What Are the Causes of Rheumatoid Arthritis?

The primary cause of rheumatoid arthritis is a disease promoting diet and lifestyle. I intend to keep repeating this message over and over again until everybody hears it: “It’s the food!” – mostly :-)

I’ve discussed the causes of rheumatoid arthritis in more detail before, but in this post I just want to provide a concise summary for those who want to either prevent, treat or reverse this disease.

I’m certain (as I can be) that the standard UK diet (SUK) and the standard American diet (SAD) are the main chronic causes of rheumatoid arthritis in the majority of people. However there are a number of known acute causes too such as tooth/gum infection, chlamydia, Lyme disease, Weil’s disease, leaky gut (although this relates to food again and is somewhere in between acute and chronic), various other bacterial and viral infections, and so on.

After decades of research and personal experience I’ve come to understand that the term ‘rheumatoid arthritis ‘ is meaningless, it’s a best guess label based on a set of symptoms that dictate subsequent therapy but bears no relationship to the actual causes. As I listed in the previous paragraph, there are many potential causes that can create the full set of symptoms (and biological markers) of so-called ‘rheumatoid arthritis’ but the most fundamental and widespread of these is the SAD/SUK diet.

Drug therapy can be extremely important and is often essential in treating the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in order to reduce pain, restriction and suffering and also to allow people to continue on with their daily lives, but I don’t believe it’s a long-term solution (in fact I know it’s not, at least currently) since it doesn’t address the causes and has no effect as a preventative measure.

If you want to prevent, successfully treat, and potentially reverse rheumatoid arthritis I believe the following steps are essential (this is just a very quick summary, more details below the list).

1. Work with your rheumatologist to obtain the best relief and control with the minimum amount of medication and side effects.
2. Learn about the whole food plant-based diet and adopt it as far as you can.
3. Get more sleep and get regular sleep :-)
4. Drink more water, but not excessive amounts :-)
5. Maintain a healthy vitamin D level.
6. Take a B12 supplement.
7. Take a DHA supplement ideally from an algae-based source.
8. Try to do regular cardiovascular exercise, every day if possible.
9. Eliminate foods and other environmental factors that tend to make your symptoms worse.

I’ve extracted the above list from a previous article I wrote in which I go into much more detail about each point: Is There a Cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis? Yes! By Removing the Cause(s).

I believe the most important step to take is to adopt a whole food plant-based diet low in added salt, oil, and sugar. I can’t emphasise this enough! The rest of the steps in the above list are very important but they won’t lead to success without a health promoting WFPB diet.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to at least explore the benefits of a whole food plant-based diet in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. I’ve written lots of articles on this subject so please have a good root around my blog and dip into some of them, they’re all based on personal experience and massive amounts of research and contain links to further resources which I hope you will find useful :-)
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