Rheumatoid Arthritis Diet

Feeding a high-fat diet to animals who are susceptible to autoimmune disease has increased the severity of RA. People with RA have been reported to eat more fat, particularly animal fat, than those without RA. In short-term studies, diets completely free of fat have helped people with RA. Since at least some dietary fat is essential for humans, though, the significance of this finding is not clear.

Strictly vegetarian diets that are also very low in fat have been reported to reduce RA symptoms. In the 1950s through the 1970s, Max Warmbrand, a naturopathic doctor, used a very low-fat diet to treat people with RA. He recommended a diet free of meat, dairy, chemicals, sugar, eggs, and processed foods. A short-term (ten weeks) study employing a similar approach failed to produce beneficial effects. Long before publication of that negative report, however, Dr. Warmbrand had claimed that his diet took at least six months to achieve noticeable results. In one trial lasting 14 weeks—still significantly less than six months—a pure vegetarian, gluten-free (no wheat, rye, or barley) diet was gradually changed to permit dairy, leading to improvement in both symptoms and objective laboratory measures of disease. The extent to which a low-fat vegetarian diet (or one low in animal fat) would help people with RA remains unclear...