Wayne Jonas, MD, executive director of Samueli Integrative Health Programs at H&S Ventures, discusses what foods he recommends including and excluding from patients' diets to help manage pain.
Transcript:
What sort of impact does diet have on chronic and acute pain management?
So, diet is often overlooked in chronic pain management. It has less of a role in acute pain management, obviously. But for chronic pain patients, I always ask about what they eat. And why do I do that? Well, the reason is that we now know that what we put on our mouth influences a variety of things that can perpetuate or aggravate chronic pain. The main culprit is inflammation. Inflammation, when it's high in the body, can actually make chronic pain worse by exacerbating signals of the pain to the body. We know that diet can reduce inflammatory signals.
There are certain foods, for example, that are anti-inflammatory. Many of them are spices. For example, turmeric, garlic, ginger have anti-inflammatory properties. There are other foods that increase inflammation, for example, sugar and alcohol. So, one of the things I asked all my patients about is what is their diet, looking for those types of things, and then I provide them with recommendations on how to increase the anti-inflammatory foods in their diet and decrease the inflammatory generating foods, and very often they'll see a reduction in their chronic pain components when this happens. Sometimes supplements can be useful for this, but I try to rely on diet as much as possible.
An additional influence of diet is on weight and weight management. Weight is a problem. Obesity is a growing problem in our country and people that are overweight or obese have higher incidences of chronic pain. The reason for this is that adipose tissue aggravates the inflammatory processes that I just talked about. But it also produces mechanical issues on the back and on the joints, where many chronic pain conditions are. Simply losing weight and doing that through diet and exercise can produce considerable relief in chronic pain. Patients are often surprised that even small amounts of weight loss can result in reductions in their osteoarthritis pain or their low back pain, for example. And so, I consider diet an essential part of chronic pain management, and I ask all my patients questions about their diet.
What's at Stake as Oral Arguments Are Presented in the Braidwood Case? Q&A With Richard Hughes IV
April 21st 2025Richard Hughes IV, JD, MPH, spoke about the upcoming oral arguments to be presented to the Supreme Court regarding the Braidwood case, which would determine how preventive services are guaranteed insurance coverage.
Read More
Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
Listen
Orca-T showed lower rates of graft-vs-host disease or infection compared with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) or acute leukemias in the Precision-T trial, Caspian Oliai, MD, MS, UCLA Bone Marrow Transplantation Stem Cell Processing Center, said.
Read More
Navigating Sport-Related Neurospine Injuries, Surgery, and Managed Care
February 25th 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Arthur L. Jenkins III, MD, FACS, CEO of Jenkins NeuroSpine, to explore the intersection of advanced surgical care for sport-related neurospine injuries and managed care systems.
Listen
What the Updated Telephone Consumer Protection Act Rules Mean for Health Care Messaging
April 4th 2025As new Federal Communications Commission rules take effect April 11, 2025, mPulse CEO Bob Farrell explains how health organizations can stay compliant while building patient trust through transparency and personalized engagement.
Read More
High-Impact Trials at ACC.25 Signal Shift in Chronic Disease Treatment
April 4th 2025Experts highlight groundbreaking research presented at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session (ACC.25), which emphasized a shift toward more personalized, evidence-based treatment strategies.
Read More