Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life (48 page)

Among the most striking breakthroughs in recent years is the discovery of contributors to back pain. Certainly, back pain is the last thing one would ever associate with foods. It is usually caused by pinched nerves, muscle strains, injuries, and osteoporosis, and so far as most of us are concerned, that has been the end of the story.

Treatment has consisted of anti-inflammatory drugs, heating pads, bed rest, physical therapy, and—all too often—surgery. And virtually every scientific review of back pain treatments found that they simply did not work well for most people.

In 1995, doctors at the University of Washington and the Seattle Veterans Affairs Medical Center reported in
Medical Clinics of North America
that the annual medical costs for low back pain had reached $24 billion, and that the majority of patients seen in back clinics for chronic pain had already had at least two operations. In spite of this enormous expense and the terrible burden to the patient, doctors lamented the poor success rate of surgery in alleviating pain.
¹

In 1996, neurosurgeons from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote in the
Journal of Spinal Disorders
, “Despite its high prevalence and the multiple burdens associated with it, low back pain remains poorly understood, inadequately diagnosed, and ineffectively treated.”
²

A whole new perspective came from a close look at the spine itself. Researchers have examined the spines of people with back pain, performing detailed autopsy studies of those who had been treated for back pain and later died from accidents or other causes. They have found that the leathery disks that are supposed to act as cushions between the bony vertebrae have often degenerated. When the disk’s tough outer layer disintegrates, its soft interior tissues can squeeze out and pinch a nerve. Sometimes whole disks are destroyed and vertebrae end up crushing against each other.

This was not a surprise; we have long known that degenerated disks can lead to pinched nerves. The news came when researchers looked at why the disks and vertebrae degenerated.

A pair of lumbar arteries carries blood to each vertebra. When these arteries are wide open, they carry oxygen and nutrients to the hardworking backbone. Like every other part of your body—your heart, your brain, your joints, and every other organ and tissue—your back needs a good blood supply in order to heal from the traumas of day-to-day life.

But surprisingly often, these arteries were clogged with plaque. In fact, they had exactly the same kind of blockages that clog the arteries to the heart, causing heart attacks, or to the brain, causing strokes.

When the lumbar arteries are blocked, the oxygen and nutrients that are essential for helping the spine recover from wear and tear are cut off, and the waste products that cells produce begin to build up, irritating sensitive nerves. The autopsy studies clearly showed that the greater the artery blockage, the worse the degeneration of the disks, making it more likely that vertebrae would shift, disks would rupture, and nerves would get pinched, causing chronic pain.

It turns out that one in ten people in Western countries has an advanced blockage in one or more of these arteries
by age twenty
.

If this is all new to you, do not be surprised. No one—not even orthopedic surgeons—knew much about what was causing disks to degenerate until quite recently. But this discovery opened up a fascinating possibility: perhaps improved circulation could prevent back pain. After all, we have learned a lot about how to stop arteries from becoming blocked elsewhere in the body, and there is no reason that we cannot do so in the back.

But it also forced us to ask another question that might be even more important: Can we reopen blocked arteries and restore blood flow to an aching spine?

By the mid-1990s, we already knew that artery blockages could be reversed, at least in other parts of the body. Dr. Dean Ornish, a young Harvard-trained physician, now on the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco, proved beyond any reasonable doubt that if we change our diets enough, and avoid smoking, excessive stress, and sedentary habits, the arteries start to
clean themselves out
. These steps reversed coronary artery blockages in 82 percent of Ornish’s research subjects. It also works in the arteries to the legs. The next question—one that researchers are just beginning to tackle—is, will it work in the back, too?

Imagine what that could mean to the millions of people suffering with chronic back pain, and the millions more for whom it is just around the corner. Most people with back pain, however, do not realize what is going on in their lumbar arteries, nor do they know how foods and lifestyle changes might be able to affect them.

We will take a detailed look at this work in progress in
Chapter 1
. I raise it here simply to illustrate a critical point: the old idea that chronic pain is a one-way street is undergoing a dramatic change, and the key comes from understanding how nutrients can help the body’s natural restorative processes.

Research studies have revealed special effects of certain foods and nutrients, as we will see in detail in the chapters that follow. Rice or peppermint oil, for example, can soothe your digestive tract. Ginger and the herb feverfew can prevent migraines, and coffee sometimes cures them. Natural plant oils can reduce arthritis pain. Cranberry juice can fight the pain of bladder infections. Vitamin B
₆
can even increase your pain resistance, to name just a few.

Whether we are talking about back pain, migraines, cancer pain, or anything else, there are three basic principles to using foods to fight pain. I will spell them out briefly here and, in the chapters that follow, will show you how to apply them.

1. Choose pain-safe foods. In headaches, joint pains, and digestive pains, for example, the key is not so much in adding new foods as in finding out which foods have caused your pain and avoiding them, while building your meals from foods that virtually never cause symptoms for anyone.

In the
Lancet
of October 12, 1991, arthritis researchers announced the results of a carefully controlled study that tested how avoiding certain foods could reduce inflammation. Often the culprits were as seemingly innocent as a glass of milk, a tomato, wheat bread, or eggs. By avoiding specific foods, many patients improved dramatically: pain diminished or went away, and joint stiffness was no longer the routine morning misery. The same benefit has been seen for migraines. While there are also benefits to be gained from certain supplements, particularly natural anti-inflammatory plant oils, identifying your own sensitivities is an enormously important first step.

Sugar may affect pain, at least in certain circumstances. As we will see in chapter 12, researchers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis tested its effects on a group of young men. They attached a clip to the web of skin between their fingers and wired the clip to an electrical stimulator. They gradually increased the voltage and asked the men to say when they felt any pain and at what point they found it intolerable. As the researchers then infused a dose of sugar, the volunteers found that they could feel the pain sooner and more intensely. The researchers then tested diabetics, who tend to have more sugar in their blood than other people, and found that they too were more sensitive to pain than other people.

What would it mean if some part of your diet, whether it was sugar or anything else, caused pain to hurt just a bit extra, without your realizing what was causing this problem? In fact, many foods trigger pain and aggravate inflammation. Choosing pain-safe foods is as important as bringing the special healing foods in.

2. Add soothing foods that ease your pain. Foods that improve blood flow are of obvious importance in angina, back pain, and leg pains. Foods that relieve inflammation help your joints to cool down. Other foods balance hormones and will come to your rescue if you have menstrual pain, endometriosis, fibroids, or breast pain. Hormone-adjusting foods have also been the subject of considerable research in cancer, as we will see.

3. Use supplements if you need them. I encourage you to explore the benefits of herbs, extracts, and vitamins that can treat painful conditions. Some have been in use for a long time and have been tested in good research studies, as we will see. Do this under your doctor’s care, so that a nutritional approach can be integrated with other medical measures as needed, and so that you have a solid diagnosis.

In presenting the information in this book, I have given particular emphasis to dietary approaches that have been tested in reputable research studies. Science usually begins with anecdotal observations, followed by small research studies that establish the foundation for more controlled studies. I will not avoid these two lines of evidence if that is the best we can do in certain areas, but the better the test, the more confidence we can have that a new approach will actually do what it is supposed to. I have included references to scientific journals for those who would like to refer to them, as well as information about treatments that are just now emerging.

Unfortunately, your doctor is not likely to tell you—and may well not know—most of what you will read in this book. In treating pain, many doctors rely on a restricted range of treatments, while vital research showing what is actually causing the problem and how to correct it often gathers dust in medical libraries.

The fact is, when a shiny nugget of potentially lifesaving information appears in a medical journal, few doctors will ever see it. For even the most conscientious doctors, it is a challenge to keep up with more than a few of the thousands of journals that appear every month, even though the very answers we are seeking might be found there. Only a handful of these journals ever publicize their findings in the popular press. The vital information they hold is simply buried in medical archives.

Of course, it is a very different story when a research study favors the use of a new drug. Then the drug company will hire a public relations firm, pay for massive mailings to physicians, and advertise in medical journals. The company will sponsor medical conferences that highlight the role of the drug and pay speakers to discuss it. Drug companies, motivated by potentially millions of dollars in profits, are skilled at getting a busy doctor’s attention. But no industry makes money if you
stop
eating a food that causes your migraines. No surgical supply company makes a cent if you open your arteries naturally through diet and lifestyle. A pharmaceutical company’s bottom line does not improve if you use natural anti-inflammatory foods instead of expensive drugs. And without the PR machinery paid for by industry, some of the most important findings never make their way onto a doctor’s desk. Patients with arthritis, migraines, menstrual cramps, or even cancer who ask their doctors what they should be eating to regain their health get no answers, simply because no one has brought new information to the doctor’s attention.

In spite of the economic forces that often slow progress, we have every reason to be optimistic about the future of medicine. More and more doctors are integrating nutrition into their practices, and scientific journals are responding with reports on its efficacy. Studies in leading allergy journals are showing the links between migraines and food sensitivities, the
Journal of Rheumatology
has published a series of reports on how foods affect the joints, the
Lancet
is reporting the new approaches to back pain and heart disease, and the
Journal of the American Medical Association
confirms the value of something as simple as cranberry juice for bladder infections.

When it comes to our health, we simply want what works. Often that means a change in diet, since every hormone, neurotransmitter, and blood cell in your body needs nutrients to do its job. On the other hand, sometimes the best choice is a prescription. Most ulcers, for example, are caused by a bacterial infection, and all the “ulcer diets” in the world are not nearly as effective as two weeks of antibiotics. In fact, I have included information on treating ulcers with drugs just so you can get back to the foods you may have been missing.

Please use the information in this book in consultation with your doctor. If you have pain, you need a diagnosis. No matter what treatment you are choosing, your doctor can clarify your other treatment options, monitor your progress, look out for any adverse effects, and can be educated by you as your symptoms improve.

However, this does not mean surrendering your good judgment. It always pays to get a second opinion—or a third, if necessary—if there is any doubt about the right treatment for your condition.

As you use the approaches in this book, let me encourage you to focus on the short term. There is no need to make a lifetime commitment to change your diet or anything else. All I ask is that you be willing to explore the power of a dietary approach. In most cases it only takes a couple of weeks to see the beginnings of the wonders it can work for you. Everyone is unique, and what works for one person may not work for someone else. That is as true of nutritional treatments as it is of surgery and medications. But if you focus on the short term, you can give it a really good try. If it works for you, then you’ll be motivated to stick with it. Try it; that’s all I ask.

Along with doctors from Georgetown University Medical Center and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, I recently completed a study using very-low-fat diets to balance hormones in women with debilitating menstrual pain. Most of the research subjects were a bit daunted by the idea of making major changes in their diets. However, the fact that they only had to do so for eight weeks (two menstrual cycles) made it much more approachable. For the first two weeks, they tried different recipes, figuring out what to eat at work or at restaurants, gradually adapting to new tastes. As they adjusted to the new diet, they discovered that it helped them lose weight, boosted their energy, and for many, reduced their pain.