Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweek segment called Ask a Nutritionist.

My name is Brandy Burrow. I'm a licensed and registered dietitian here at Nutritional

Weight and Wellness. And today I'm going to be talking about something that impacts probably all of us

at some point in our life, and that's joint pain, whether it's your knees or hips, maybe it's

stiff shoulders or swollen fingers. Maybe you just think that it's a normal part of aging. But

nutrition plays a much bigger role than you think it might. And what you eat or don't eat can actually help calm

that inflammation and pain or make it much worse. And this is something that I take very seriously.

As somebody that has a type of autoimmune arthritis, I have learned that what I eat can make a huge

difference in managing my pain and just helping me stay mobile and active

and doing all the things that I love to do. So in this episode, I'm going to get very practical with you.

I'm going to walk you through what you should stop eating, things that are fueling the inflammation,

and what you need to start adding more of to help calm

the inflammation and support healthy joints.

But before we get into the food piece, let's talk a little bit about what causes joint

pain.

So here's the big picture.

Most chronic pain outside of an injury is driven by inflammation in the body. And inflammation can be influenced by a few things.

It's heavily influenced by big swings in blood sugar. Processed foods can be part of that, but there's

also some things in processed foods that are inflammatory. Nutrient deficiencies and gut health

can also impact that inflammation. So if your

joints are constantly stiff or swollen or you just always just feel achy, it may not just be wear and

tear or a natural process of aging. What you're eating can either help calm that inflammation

...