A survey conducted by the Natural Health Advisory Service has found that women in the UK are not taking simple lifestyle steps to improve their health and ensure they live a longer and happier life. The survey of 1,200 women aged between 35 to 65 years reveals how those looking after themselves are happier, have more energy, less joint pain and a higher libido!

Despite the barrage of good health messages from the media, middle age women are not acting on the advice. Women in the UK now live to an average age of 81 but the survey shows that unless they take steps to look after themselves they could spend their last few years overweight, in pain and depressed.

• Only 25% of women said they ate at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day
• Women are more likely to have poor energy levels if they do not eat enough oily fish
• Over 70% of women who exercised less than once a week suffered migraines, bowel problems, anxiety and depression
• Women who eat oily fish, do regular exercise and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables have more flexible joints and a higher libido than those who don’t.

So effectively we might well be bringing many of our aches and pains on ourselves by not making sure our diet is good for us and that we take sufficient exercise to keep our joints mobile. But it’s not quite as simple as that for there could be a number of underlying reasons why we suffer pain and swelling.

For a start there could be an underlying food intolerance.

If you’ve thought your joints felt achy after a meal, only to doubt yourself after hearing that no evidence links food allergies to rheumatoid arthritis, you are not alone. Until now there has been little evidence to support this connection.

Most studies have focused on antibodies (proteins that attack and destroy foreign substances) in the blood, but that focus may have been wrong. Food-related antibodies may not show up in the blood but in the gut of people with Rheumatoid arthritis, and that’s just where researchers at the University of Oslo, Norway, looked. They found that, in test tubes at least, the intestinal fluid of people with Rheumatoid Arthritis had higher levels of antibodies to proteins from cow’s milk, cereal, hen’s eggs, codfish and pork than that of people without Rheumatoid arthritis.

The gut is the first site of exposure to food, and the immune system in the gut is the first to recognize potential allergens.

Food allergies occur when your immune system mistakenly believes that something you ate is harmful. To protect you, the immune system produces immunoglobulin E - also called IgE antibodies - against that food. The antibodies set off a chain reaction that causes symptoms.

In some people, the antibodies and proteins bind together and form immune complexes in the intestine. These immune complexes then circulate and get into every nook and cranny of the body, including the joints, where they may contribute to inflammation. Once antibodies are made against a particular food, the body instantly recognizes that food the next time it is consumed, and the cycle begins again.

So what should you do if you think certain foods make your arthritis worse? Well you could try eating the standard Stone Age diet, which includes only fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, for one month, or follow the elimination diet which is discussed in Maryon Stewart’s book The Real Life Diet. Studies have shown that if a person is food-sensitive, this type of diet can help reduce morning stiffness and pain, improve range of motion and lower inflammatory mediators in the blood.

In fact, Dr Jonathan Brostoff and his co-workers in London did an experiment and found that more than one-third of people with Rheumatoid Arthritis felt better and had less morning stiffness on this diet and a few of the patients in the study were able to get back to walking and all the other activities they did before.

Self diagnosis by diet alone can be difficult as food intolerances often have a delayed onset. This means that symptoms may often arise hours, days or weeks after you’ve eaten a problem food. An alternative way to check to see whether you have food intolerance is to use a new test called the Food Detective. It’s the first in the world which can be done entirely at home and all it takes is a simple pin prick of blood which will yield a result in 30-40 minutes. This makes it perfect for those who are too busy to get to a doctor and it’s the first of its kind to receive a CE mark from the EU, making it absolutely reliable.

The test results will show which food you should eliminate from your diet in order to alleviate your symptoms. These include gluten, rice, cocoa beans, mushrooms, yeast, nuts, soya, shellfish, eggs and dairy products. More than 70% of testers who had eliminated offending food groups from their diets experienced an improvement of their ailments.

If you are suffering with aches and pains or diagnosed arthritis, it might be worth casting fads aside, take the guesswork out of it andyou’re your self properly tested. If you have a food intolerance you will most likely be suffering from symptoms which range from mild to chronic. These can include anxiety, constipation, diarrhoea, insomnia, migraines, arthritis, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, inflammatory bowel disease, itchy skin, weight control problems, irritable bowel syndrome as well as arthritis.

It’s undoubtedly a useful tool and it’s not very expensive, which makes it even more attractive as it takes much of the guesswork out of the process. Once you have identified the foods that may be causing problems it’s ideal to leave those out of your diet for a month making sure you have plenty of alternatives. Within a month or two you should notice a significant difference to your symptoms if it is diet related. To learn more about following a diet that helps reduce your symptoms of arthritis go to the website www.keepingyourjointshealthy.com is a great resource site for information that deciphers the many natural supplements people are taking to stop these degenerative diseases and reduce the pain associated with troublesome joints.