If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, it should be pretty clear by now that food can cause disease or heal your body from pretty much anything you throw at it.
Today, I’ll be talking to the millions of people who are in constant pain.
In the US, that’s a whopping 100 million people — roughly a third of the entire population — who are suffering from chronic pain… (1)
Pretty. Bad. Statistics.
Do You Even Know Where Pain Comes From?
If you live in North America, chances are that you’re stuck in this health system where docs have about 15 minutes to assess what your problem is, and then prescribe you something to help you out.
But when was the last time someone took time to tell you exactly what the cause of your pain?
It’s not like docs don’t want to help you. But their reality is that they get so little time with patients that it’s pretty hard to find out what your exact problem is in a matter of minutes.
Let me help you with this pain 101 class.
There are 3 types of injuries that cause pain:
1) Serious injury: that’s when you hit your foot on the corner of your bed and lay down in a fetal position afterwards, or any kind of other intense, one-time injury like a muscle tear, torn ligament or even broken bone.
2) Overuse injury: that’s when you do the same thing for hours, and end up feeling pain because of the stress it caused to your joints, ligaments or muscles. The classic example is computer work that gives you wrist pain, or jogging that can make your knees swell.
3) Dietary injury: that’s the one injury that people rarely talk about. That’s when certain foods cause chronic inflammation inside your body, and put you in a state of chronic pain. (2)
30-Second Inflammation Crash Course
I’ll keep this very short and to the point. Here’s what you need to know about the inflammation that’s a normal consequence of injuries.
Normal inflammation:
- You experience one of the above injuries
- Your body is signaled to send specialized cells to the injured area and cause inflammation
- Inflammation causes that redness, heat and other classic symptoms
- This environment helps you heal faster and ward off disease
- You heal, and then inflammation decreases
- Conclusion: inflammation is GOOD and ESSENTIAL
Chronic inflammation:
- You have a repetitive injury
- That causes inflammation
- The repetitive injury keeps your body in a constant inflamed state
- The inflammation gets out of hand and your immune system gets triggered
- You never really heal because of the repetitive stress, and feel pain all the time
- The pain and inflammation never decrease and stick around forever
- Conclusion: too much inflammation is BAD
Your Gut May Be Leaking As You’re Reading This…
Sounds gross, I know.
But the truth is that most people intestinal linings are damaged by their food choices and a ton of other factors that screw up your gut like…
- Chlorine in water
- Sugar
- Artificial sweeteners
- Pesticides
- GMOs (potentially)
- Etc.
As it becomes irritated with this constant flow of offenders, your gut lining’s cell walls become spaced out and allow food particles to pass through to your blood along with the essential nutrients you’re absorbing. That’s called “leaky gut”.
It causes a cascade of bad consequences:
- Your immune system starts attacking food particles, which causes food allergies, intolerances or sensitivities
- The inflammation gets out of hand, and won’t go away until you stop feeding it
- The more of these allergenic foods you eat, the more allergic you become – a never-ending spiral that usually just gets worse over time
That’s why I’ve been repeating over and over that health starts in your gut.
Even if leaky gut is still a controversial condition that’s not “officially” recognized in most of the medical community, it’s very real.
Once your gut is leaky, even healthy foods may start to…
- Trigger your immune system
- Which leads to more inflammation
- Which leads to more PAIN
On top of the constant pain a dietary injury causes, your hormones are directly affected.
Serotonin: 95% is produced in your gut. Reduction of your serotonin means impaired mood, mental focus, and sleep cycle quality, but also reduction of your growth hormone (GH).
Growth hormone: your leaky gut contributes to the reduction of this key hormone, which means bad carb tolerance (you store carbs as fat very easily), and reduced ability to burn fat and build muscle.
Should You Just Pop A Pill?
Pills might be useful short term if you suffer from a serious injury, but taking even the so-called “harmless” pain pills like ibuprofen may screw you up pretty good over the long term.
Ibuprofen is known to impair a function of your intestine, which could in fact INCREASE your inflammation. (3)
In another study, 800 milligrams (a fairly common prescription dose) of ibuprofen before exercise was enough to cause exercise-induced small intestinal injury, worsening gut barrier damage. (4)
NB: Wait, it gets even worse. Studies have shown that even intense exercise can cause short-term small intestinal injury and gut barrier dysfunction. (5)
That doesn’t mean that you should stop exercising, but that’s just another factor that’s keeping you in pain.
The Top 4 Pain-Causing Foods
Pretty much all foods can contribute to your dietary injury and pain.
But certain foods are known to be a problem for most people.
1) Milk and dairy products
Like I’ve said in my “Is Milk Healthy or Not?” article, about 60% of all adults can’t digest milk properly because they lack the enzyme to do so. (6)
That’s just one of the many reasons that people report a better health and less pain after either reducing or eliminating pasteurised dairy from their diet.
It’s no wonder that milk is one of the most common allergens around.
2) Gluten-containing grains
Going “gluten-free” is NOT a fad.
Between 10 and 60% of the population is intolerant to gluten, depending on what expert you listen to. (7)
The problem is – only one in 80 gluten-intolerant people will ever be diagnosed. (8)
That’s why a lot of professional athletes like cyclists found that a gluten-free diet improved performance through better sleep and faster recovery times. (9)
Removing gluten-containing grains (wheat, barley, bulgar, couscous, kamut, rye, spelt, triticale) from your diet for a while and putting them back will help you figure out if gluten is a problem for you.
3) Sugar
Sugar is terrible on all aspects of your health.
Natural sugars like honey are OK and even beneficial in small quantities — about 1-3 tsp. per day — but remember that they can still screw up your gut and make your entire body inflamed if you consume too much.
4) Foods you’re allergic to
You can develop allergies or intolerances to pretty much any food if your digestive system is screwed up.
Make sure you get tested for allergies if you think that’s your case, but also be aware of how you feel after eating certain foods.
Conclusion
Food can either heal you or cause you pain.
What is terrible about this food/pain relationship is that even very healthy foods can contribute to your pain if you developed specific allergies or intolerance to them.
If you’re one of the dozens of millions of people who suffer from constant pain, here’s what I recommend you do for the next two weeks:
1) Cut out all sugar, gluten and dairy from your diet for 7 days.
2) Reintroduce dairy for one day at each meal and see how you feel. If nothing goes wrong after 2-3 days, keep consuming dairy.
3) Then, reintroduce gluten containing-grains like wheat for one day at each meal and see how you feel. If nothing goes wrong after 2-3 days, keep consuming gluten.
4) If this experiment doesn’t reduce your pain at all, make sure to get tested for allergies asap.