[jonathanphifer]

I have had severe inflammation in my knees for the past three years. I have always been really active. It was diagnosed as runners knee. I went to physical therapy for a while and tried everything I know in hopes of it getting better. The pain has been persistent almost daily in my right knee and seemed to come and go in my left knee.

I gave up grains a few months back. I have always been experimental with my diet, and I have been on a mission on the past few years to figure out what agrees with my body and what does not. This lead me to give up grains about a five months or so ago. The only grains that I consumed were quinoa, rolled oats, brown rice, and some white rice. After a week of no grains I woke up and noticed that I had less knee pain than I have had in almost two years. I thought this was so odd because this is something I would not have associated with eating grains. I continued for another month of no grains and my knee pain was completely gone. I was pretty shocked. I reintroduced the grains into my diet after one month and within 3 days the knee pain was back. I continued over the next 2 weeks and the pain continued to get progressively worse.
I eliminated grains again after two weeks. After about a week the pain was gone again. I have been grain free(very occasionally have white rice) for the past few months and I have had zero knee pain.

This was a shocking discovery to me and I have been trying to find research or answers to this situation. Im curious if anybody has experienced anything similar to this? Obviously, there could be other factors here, but I have changed nothing else about my diet or exercise. It seems to me there is a clear association with the grains and the knee pain. It also seems possible that the grains were causing more inflammation within my body, but the knee pain was the only noticeable inflammation. I would love to know on a deeper level how this is possible mechanistically.

[Laura Knoff]

Hi Jonathan,
Yes, I too have noticed that avoidance of all grains (and beans, nuts and seeds) eliminates my inflammation, including joint pain. We are not the only ones. Grains do not want to be digested. They are seeds and hope to pass through the digestive system and be deposited on the ground with additional "fertilizer". To this end they protect themselves from digestion by having pretease inhibitors, phytates, lignin's primarily on the hard hulls or bran. Any compounds that are undigested become irritants to the intestine and increase inflammation locally and even systemically. The immune system treats undigested or semi digested foods as a foreign substances and tries to protect us from them with inflammation and even antibody formation. Antibodies will attack any protein that looks like the target, even our own joint tissues. For more information on this look up mollecular mimicry and check out https://www.thepaleomom.com/ for details that can help.