Veggies and Olive Oil May Protect Against Rheumatoid Arthritis

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December 17, 1999

Veggies and Olive Oil May Protect Against Rheumatoid Arthritis

Chalk up more benefits for eating a Mediterranean diet-no, not a new fad, but

the typical diet of people who live in places like southern Italy and Greece.

These folks tend to eat more fish and vegetables and less meat than other

nationalities and lots of olive oil. Previous studies have suggested this type

of diet protects against cancer and heart disease. Now researchers believe it

also protects against rheumatoid arthritis.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and the

University of Athens in Greece studied the lifetime diets of 145 Greek men and

women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 188 control subjects without it.

Participants were asked to recall how often they ate a variety of foods (more

than 100 kinds) from childhood up to when their RA was diagnosed, or up to the

present for controls.

Participants were also asked to what extent they followed the Greek Orthodox

Lent, which requires abstinence from meat and animal products twice a week and

during four longer periods each year, for a total of 180 days. During these

periods, people eat mostly fruit, cereals, and vegetables, and strict adherents

refrain from all fats, including olive oil.

The researchers compared the group that consumed the most olive oil to the group

that consumed the least. Those in the group who consumed the least olive oil

were two and one-half times more likely to get RA than those in the group that

consumed the most olive oil. Similar results emerged for vegetable consumption:

Those who ate the most veggies were significantly less likely to develop RA. No

other food items had any significant relationship to RA.

Writing in the " American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, " the researchers point

out that no one knows exactly what causes RA, nor why eating certain foods would

affect it. Many researchers think that protective fatty acids found in

deep-water fish like tuna, herring, salmon, and cod help inhibit the

inflammation characteristic of RA. Similar substances are found in olive oil, so

that's one reason it might help prevent the disease. Another is that olive oil

is rich in antioxidants, which protect the body against cellular damage that can

cause chronic illness.

The researchers noted that fish from the relatively shallow Mediterranean don't

have as much protective fatty acid as deep-water fish, and that's probably why

fish consumption wasn't related to RA in this study.

According to the authors, the next step is to figure out how these foods,

especially the olive oil, work to protect the body against disease. They suggest

that somehow the process of metabolizing the oil suppresses inflammation, but a

lot more research is needed to understand why.

http://www.mediconsult.com/mc/mcsite.nsf/condition/arthritis~Research+Digest~PVI\

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