanford Medicine published their data in the journal Cell,8 in which they evaluated 19 inflammatory protein biomarkers from 36 healthy adults who were randomly assigned to eating either fermented or high-fiber foods over a 10-week intervention period.9 Both diets have shown an ability to impact gut microbiome in past scientific study.
In this clinical trial, researchers sought to evaluate how two microbiota-targeted diet interventions could modulate the gut microbiome.10 They found the gut microbiome and immune system effects on the participants were different.11 The scientists measured stool and blood samples collected during a three-week period before the intervention diet started, during the intervention and during a four-week period after the diet ended.
The data revealed that eating foods like kefir, fermented cottage cheese, vegetable brine drinks, kombucha tea and kimchi in other fermented vegetables increase the overall microbial diversity in a dose-dependent manner.12 The primary outcome of the study was a cytokine response score, which remained unchanged.13
