If you’re experiencing chronic pain, adjusting your diet might help.
Ken Hargreaves, DDS, PhD, is the chair of the Department of Endodontics at UT Health San Antonio.
"And I've spent the last nearly 40 years studying pain mechanisms and how we can better diagnose and better treat patients," Hargreaves said.
Researchers at UT Health San Antonio have found that unhealthy fats in our diets can be metabolized to form pain mediators and produce pain.
"And the opposite is true if we eat the healthy fats that are found in the Mediterranean diet in olive oil and the like," he said."They can actually be made into the body, into pain relieving substances that actually reduce pain."
These findings could lead to a better understanding of how to ease pain in patients experiencing things like diabetic neuropathy or recovering from surgery or physical trauma. But for the millions of American adults who experience pain every day, try cutting unhealthy fat from your diet, and add more healthy fat.
"We're talking about something that I think is rather important because we don't have to wait for the FDA to approve it. We don't have to pay $1,000 a pill to get it. And the benefits are really well documented. You're going to have better cardiovascular health. You're going to have better effects against diabetes," he said. "And, oh, by the way, we think you're going to have much less pain as well."
