Healthy Eating Can Be Hard If You Have Chronic Pain

February 29, 2024 / Thomas Cohn, MD

New research published in Scientific Reports found that many patients with chronic pain expressed a desire to have healthier dietary habits, but following through on this desire can be difficult as a result of their pain condition.

Researchers took a deep look at some self-reported aspects of diet and nutrition among patients who were suffering from a chronic pain condition. They found that despite pursuing some common suboptimal habits like fast-food consumption and irregular mealtimes, many patients with chronic pain expressed a desire to live healthier. Researchers say the findings can help healthcare professionals and pain care specialists address nutritional challenges faced by patients with long-term pain.

Healthy Eating And Chronic Pain

For the study, researchers polled more than 2,100 individuals with a chronic pain condition about a variety of lifestyle factors and their pain levels. The average patient was just over 46 years old, and more than half were overweight or obese. More than half said they had been in pain for five or more years and reported high levels of pain intensity.

When comparing lifestyle factors, researchers found:

People who said they desired to eat healthier were more like to report a longer duration of pain.
A higher pain score was significantly associated with suboptimal eating habits (irregular meal times, unhealthy food choices, etc.).
People with the worst eating habits were the most likely to express a desire to eat healthier.

Looking at the totality of the study, it’s clear that there is a large portion of chronic pain sufferers who want to eat healthier but struggle to do so. And this is understandable, because chronic pain has a significant impact on a number of different aspects of your life. Chronic pain can be isolating and increase your risk of anxiety and depression, all of which can increase your risk of turning towards nutrient-poor and energy-rich food options. Doctors should be jumping at the opportunity to help patients improve their eating habits, because clearly the underlying motivation is there, they are just struggling with following through on these desires.

This is especially true when you consider just how much of an impact your diet can have on your chronic pain condition. A poor diet can lead to increased inflammation, increased oxidative stress, poorer gut health and alter your metabolism, all of which can make a chronic pain condition and its symptoms worse. Making some small positive changes can slowly help you become healthier and regain more control over your chronic pain condition.

We understand that changing your diet and eating healthier is not easy, especially when you’re battling a chronic pain condition, but that’s where we come in. We know that treating chronic pain needs to be a multi-faceted approach, and nutrition is just one key aspect that we’ll focus on during your journey to better health. Don’t just opt for a doctor who is going to write you a script and send you on your way. Work with a provider who takes a comprehensive approach to pain care, and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the success of your treatment.

For more information, or for help with a chronic pain condition you’re experiencing, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today at (952) 738-4580.

Dietary Tips If You Have Fibromyalgia

March 24, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

dietary Fibromyalgia is a tricky condition that is categorized by widespread pain and fatigue, and there is no direct known cause for why it develops. Pain specialists oftentimes work to control symptoms through lifestyle adjustments and increasing a person’s daily exercise. One simple adjustment that oftentimes help to quell fibromyalgia symptoms is improving your daily diet. In today’s blog, we share some tips for controlling fibromyalgia symptoms with some simple dietary changes.

How Your Diet Can Help Control Fibromylagia Symptoms

Changing your diet won’t completely cute you of fibromylagia, but these healthy changes can help to put an end to inflammatory reactions in your digestive system that can sometimes serve to make your fibromyalgia worse. Here are some steps to take if you want to see if you can alleviate symptoms through dietary changes.

1. Journal – Start taking a little more ownership in what you put in your body and how it affects your condition by starting a daily journal. Document what foods you eat, when you eat, who much you ate and how you feel minutes and hours after the meal. Start to map out certain trigger foods and work to avoid them.

2. Avoid Caffeine And Alcohol – Not only can caffeine and alcohol sometimes serve to make fibromyalgia symptoms worse, but they can also prevent us from getting restful sleep. Poor sleep quality can cause fibro flare-ups so you need to strive to get good sleep each night, and caffeine and alcohol can disrupt that.

3. Ditch Highly Processed Foods – Highly processed foods are harder to break down for your digestive system, and this can lead to an inflammatory reaction. Foods that are high in carbohydrates or sugar are typically highly processed and can lead to a worsening of fibromyalgia symptoms.

4. Get Your Daily Dose Of Vitamins And Nutrients – Your body works best when it gets its daily dose of vitamins and nutrients from food sources. These vitamins and minerals can help to ward off inflammation and in turn keep our fibromyalgia in check. Reach for a range of foods from the most sought after food groups, like fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

5. Derive Energy From Your Diet – Fibromyalgia can leave a person feeling fatigued, which is why it’s oftentimes helpful to work to derive some natural energy from your food sources. You can best do this by looking for foods that are low in sugar and high in fiber. Some foods that are good natural sources of energy include:

Nuts
Fish
Beans
Avocado
Beans

We’re confident that adjusting your diet and working to make some healthy changes can have a positive affect on your fibromyalgia, but if you’re running into trouble or want more hands-on assistance, reach out to Dr. Cohn and his team today!

5 Healthy Habits To Live Longer

September 24, 2018 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Everyone has advice on living better and longer. Sometimes the advice is complex, sometimes someone is just trying to sell you something, and in a recent StarTribune issue, there was some simple practical advice. The information is from a study of 100,000 people published originally by the American Heart Association. It lists five habits to adopt to live better and longer. It is the straightforward approach to life.

The Five Habits

The first habit for good health is to avoid smoking. The best habit is to never smoke. The dangers of smoking have been known since the early 1960’s. Everything from vascular disease, to lung problems and cancer result from smoking. Quitting smoking does help, never starting is even better as far as the risk is concerned.

The next habit is maintaining a healthy weight. The easiest tool is based on having a body mass index (BMI) that is between 18.5 to 24.9. The formula for is: BMI=703x[(weight in lbs)/(height in inches)(height in inches)]. The number can be looked up in charts. Unfortunately this is a rough guide, and if you are muscular, or have a larger build with “big bone” structure, you may fall into the category of obese. For instance my BMI is 24.3, it is borderline since I have relatively more muscle than fat but I am pretty healthy from a cardiovascular standpoint due to an active lifestyle.

The third habit to increase life is to exercise moderately for 30 minutes a day. This is to walk, swim or work out in any sort of way every day if at all possible. The 30 minutes does not have to be all at once. If you take three ten-minute walks a day, that adds up to the correct amount of time. In addition to the above aerobic conditioning, most health advocates recommend a general strengthening program three times a week to maintain muscle tone. A daily stretching program to reduce muscle tightness and pain is also helpful.

The fourth habit is to drink only a moderate amount of alcoholic beverages. That is on average only 1 to 2 drinks a day. Drinking wine is often better than mixed drinks or beer due to some of the compounds from grapes that have positive health benefits. All alcohol contains carbohydrate-type calories and this needs to be remembered as part of your overall food intake. Excessive intake of alcohol, binge drinking and then averaging out the intake over time does not count. Binge drinking is dangerous.

The last healthy habit is to try to maintain a healthy diet. A healthy diet includes higher intakes of vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, fibers, and stick to fats that are polyunsaturated or long-chain fatty acids. The best meats are fish and poultry as well as white meat (low fat pork). Obtaining protein from vegetable sources like beans and legumes once a week is also highly recommended. Try to reduce the intake of red meat, sugar and fructose sweetened beverages, trans fats, and high sodium salty food. Part of eating healthy is also controlling portion size and avoiding excessive snacking.

Better living is a goal in life. To reach the destination, one must take steps to change if you are not where you want to be. Setting realistic goals and changing one aspect of your life at a time is the best. Furthermore, be accountable to yourself and one another, as that will help you reach your goal. If you need help, work with appropriate experts to reach your goals. Help may be from dieticians, physicians, physical therapists, trainers to even psychologists. Change is difficult, and better health is a life long goal.

A Doctor’s Tips For A Successful Diet

April 9, 2018 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Eating right has always been a challenge, and losing weight sometimes seems to be impossible. With everything in life, change is hard and finding the right path is never easy. There are more diets available and more advice than one can ever fathom. Being the right weight is not magic, but it is work and a lifestyle commitment.

If you want to be successful, one must commit to change. So many times people say they are unhappy with where they are currently but in the next breath they are comfortable with how everything is and are not willing to consider alternatives. Furthermore, most people who ask for advice do not trust anyone who might have legitimate information. If the advice is sensible and simple it seems even less trustworthy.

Steps To Take

So the first step in changing one’s weight is to understand whether you feel it is problem and whether what you are eating is affecting your life. If you are totally happy with how you feel and with your health, than you have no reason to change. Life is likely to stay the same for you.

A person’s weight is dependent on a complex array of variables from genetics, to exercise to what we eat. There are things we can change and things that maybe outside of our control like our genetics and medical conditions. However, we can control what we eat, how we perceive our food and we can also control our activity level. So weight management is about our interactions with food.

The temptation is always for people to look for a quick fix. In pain management everyone just wants a pill or quick solution. Once people realize the answer may be complex, the light goes on. If the answer was simple, the problem would likely not exist. Education is one of the best paths toward the solution.

Weight gain was a slow problem that crept up on me. Every year my baseline weight increased. Initially it was ok. When my pants were no longer fitting in the waist and I needed a new wardrobe, it became something I needed to understand. The first issue was as we all grow older, our bodies change. For me I had reached a time when there was a hormone change in my body and that caused a slowing of my metabolism. The old school teaching was calories in and calories out must be balanced. So I just tried to exercise more. Initially that may have worked, but only for a short period of time. However, exercising for hours a day does not work to burn off all the calories taken in by eating more than needed. Running or walking a mile only will burn off 100 calories. The not so obvious answer then was I needed to change my diet, and I probably need to do more than I have already done.

New Dieting Goals

The new goals with dieting are to be sensible about eating. The important things to remember are the quality and quantity of food. There are a million diets with tons of rules. Most of the diets are complicated, require special foods, and are difficult to follow for a long period of time. In reality, simpler is better.

First, remember a portion size is a ½ cup for most foods. Measure out that amount and it is not very much food. A small size French fries at MacDonald’s is likely 2 portions. A ½ cup of pasta is the size of a single scoop of ice cream. If one sticks with appropriate single sizes of portions one will not be over eating – staying to the right quantity. Next buy your own fresh food and cook it to make your meals. Eat fresh vegetables, fruits, lean meats, fish, and try some vegetarian meals since the calories will be less and healthier. Keeping the refined sugar down, as well as limiting bread and pasta helps most tremendously.

Typical meals tend to change as one begins to improve your diet. Most dietitians recommend that everyone should eat breakfast. This prevents the body from thinking it is starving and turning all intake into fat for storage. Breakfast can be a piece of fruit, Greek yogurt for diary and protein, and oatmeal or granola cereal (for more protein, fiber, and a bit of carbohydrates). Lunch is a green salad with a low fat dressing, and 4 ounces of protein. Dinner is a portion of vegetables, 5-6 ounces of lean meat, and fruit or a salad. It is okay to have a small portion of brown rice, pasta or potato, but not with butter or a fatty sauce. If you have no recipes, get yourself a cook book. Lastly, donate or throw out all of the snacks and junk food that is sitting around your home and tempting you to eat. Also, stop buying lots of processed food, and when you eat out, eat the same types of meals that you would cook on your own.

Finishing Strong

If you are serious about making a lifestyle change, then you may be successful. Some people are very self-motivated and can change if they set their minds to do something. For most of us, working with a partner and holding each other accountable often is easier and more successful. Another couple of helpful keys are to record everything you eat daily and keep a record of how much you actually eat. You must weigh out your portions and be accurate with them, and it also helps to weigh yourself once a week. Tracking your activity with a fitness tracker will also help monitor about how much you are burning, but they are notoriously overly ambitious in how many calories they are estimating that you are burning.

Starting a diet does not need to be complex. It requires one to shop from the outside edges of the grocery store. Eat fresh fruit, vegetables and lean protein sources in controlled portion sizes. Reduce the amount of simple carbohydrates – sugars, pastas, and breads. Track your portion size, your intake, and weight. Increase your activity level and move moderately for at least 30 minutes a day. Drink more water also, as this may decrease your appetite. Lastly commit to change and keep at it.1-2 lbs of weight loss a week is excellent progress.

Food Choices For Pain and Weight Management

May 22, 2017 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Everyone is different, but improving your nutrition can drastically improve how well you feel. A good diet, exercise and adequate sleep all are parts of healthy living. Doing just one of the three things leads to mixed results. Living a balanced life can solve a lot of health problems, and is often very beneficial in treating pain. Unfortunately, doing the right things in life is not always easy. Most of these things take time and planning, and most are not fun.

Food and Pain

Different foods have different effects on the body. There are three basic food categories – proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. They all have different values to the body, and there are many ways to obtain these.

Proteins provide essential amino acids that are necessary for building various chemicals in the body including muscle, and can be a source of delayed onset energy.

Carbohydrates are used for energy, but also are in what we consider fiber. It is important to remember that the quality of the food is often as important as the number of calories and how the body will use the food.

Fats are necessary also in small amounts for certain chemical processes in the body and can be stored for energy later.

Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean and vegetable type proteins, and healthy fats will provide quality energy during day while maintaining your health. Fast food provides limited short-term energy and often adds to the waistline due to the types of carbohydrates and fats.

Meal Planning and Pain Care

Starting your day with a good breakfast has been a nutritional rule for years. For most people, eating a breakfast with some complex carbohydrates like granola that is high in fiber and fruit, with a source of protein such as yogurt and nuts, provides energy throughout the morning, reducing fatigue and the desire to munch or eat things like donuts.

Lunch provides the energy for the middle of the day. Some nutritionists say this should be the biggest meal of the day. Most of us do not have the time for this and is something that is eaten in a hurry. Maintaining a high fiber lunch with a protein source is a positive meal. A salad with a low fat piece of protein, like a chicken breast or tuna fish is an excellent meal to help control weight.

Many of us feel the need at times to snack. To help control this urge, drinking plenty of water is sometimes helpful. Nutritionally, one of the best snacks is nuts, especially almonds, walnuts, or other tree type nuts. These help reduce diabetic and cardiac risks, are high in protein, fairly low calories and will fill you up. The main thing to avoid are sweets and high carbohydrates like potato chips or cookies. Popcorn that is not highly salted is also good due to high fiber content and low calorie amount.

Dinner is one of the hardest meals to do appropriately. It is important to learn balance and portion size. If you are trying to lose weight, eliminate simple carbohydrates like pasta and potatoes. Include salads, vegetables, and fruits to help to fill yourself up. Meat portion size should be about five ounces, and lean meats like chicken, fish and pork are the healthiest. Spaghetti squash can be used at times for a substitute for pasta in many dishes that have a meat sauce. Also, slow down your eating and drink plenty of fluids since both of these strategies help fill oneself up. Lastly, do not eat really late and then go directly to bed since this tends to allow the body to move the calories just eaten into fat for storage reasons.

Dietary Health For Pain Sufferers

Eating a better diet often allows one to lose weight. Reducing the total calorie intake by reducing fatty foods and simple carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, and pasta, and also reducing sweets can go a long way to meeting a complex goal. The hardest thing is probably reducing the total amount of calories taken in during the day to maintain a balance with the activity level one is performing.

Most everyone will have an increasingly slower metabolism as we age, and to exercise enough to burn off all the calories we eat is often impossible. It takes a wise diet and exercise to lose weight. It is never easy, but the more one learns about eating healthy, the easier it becomes to lose weight. Discipline in diet is probably more important than any fad diet, and be sure to choose a diet that you can follow long-term.