I did a little bit of research on the subject and found an article that suggests that RA symptoms may be caused by an "allergic" immune response to foods such as milk and other dairy products. The basic premise of the study the article mentions is that your body may produce antibodies to certain foods. These antibodies form immune complexes in your intestines and from there, these complexes can travel throughout your body and become inflammatory mediators.
This article mentions a study done by an individual doctor who noticed that up to a third of his RA patients felt improvement in their symptoms when they eliminated most allergy-causing foods and reverted to a basic "Stone Age" diet of fruits, vegetables, fish, and plain meat.
Here is a link to the article :http://www.arthritistoday.org/conditions/rheumatoid-arthritis/healthy-living/ra-food-allergies-2.php
This is a very interesting article, but can't we just say this for every disease we study with inflammation and not just RA? The article talks about reducing the inflammation associated with RA, but what about other inflammatory responses? We can't just go along saying that the diet we chose to eat is causing us inflammation. Of course it is causing inflammation, we eat horrible food, especially in the US, and these foods cause inflammatory mediators to be activated. I believe that these types of studies are kind of primitive in the health care professions today. We need to get passed the point of diet effecting our inflammatory response, because there is a very small percentage of people in this world that are going to change their diet and stick with it. There are too many temptations for bad, tasty, inflammatory foods. We need to focus on studies that do not include diet and perfect the procedures to deal with inflammation that way instead of relying on people to eat differently.
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