Improving Food and Nutrition Practices to Reduce Arthritis Symptoms (Abridged Version)

and my guests as your weekly walking buddies. We'll hear stories from caregivers and gain tips and insights from health experts and advocates who know how important it is to take care of yourself and manage joint pain due to arthritis that often accompanies being a caregiver. Together, we'll find community ourselves and maybe even alleviate some joint pain in the process as we walk together and connect to the best parts of being a caregiver. Hello, fellow caregivers, Welcome

back to care Walks. Thanks for joining us again, and I hope you're finding time to take care of you too. As a reminder, right now you're listening to the abridged version of this episode, but if you're looking to get a little extra inspiration, don't miss a minute. Check out the full length version of this episode in your podcast feed.

So now that's taken care of, I want to spend this episode learning about the role diet and nutrition play in combating joint pain and improving our quality of life. To help us better understand how our self care can be applied to the kitchen, I've invited Dr Monica Agarwall to join me on today's episode. Dr Agarwall is an adjunct clinical Associate Professor of medicine in the University of

Florida Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. She's been conducting research on the impact of diet on everything from physical fitness to mental health. I'm really looking for or to talking to Dr Agarwall about her work and learning about how we might be able to use diet to treat the symptoms of our joint pain. But before I share today's conversation, let's set out on today's walk. As you walk, take some time to reflect what has brought you peace in

your body today. This moment could be anything from a tight hug, to your morning stretch, or the taste of a nourishing meal. Carry that piece with you through our walk today. I want you to think about all the aspects of our health that help us stay powerful and strong. And as you set your pace for the duration of the walk, we're going to dig into some comple nutrition strategies that can go a long way in helping us

protect our joints from the inside out. Today I am joined by Dr Monica ager Wall, an adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine in the University of Florida Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. Dr Agarwall's book Body on Fire, How Inflammation Triggers chronic Illness and the Tools we have to Fight it outlines prescriptions to help guide people to better health. And now she has a cookbook, Body on Fire, Anti Inflammatory Cookbook, Your Guide to eating plant foods that Fight Disease.

Dr Agarwall, thank you so much for joining us today. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Tell me what first got you interested in studying nutrition. You know, I am Indian by birth, so maybe my whole life, my mom told me to eat turmeric or you know that I would do better if I slept more, or to you know, eat more kuman and mango powder because it was going to help me with this or that. And so I always sort of grew up in that

kind of space and when I was in fellowship. So in training for cardiology, you go to medical school, and then I also did an integrative medicine fellowship, so I was always interested in integrative practices try to maybe I don't know the combination of east and west, but it really didn't kind of hit home for me until I myself became sick. So when I finished my fellowship, I decided to have children. And when I got pregnant, it

was the most amazing thing. But I decided that, oh my gosh, I you know, I'm older now I want to have all these kids. So I had three kids within four years. Four months after I had baby number three, I started manifesting joint pain and it started with a finger and it migrated to my knees and my shoulders. And within a week of my diagnosis, I was told that I needed to stop nursing my kid and get

on these medications. And that's a humbling feeling. And I remember this feeling of being small and being told that there was I had an incurable illness and I needed to get on medications. There was no way I was going to come off. So I just needed to accept that. And that's interesting for a doctor because I thought, you know, it's not that I embrace medications. I was trained with medications.

But isn't there another way? Isn't there other things? Aren't there other things that we can do to make our bodies better? So I started on a path of learning about how lifestyle impacts your body. I met a woman who said, maybe your nutrition is bad, and it's ironic because I was vegetarian. And I was probably a jerk to her because I said, like, oh, yeah, no, I'm vegetarian. I got this, but I was an unhealthy vegetarian as many of us are. What does that mean? An unhealthy vegetarian?

Stop right there? Yeah, yes, a good question. I feel seen right now. So tell me what that tell me what that means? Well, that's a that's a good question. And so there are many people who call themselves vegan or vegetarian that eat a lot of unhealthy foods. And to be fair, veganism is often an ethical choice and not necessarily a health choice. But we have to remember that there any vegetarian and vegan foods that are not

super healthy. Doctors actually get very little education and nutrition, so it took me years of training after my training to learn how to educate people and how to heal my BWn body. And so I had to learn a lot about the impact of what we eat, how dairy infects your body, how fats affect your body, how all of this stuff triggers inflammation, How inflammation triggers illness. So let's talk inflammation, because I know you know a lot

about that. What exactly is inflammation? How does food contribute to or combat it? Yeah, so inflammation. I always described to people that inflammations like your body is mad at you. That's why the title of the book is called Body on Fire. And I always describe it to people as that your life is full of stresses and resources. And just think about the stresses in your life. Well, there are lots of them, but then they are all these

resources too, and that's something that we forget. And there's all these resources like how the clean eating, there's sleep, there's movement, there's gratitude, journaling. You brought up nutrition, and so what we're focused on in terms of nutrition. Gosh, there's so many things you can do with your diet and people don't realize, like, wait, what, there's so much you can do absolutely. So there's all these toxins we put in our body right now, and some of those

toxins are things like refined foods and processed foods. And what happens with all those refined foods is that they go inside your body and they activate your insulin, your sugar levels go up, and they process really fast, and they're actually the foods that give you the high and low.

So if just think about, for instance, you worked all day and then at midday whatever, you go to lunch with your friends, you go to Olive Garden or something like that, and maybe I shouldn't have said all of garden by some restaurant like that, and then I know. And then you you eat like a pasta meal which has no fiber in it and it's loaded in cheese and fat, and you eat the bread that comes with it. And so people are like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired,

I'm not getting enough sleep. I know what I need. I need more protein. Well, actually that's not the case at all. Most of the time, it's neither of those things that they just need to cut out their sugar. So a lot of those refined foods and sugars are source of inflammation. Another big sources animal fat unfortunately, and mostly fried animal fat. Really, the foods that we want people to eat our anti inflammatory. There are fruits that

are antioxidants, like blueberries and berries in general. There are spices like turmeric that are super potent in anti inflammatory. So all these things that you can do to combat to take out those inflammatory foods, and you add back some of that anti inflammatory food and boy, there you go. You know, when you say refined sugars, it sounds a lot like that is also carbohydrates. Is that accurate? So

our carves something that we should widely avoid. Oh, I'm so glad you asked that because there's such a fear of carbs and I kind of added to that just now, and I appreciate you bringing that up. So, you know, I think the thing that people need to realize is that carbohydrates are this humongous bad of different things. And there's complex caubohydrates and then they're simple carbohydrates. Well, complex cobohydrates or foods that when you eat them you feel

full longer and you don't feel hungry. Well, those are complex carbs like beans and keenoa and whole whole, whole grains that don't have other additives in them. And so when we tell people we want to avoid cobohydrates, we want them to avoid those simple carbohydrates and refined carbohydrates. Then those are things like your candies and your cookies and your crackers and your sodas. Those are the foods

that we want people to avoid. Yes, a lot of our audience are caregivers, and self love and self care can just be such a challenge for many of them. How do you approach nutrition with time boundaries? Like finding fresh veggies, cooking whole really good meals, snacks on the go. That's something that I know I struggled with. So a couple of things you can do is pre cooking I'm a huge fan of, So don't be embarrassed used frozen food first of all, like embrace frozen foods, and then

batch cook like cook ahead of times. And the other thing for snacks. You know, I carry those baby carrot bags around, and I carry tubs of hummus around, and I carry peanut butters or almond butters, which are really good ways to get snacks. Those are sort of clever ways to get them in very clever. Dr Monica Agarwalla has been so awesome speaking with you. I have been taking notes, but boy, this has this been very, very enlightening.

So I really appreciate talking to you today. Thank you so much for joining us on care Walks and that was an honor. Thank you so much, appreciate you having me. I want to thank Dr agarwall again for being my guest today. You know, I'm constantly learning about my own habits and routine with each episode of this show, and I hope you will take away some valuable lessons about nutrition and for you and your family, and remember keep walking and don't forget to take care of yourself too.

That's it for today's episode. Don't forget to join me next week, when we talked to family caregiver Lakida Casting about the importance of finding community to fend off isolation when you're a caregiver. Care Walks is produced by I Heart Radio and partnership with vol Teren Arthritis Pain Jael and hosted by me Holly Robinson Pete. Our executive producer is Molly Sosha. Our head engineer is Matt Stillo. This

episode was written and produced by Sierra Kaiser. With special thanks to our partners at g s K Platform, GSK, Weber, Shandwick and Edelman.