Could a Mediterranean Diet Be Right for You?

No sugar. No dairy. No gluten. No carbs. No...You fill in the blank.

We’ve all heard advice – solicited and unsolicited – about what to eat to help psoriatic arthritis. If you’re like me, you’ve probably tried and failed many of them. For me, one thing is for sure: Eating a generally healthy meal gives me more energy, but finding the right combo to actually help my psoriatic arthritis symptoms is a challenge.

Cue Elizabeth Perkins, MD, Novartis spokesperson and Alabama-based rheumatologist, who suggests lifestyle changes, like nutrition, to help her patients feel better.

“It was this drive to meet patients’ demands for, ‘What can I do more?’ and actually sitting with patients in their clinic visits months and months and even years into their treatments where they were saying, ‘I really want to feel better. I want to be more well than I am,’” she said.

A doctor’s perspective on diet

Dr. Perkins explained that a healthy patient might feel achy, joint pain and tired after eating unhealthy foods and inflammatory foods — processed foods, high carbs, a lot of sweets and desserts. These foods can knock you down. If you want to know what psoriatic arthritis feels like, eat a chili dog on Sunday and you’ll know what that patient feels like on Monday.

Diet woes

As Dr. Perkins points out, meals can be labor-intensive and can be expensive, not to mention driving all over town to find ingredients. Something else to consider is how your culture fits into the meal. It can definitely be difficult to pull it all together.

If you’re going to spend time on prepping and cooking, Dr. Perkins says you should be spending it on a diet that lowers inflammation.

“Don’t waste your time on food that makes you feel trashy. Spend your time on things that will help you feel better,” she said.

For that, she said she looks to the literature, and she found that a Mediterranean diet is one that can lower inflammation.

The Mediterranean basics

According to Dr. Perkins, the Mediterranean diet focuses on four food groups that are rich in omega fatty acids and have anti-inflammatory properties:

• White meats, like chicken and seafood
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Nuts

In addition, Dr. Perkins said that legumes (heavy in this diet), beans, fruits and nuts are all very anti-inflammatory.

Alternative foods

Sticking to a diet of any kind can be difficult, especially when you crave certain foods. Dr. Perkins suggests figuring out what makes you want those foods so badly.

“For example, I’m from Alabama, and I’m really trying to gear people away from macaroni and cheese. But if they love pasta, then I’ll ask them, ‘What do you love about pasta?’ If they like the cheese, you can have cheese in small amounts, so maybe replace the pasta with vegetables with the same sauce or same seasoning,” she said.

She continued, if you like bar-b-que, ask yourself what it is about the bar-b-que you like: Is it smoked? Does it have a certain flavor? And then try to replicate what you like by using salmon or tuna.

“If you’re tracking your diet in a healthy way, there is a place for your guilty pleasures, and you just need to make sure that it isn’t all of your meals that are filled with guilty pleasures,” she said.

Consult your doctor

If you’re like me, finding any control over a disease that is unpredictable is welcomed. Learning to ask for help in the kitchen and eating an anti-inflammatory diet might help you find a bit of control. Be sure to ask your own doctor first before starting any new diet, because after all, every patient is different and what is good for one may not be good for another. You want to make sure you’re helping your disease and not making it even angrier than it already is.