Reducing Inflammation: Understanding Arthritis and the Power of Food

Join Janice Wood and Dr. Jeff Shad, DC of Minimally Invasive Medical Group for an 
easy-to-understand conversation about arthritis and inflammation. Dr. Shad shares what can cause arthritis, 
how food can trigger 
inflammation in the body, and what types of foods may help fight it. This episode helps break down how your daily 
diet can play a role in how your body feels.

Janice Wood
 Host and Producer of A Senior Citizens Forum &
Insights with Entrepreneurs
Owner of Benefits4U2 Insurance Services
Janice@benefits4u2.com
(310) 245-0332
License #0F35236

Dr Jeff Shad D.C
Jeff@misurgical.org
(949) 988-0445

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Did you wake up in the morning and you found out that your joints are killing you? And as you get older, your joints are even hurting you more and more. You go to the doctor and you've been diagnosed with arthritis. There's several different kinds of arthritis. Well, I'm going to basically be talking today about osteoarthritis with Dr. Jeff Chad of the minimally invasive medical group in Orange County. He has three locations. One location in uh Mission Viejo, Irvine, and Lake Forest. He's going to tell us why our diet will affect arthritis and how it affects our joints. So let's go in and talk with Dr. Shad. Hi, Dr. Shad. Hi Janet. Dr. Shad, welcome to a Senior Citizens Forum. Welcome back, I should say. Thank you for having me again. Yes, I'm excited to be talking about arthritis and inflammation.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

They go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

They absolutely go hand in hand, but there's so many different forms of arthritis.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Definitely. There's many different forms, but the main ones that you want to probably stick to today is osteoarthritis, the most common.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Quickly before we go on, let's talk about, you know, your education where you started out at Pierce College out in Woodland Hills, California, and you went on to the Western School of Chiropractic.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Well, then I went to Western University, and then after that, I went to Los Angeles College of Chiropractic. I have a four-year graduate degree to become a doctor of chiropractic. I was also doctor for Orange County Zodiacs because that my passion is in soccer. I played professional soccer, semi-professional to professional soccer for 27 years. Yeah, so being a chiropractor is something that I was drawn to early on, because as I said in my previous show, I wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon. Then I realized that it's a lot more fulfilling for me to use my hands and my uh knowledge and to treat the patient as a whole versus just putting the arm back together with the screws and pins, and there's plenty of orthos out there that probably are gonna do that job better than me. So I decided to stick to chiropractic and I'm glad that I did.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Well, one of the interesting things about chiropractic is that so many people don't realize that you have an extensive background in nutrition.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Exactly. In nutrition, you have an extensive background in radiology because we use X-ray technology to determine how badly your bones have deteriorated, if there are there's misalignment, if there is deviation in your spine, so on and so forth, the curvature of the spine, your posture. So our curriculum is similar to medical doctors, and we pretty much learn about all diseases that they do. The only difference between chiropractic four-year graduate school and medical school is that from day one they teach us X-ray radiology. That's the tool we use the most. The MDs use pharmacology, they use the chemistry because they prescribe medication. So they deal with the body chemistry, we deal with body anatomy, body structure, and physiology as far as your biomechanics and uh spine, so on and so forth. So the chiropractic philosophy is if you get rid of the interference of the signals from your brain as is passing on to the rest of your body, including internal organ, you align the spine, you're able to function at your optimum level. But then what happens, like you said, good chiropractors, there's some ones that not all of them do nutrition, but most chiropractic are into nutrition because they realize body chemistry could change with proper nutrition. Inflammation could decrease with proper nutrition. And unfortunately, unfortunately for both at the same time, unfortunately, inflammation and arthritis go hand in hand. So the more inflamed you are, the more pain you're gonna have. The degree of inflammation in your system and my system, if it's mine is low, yours is high, we have the same arthritic joint, meaning the joint is worn out the same exact way.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Okay. So if you have an arthritic joint, so you've got yeah, bone on bone.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Bone on bone, right? So let's dig into that a little bit more. So what happened is over time uh our body starts deteriorating, correct? Depends on what level. Let's just let's use a knee, for example. It's a perfect joint.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Maybe it's perfect because I've had problems with the knee, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Right. A lot of people have knee problem because it's weight bearing. So we ambulate, we're on both feet, right? So as mammals, we're the only animals that walk on two feet. So, and the joint, the knee and hip is the ones that wear out the most, and then goes down to your spine. So we see a lot of knee, hip, spine related pain. And let's say you start wearing out the cartilage. What's the first line of mechanism for repair? Inflammation. So your body sends a troop through your lymphatic system, repair troop. We call it repair troop. The repair they go to repair the area, but then the cartilage is avascular and it's hard to repair, so the inflammation settles in and it becomes chronic. And chronic inflammation wears out the joint more. As you have more inflammation in your system, that becomes chronic inflammation. Prolong time sitting at your in your knee, it keeps wearing it out and wearing out, wearing out. So the more inflamed you are, the more pain you're gonna have. The less inflamed you are, the less pain you're gonna have. And then next thing after that is of course being overweight. And we have the epidemic here in the United States. We have a lot of overweight and obese people. Unfortunately, it has to do with our diet. It's called SAD diet, standard American diet. Yeah, SAD, S-A-D. I love it. Okay, yeah. I'm sorry, I have to say it, but uh, everybody is aware of it now. That's a good thing. You gotta bring it bring awareness. All that processed food, all that processed food, because our population is so large, and this is the country that is capitalism, everything wants to grow. Grow, let's go, let's move. And we love to eat.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Instant gratification.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Instant gratification. Everybody's looking for that serotonin and dopamine level to increase in your brain. Happiness comes from eating. If you start understanding that you could be happy without eating and just eat to survive, eat the proper food. I want to do one example. It's very easy. When you look at your dish, if it doesn't grow directly out of the ground, it's processed. I'll call it paleolithic diet. Okay. Paleo means anything natural, naturally growing out of the ground.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Okay. That's where we had that diet that was very popular. Yeah, paleolytic diet, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Uh so that's basically kind of answers your question as far as inflammation and the arthritis. You're saying many different kinds. Of course, there's rheumatic arthritis. You could be born with it, it's genetic, you can have it from childhood, juvenile arthritis. Those are inflammatory arthritis, that unfortunately is just the way your body is formed. But you could still manage, to a certain degree, manage it with the help of medications that more advanced medication than now is out in the medical world. We thank the scientists for that, that they they are advancing to controlling rheumatoid arthritis for certain meds, but you could control it also with diet to certain degrees. But osteoarthritis, which is regular degenerative joint disease, is definitely controllable with diet. And unfortunate that people don't pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

But I have another arthritis I think that can have some control with diet is that rheumatoid.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, like RA. That's rheumatoid arthritis. Yeah, that's that's more from childhood. It's really genetic, you know, it's kind of passed on from your family to family. It's harder to control with diet, but it's still manageable. You could manage it. Uh, but what we really want to talk about today is osteoarthritis.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

So that's what most of probably your viewers, all of us are gonna eventually end up with. I mean, I am having already osteoarthritis in my left knee because of multiple trauma to it from soccer injuries. I had two surgeries. I also have right knee osteoarthritis starting. Um, it started already. What I do is um I use the new technology, viscous injection. It's a lubricant, okay, hyaluronic acid that you could inject in the joint, and it keeps the joint lubricated and is good for the cartilage. It kind of keeps it alive and slows down the wear and tear in addition to diet, in addition to weight loss. You're controlling how much weight you're putting on this weight-bearing joint because you're constantly standing and walking up and down the stairs. Your the knees and the hips are constantly under attack.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Well, I always find that the more I move, even though it sometimes it hurts, like I have an elbow. Okay, once I start exercising it, it goes with the pain goes away.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Mild to moderate exercise, locomotion, keep it moving, don't keep it in one position. Yeah. Often a patient comes in here with tennis elbow, you know, frozen shoulders, stiff hip. And I'm like, what do you do? I'm a computer analysis, I'm a programmer. You're constantly using the mouse, sitting. I'm like, do you get up your chair, walk around, take a break from that position, get a table that goes up and down. You could stand up and sit. You change your position. You constantly move. That's why the new Apple Watches have a program in there. Every so often it says time to move, time to stand, time to breathe. It's actually telling us it's sad that you're listening to software, but hey, it tells you a lot. It tells you a lot.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah. Tells me you're I'm walking outdoors. Right. It tells me where I'm going next. Right. He has everything before I know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Run your life. But going back to what we were talking about, can you have arthritis in your neck?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

We see a lot of patients with osteoarthritis, degenerative joint disease. We actually call it DJD.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Degenitive joint disease. And then with that comes hand in hand, DDD, degenerative disc disease. So that happens usually at C6, C5, C6 level, where the curvature of the spine kind of at the apex of it, it's in the middle of the neck. And then in the lower back, it's with L4 and L5. And then the joints in the back of the neck, which is called facets, those could definitely get arthritic. And that's why patients often say, when I wake up in the morning, I'm so stiff, I can't turn my neck, look up. It takes a little bit. I have to keep taking my head down, side to side, move it. Like you said, start walking a little bit, almost lubricating your joint pretty much. By locomotion, you're keeping it lubricated. And that's what the pain for arthritis kind of subsides after a couple of hours. But you still feel it throughout the day. Yeah, you could have arthritis in the neck for sure and the back. Because again, it bears the weight of your head and then your lower back, your torso.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Well, people don't think about it, but your head weighs about 10 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

10 to 12 pounds on average, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

And that, and in addition, if you don't have the right curvature, for whatever reason, you lost the curvature, which I see often. If you're, I'm sure some of your um, a lot of your viewers have children, grandchildren, that phone, the phone is becoming epidemic. I I I kid you not, I see so many young patients that come in here and they already have reverse curvature. At the age of 18, 19, 20, 22, the curvature of the neck should be in like a seat this way, and they're tilted forward. So imagine that 10, 12 pounds, head tilted forward, these muscles constantly firing, trying to hold the weight of your head from falling forward. That's why so many patients have patients have tension in the upper back.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Well, headache. And even from your hands. Oh yeah. From holding all these different devices. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Devices.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Listen, smartphones, the different types of uh pads that they're using.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

You know, the you see the arthritis in the joints, you see the deformities in older folks, you see enlarged joints.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

They're kind of crooked and tilting, turning. It's ugly. But again, that's how art what arthritis does. It keeps wearing and tearing the joint. The chronic inflammation starts causing deformity. And then the joint becomes unusual shape. So enlarged. And it could happen in the neck. So I have patients coming in here, they have a small disc, but then they go, they want to remove my disc. I said, Well, the problem is your joint. The joint is enlarged, it's big, it's like a huge knuckle. So they gotta shave the back of the joint if they want to do any surgery. So in a way, I kind of help them to do the right surgery, which I don't want to, but we always offer spinal decompression, which is a very, very unique technique to take the weight of your head off your neck, you stretch it, you do 20, 18 cycles of pull and release. It's called DRX9000. We do it for the neck. Sounds like we can have a whole show on that. Oh yeah, that that by itself is a whole different world.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

That's a whole different world. So I would like to do a show on that sometime in the future, but right now I want to go back to inflammation. Okay. We we're talking about how osteoarthritis affects our body. Now, just one other thing. I see a lot of people, and I'm very fortunate for my age, I don't have any deformity in my in my hands, but I see big swollen knuckles.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, that happens with rheumatoid arthritis a lot more. Because that's very aggressive inflammation. It wears and deteriorates the joint. As a matter of fact, if it's at an uncontrolled level, you could actually um you could actually see bones collapsing in the neck, and it could actually cause broken bones or paralysis, even if it's bad enough in the neck. So going back to inflammation, you're right. Let's stick to let's stick to diet. So one of the um first I call it elimination diet. When the patient comes in with osteoarthritis or degenerative joint disease, I tell them, please write a di uh a journal of what you eat for a week. Oh, they and then don't sugarcoat it. Just eat what you eat, write it for me. Or if you know, write it, bring it on next visit. And then I see a lot of dairy, I see a lot of processed food, I do see quite a bit of sugar in their diet. Um there's a controversy on soy, but I also don't like my patient to be on soy. Refined carbohydrate. So I tell them eliminate dairy, eliminate refined carbohydrate, eliminate refined sugar, eliminate soy, alcohol if you can, because that causes inflammation, caffeine. I allow them to have maybe one dark cup of coffee a day. And by eliminating those five ingredients from your diet, not only you reduce the inflammation, you lose weight, and then they go, so what do I eat? I said the only dairy you could have is eggs. I I allow them to have boiled eggs with a little bit of a pepper and salt, maybe, and the salt has to be uh uh organic. Sea salt, not your ionized white salt that we use because those are all processed. Because sea salt actually has uh essential um minerals that you need. So there's so much into it. They see major change in their in their pain when they and then avoid darker vegetables, for example. The one that you want to avoid eggplants, avoid um dark pepper, bell peppers and uh tomatoes, those are all inflammatory.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, yeah. So what is it? The whole bell pepper.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Those red, red bell pepper, green bell pepper is proven to be inflammatory. But the yellow ones are better. The yellow ones seem to be okay, but again, overall it's it's hard to differentiate. So I just don't avoid bell pepper. Oh, I can't. That's not my favorite. I said, well, try to substitute it with something else. Um black pepper, uh, powder format or something. It is not that crucial. That honestly, dairy is very crucial. People say, well, that's the way I get my protein. So, well, yeah, there's other ways you could get protein. If you get it from white fish, you could get it from beans, you could get it from vegetables. Um so it's it is a lifestyle change, which is hard for most patients to do. They always fall back on anti-inflammatory medication. They go to their primary doctor, they go to the rheumatologist, they get uh celebrex or other medication. They take one cerebrex a day to manage their I don't like the way uh some of those medications make you feel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

I don't like the the drowsy feeling, like you're you're sluggish.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Well, some of those are narcotics that you're referring to. Um so it depends what level of pain you're in, and they they prescribe some narcotics. Some patients, unfortunately, they they must be on one because it's so chronically deformed, the pain, the joint. Yeah, they have to block it every once in a while with injectables or um, you know, some kind of a monitored narcotic medication. Those are those are uh pain medications, yeah. So we refer- I'm referring to anti-inflammatories, more more like a steroid, you know, oral steroids. It has a place for it, for an acute condition, but um like acute bronchitis, perfect. You take, you know, you you take oral steroid.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Well, but you have to be careful with that too, because if you're diabetic, you don't want to take a steroid.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

You have to be under supervision of your uh medical doctor, your your primary or physician. Oh, talking about diabetes, that's all inflammation, all sugar related. Yeah, if you really most people could manage the diabetes with diet if they really want to, and they don't have to be on on uh metformin and those types of medications.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Uh pre-diabetic patients. So it's a it's a sacrifice you have to make. You have to give up eating as a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Well, some people don't mind popping the pills.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah. More life to live, why not? I pop it. Who cares?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah. I know it's really difficult to go out with a group of people and you're sitting there and going, well, I can't eat this. This has got this in it, because this is what I do all the time. Good. Okay. But it's really hard. I don't drink alcohol, but I notice the majority of my group, there's always going to be three or four people that are going to have an alcoholic drink.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

And if you say something, they get upset.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

I mean, it's their prerogative, right? I mean, uh I gave up drinking alcohol, and uh, it's the best thing I've done. Uh I ha I had it in the past, and uh it not only affects my psychological behaviors and uh actions. Affected my entire life. You end up basically not knowing what to do in a social event. Just grab a drink. It's the first thing you're drawn to.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I gotta grab a drink of water and say it's phosphorus.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Exactly. Sparkling water with a lime, twist the lime in it, and you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

You're fine.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Econning people. Hey, I'd rather have you healthy than I don't think I'm drinking alcohol. I'm always laughing anyway, so they won't know.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

I mean, I I tell them I'm the boring one.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

But I'm okay with it. You're not boring at all. You're having a great time right now.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Right. Yeah, right now we're having a great time. But that but there's so many ways you can get around it. And people think they're doing you a favor. You know, you go to a party, and you know you've had this happen when it comes to food. But I made this. You have to try it.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

I mean, if you try it here and there, and it's okay, right? I mean, you could cheat. I would cheat once every other week. That's my cheat day. Yeah. But I don't cheat that bad, but you could cheat a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

You can cheat, but you've got to know what you're doing with your life in order to cheat. Now, everybody knows I sell Medicare insurance, okay? So I used to go out to, and I still do, I go out to places, and what do the seniors want to eat? Pastry. Right. Cakes. They want to eat pie. Drives me nuts. I always buy a little thing of vegetables and put it out.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

They don't touch it.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Nobody touches the vegetables. But I have it there just so it makes me feel good.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Because I'm somebody may want to eat that vegetable one.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

If they eat uh yeah, if they eat the pies once in a while, like at your events, or their their own event a couple times a year, even once a month. But once you make it a daily routine or or nightly routine, or or you're just your your routine is you know, um cereals that have a high high fructose sugar in them, you you think you inherit the healthy food. It's a multivitamin cereal. And it's yeah, they put a lot of vitamin, but it's mostly sugar and the carbohydrates and turn they turn into fat and sugar.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Well, that's what I always tell people. This is fun. You gotta look at those labels that are on those cartons.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Constantly look at the labels. Yeah. The best is stick to big volume of vegetables, good, you know, healthy salads, um, nice clean protein, fish, white fish is great, organic chicken breast. I mean, you could have lamb, you could have lean uh uh filet if you're if you're a vegetarian, then you could flip it around and and in and substitute vegetarian uh vegetables for high protein content in into your diet. So yeah, as long as yeah, you're getting half, let's say you're I weigh 150 pounds, let's say, I have to have at least half of my body weight in grams of protein daily. So I have to have at least 75 grams. If I'm working out, I want to get at least 100-120 grams of protein a day and then have maybe 25-30 grams of carbohydrate, right? So I balance out and then a lot of vegetables.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Well, you have so much great information to provide us. We can go on for another couple hours. We probably could, but we're running out, I'm sorry to say we're running out of time. Okay. Thank you for being on a senior citizens forum. You had great information. Uh, anyone, if you have any questions for Dr. Shad or myself, this happens to be a subject I obviously like to talk about, please contact us. You can go on to Facebook, YouTube, and find us, the Senior Citizens Forum, besides being on E360 TV. Dr. Shad, you'll have to come back again and talk about many other things that you provide at your minimally invasive medical group, because you have so many different things that you are doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So we're glad to thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

So thank you for joining us, and everybody will see you next week on a Senior Citizens Forum. Thank you.