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(Health Secrets) You may have heard the expression, “One man’s food is another man’s poison” and the statement is never truer than for those living with chronic pain. If you’re like millions struggling with chronic disease, you may take one or more prescription medications. Opiates, steroids, and narcotics often cause terrible side effects if used over long periods of time. These food cures for chronic pain can help reduce or completely eliminate your need for them.
The Food and Pain Connection
You may have never given much thought to how food might affect your pain levels but it has a lot more effect than you think. Highly processed foods like soda, candy, boxed cereals, instant soups, and fast-food burgers contain little nutritional value and a dangerous amount of chemicals that make chronic pain worse.
These chemicals include:
- Aspartame
Aspartame is a synthetic sweetener commonly found in diet soda, candy, gum, and cereal. This neurotoxic chemical has been shown to lower dopamine levels and increase sensitivity to pain.
- Food dyes
Food dyes have been at the forefront of investigation for the past few years. They have been known to cause side effects ranging from irritability to cancer. Yellow #5 has been linked to insomnia, which for chronic pain sufferers is already an issue. Less sleep equals more pain.
- MSG
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a cheap flavor enhancer hidden under multiple names in dozens of different junk food products. MSG has been shown to cause chronic migraines, chest pain, gastrointestinal problems, numbness, and facial pressure or tingling. MSG is an excitotoxin, meaning it over-stimulates your brain cells to early death.
- High fructose corn syrup
High fructose corn syrup has been clinically-proven to turn on pro-inflammatory compounds within your body. This synthetic sweetener has long been thought to be the primary cause of obesity and diabetes.
- Splenda
Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar? Don’t be fooled. Splenda may start out as sugar but when it gets out of the lab and onto your plate, it’s anything but. The process used to make sucralose causes it to morph into a type of hybrid fructo-galactose molecule your body doesn’t recognize as food. Anything your body doesn’t recognize as food causes your immune system to respond, worsening chronic pain and inflammation.
- Trans fats
Trans fats may start out as ordinary plant-based fats but when they’re chemically-processed, they turn into a poison you don’t want in your body. Trans fats are found in many of the pre-packaged convenience foods you buy. These dangerous chemicals directly affect the way your body functions on a cellular level.
- Sulfites
Sulfites are preservatives commonly found in wine and processed meat products. Many people have sulfite intolerance, which can lead to symptoms such as headache, breathing problems, rashes, and chronic inflammation.
- Nitrites
Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite are food preservatives that become highly carcinogenic when they enter your body. These chemicals form nitrosamine compounds that cause problems with multiple organs and bodily systems.
- Sulfur dioxide
This food preservative destroys the B vitamins and vitamin E in your system, which can have profound neurological effects. It has been linked to severe upper respiratory distress and sudden and dangerous drop in blood pressure.
- Potassium bromate
This flour ‘improver’ has been linked to liver and kidney damage as well as gastrointestinal malfunction. This additive alters your body’s chemistry on a cellular level, which can cause a host of unexplainable health symptoms, including chronic pain.
Foods That Cause Chronic Pain
Foods that cause and worsen chronic pain include highly-processed foods that contain the above-mentioned synthetic chemicals. Think fast food meals, frozen meals, canned food, soda, cookies, donuts, candy, snack cakes, etc. When you start reading the labels on these foods you’ll suddenly realize you’ve been eating more chemicals than actual nutrition for a long time.
Gluten, soy, and corn often have highly-inflammatory effects on the body as well. Even those who do not test positive for celiac disease may still be intolerant of gluten, which can worsen chronic inflammation. It is estimated that 80% of soy and corn is genetically modified. GMO foods contain pesticides that wreck havoc with your digestive and immune system, leading to chronic pain.
Foods That Heal Chronic Pain
The foods that heal chronic pain are those that were found in nature 100 years ago. Natural, whole foods like organic produce, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, meat, poultry, fish, and healthy fats. Healthy fats include butter, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado, and walnuts. Remember, it’s trans fats you need to stay away from. Saturated fats are excellent for your health.
Vegetable juicing can do wonders for your health if you’re living with chronic pain. More often than not, those with chronic pain also live with digestive problems and an inability to effectively absorb nutrients from food. Vegetable juicing extracts the nutrients from organic vegetables and offers them in a pure, easy-to-digest form. When you juice, your body doesn’t have to break anything down. You just get pure, wholesome nutrition in every glass.
The more nutrient-dense foods you consume, the less pain and inflammation you’ll experience.
After reading this you may be tempted to just toss all the junk food in your kitchen out and start fresh. You could but you’d then be looking at some serious withdrawal symptoms in addition to your pain.
Instead, slowly trade in your junk food for whole food. Start by getting rid of soda and drinking water or eating fruit. Begin juicing to get the nutrients you need. Eat more wild-caught oily fish like salmon to decrease your inflammation.
Healing from chronic pain is a step-by-step process and it takes time. Once you understand how food can both cause and cure your pain, you’re that much closer to living a healthier, pain-free life.
Published with permission from AlignLife. Original article link is here.
