If you’re worried about your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), then you may want to take a look at your breakfast routine.
A new study has discovered that a fibre-rich diet can reduce bone damage in the painful, progressive disease.
In particular, researchers recommended eating muesli every morning as well as enough fruit and vegetables throughout the day.
They found in experiments on mice that fibre boosts a molecule produced by bacteria in the gut, which play an important role in the health of joints and bones.
Study leader Dr Mario Zaiss from Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) said: ‘We were able to show that a bacteria-friendly diet has an anti-inflammatory effect, as well as a positive effect on bone density.
A new study has discovered that a fibre-rich diet such as muesli can reduce symptoms in both rheumatoid arthritis (stock image)
‘Our findings offer a promising approach for developing innovative therapies for inflammatory joint diseases as well as for treating osteoporosis, which is often suffered by women after the menopause.
‘We are not able to give any specific recommendations for a bacteria-friendly diet at the moment, but eating muesli every morning as well as enough fruit and vegetables throughout the day helps to maintain a rich variety of bacterial species.’
Key findings
The health of our gut flora has increasingly been linked to a range of conditions including obesity, diabetes, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.
But the team found that it is not the intestinal bacteria themselves, but their metabolites – a substance made or used when the body breaks down food, drugs or chemicals – which affect the immune system and therefore have a knock-on effect on autoimmune diseases such as RA.
The researchers focused on the short-chain fatty acids propionate and butyrate, which are formed during the fermentation processes caused by intestinal bacteria.
These fatty acids can be found in the joint fluid and it is assumed that they have an important effect on the functionality of joints, say the researchers, writing in Nature Communications.
The findings showed that a healthy diet rich in fibre is capable of changing intestinal bacteria in such a way that more short-chained fatty acids, in particular propionate, are formed.
They were able to prove propionate caused a reduction in the number of bone-degrading cells, slowing bone degradation down considerably.
Propionate, one of the better known short-chained fatty acids, has been in use as a preservative in the baking industry since the 1950s and has been checked and approved as a food additive according to EU guidelines.